Nuclear Nightmare !

Technically, North Korea is still at war with its democratic South Korean neighbour.  The two sides are separated by a heavily fortified demilitarized zone and South Korea is protected by an American alliance and a United Nations peace force that ensures stability.

North Korea is an enigma.  It really is a remnant leftover from the years of the cold war.  It is a hardline Communist state in a world where the Soviet Union has imploded and China morphed into a capitalist version economy run by a Communist dictatorship.  Unfortunately, North Koreas leadership revolves around a family hierarchy and the Kim's exhibit hostility and intolerance to the rest of the world from their heavily armed hermit kingdom.

North Korea shuns normal contact with other nations and it earns a living by arms sales, narcotic distribution and counterfeiting the banknotes of other countries. Its economy is totally reliant on China and its presence provides a buffer for that Communist state which fears the encroachment of hostile nations at its borders.

The North Koran military is one of the biggest standing armies in the world and absorbs the greatest share of the economy while the peasants endure hardship and starvation.  The world was shocked when North Korea detonated an atomic weapon and announced that it had joined the nuclear club. It has since conducted further nuclear test firings and is fast developing the technology to build a credible ICBM force.  It claims the ability to fire a nuclear warhead capable of decimating American cities.

America and the western world has deplored this nuclear development and imposed sanctions.  Clearly, that has failed to prevent  North Korean advancement and we face a stalemate.  We know North Korea has a small number of nuclear bombs similar to the bomb that demolished Hiroshima.  We doubt that they yet have the ability to miniaturize that to fit in an ICBM warhead, but reaching that stage of development seems imminent.  Their ICBM development is now advanced and they will shortly have an all world reach.

The big question is exactly what Kim Jong-Un intends to do with his nuclear arsenal.  He is bombastically threatening to annihilate America and Japan.  He has threatened the American island of Guam in the Pacific and a recent ICBM test firing crossed the Japanese mainland before falling into the ocean.  His mental state is unknown and if he is threatened by internal unrest he could create an imagined threat to North Korean sovereignty and take the country to war to consolidate his hold on power.

It is likely that the North Korean threat is basically bluff.   In a nuclear war North Korea could do a degree of damage that would cost millions their life, but the country would be wiped off the map and cease to exist.  It is unlikely that there would be nuclear war by intent, but the danger exists of war by miscalculation - or by a leader with an unhinged mind unleashing war with irrationality.

The world probably missed the opportunity to deal with North Korea when it exploded its first nuclear test explosion, just as the opportunity to deal with Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime in the 1930's before it consolidated its armed strength.

That same question awaits an answer at the present time.  North Korea presently has the power to inflict limited damage.  If we hesitate, in a few more years the regime will have progressed to the hydrogen bomb and will have mastered multiple re-entry warheads and have missiles capable of delivering world devastation.

Can we live with a North Korea with Kim Jong-Un's finger on the nuclear trigger ?