North Korea: The costs of war, calculated

Donald Trump is contemplating wars that would dwarf anything that his immediate predecessors ever considered.

He has dropped the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan, and he’s considering the mother of all wars in the Middle East. He is abetting Saudi Arabia’s devastating war in Yemen. Many evangelicals are welcoming his announcement of US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as a sign that the end of days is nigh. The conflict with Iran is about to heat up early next year when Trump, in the absence of any congressional action, will decide whether to fulfill his promise to tear up the nuclear agreement that the Obama administration worked so hard to negotiate and the peace movement backed with crucial support.

But no war has acquired quite the same apparent inevitability as the conflict with North Korea. Here in Washington, pundits and policymakers are talking about a “three-month window” within which the Trump administration can stop North Korea from acquiring the capability to strike US cities with nuclear weapons.

That estimate allegedly comes from the CIA, though the messenger is the ever-unreliable John Bolton, the former flame-thrower of a US ambassador to the U N Bolton has used that estimate to make the case for a preemptive attack on North Korea, a plan that Trump has also reportedly taken very seriously.

North Korea, too, has announced that war is “an established fact.” After the most recent US-South Korean military exercises in the region, a spokesperson from the Foreign Ministry in Pyongyang said, “The remaining question now is: when will the war break out?”
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N Korea fires most powerful missile toward Japan; can handle it, says Trump

North Korea on Wednesday fired a ballistic missile that landed into the Sea of Japan, the media reported citing officials.

The missile, believed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by the Pentagon based on initial assessments, was launched from Sain Ni, North Korea and flew roughly around 1,000 km before landing in the Sea of Japan, Fox News reported.

The missile flew east for about 53 minutes before landing off the north of Honshu, Japan's largest island, the New York Times reported.

The missile was fired high into the air, reaching a maximum altitude of over 4,500 km, in an arc similar to the North's two previous intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, which were launched in July.

The distance travelled appeared to be significantly greater than that of the two previous ICBMs, which flew for 37 minutes on July 4 and for 47 minutes on July 28.

David Wright, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the missile performed better than the two fired in July, with a potential range of more than 12,000 km, able to reach Washington or any other part of the continental US.

"It's pretty impressive," Wright said of the test flight. "This is building on what they've done before. It's muscle-flexing to show the US that they're going to continue to make progress."
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UN has 'exhausted' its options on North Korea nuclear crisis: Nikki Haley

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley warned that the world body has "exhausted" its options on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.

"We have pretty much exhausted all the things that we can do at the Security Council at this point," Haley on Sunday said in an interview with the CNN.

"None of us want war," she said, adding that if diplomacy fails on the nuclear issue, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis "will take care of it", Xinhua news agency reported.

Meanwhile, the US and South Korea have agreed to increase pressure on North Korea after its latest missile test, the White House said on Sunday.

US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in spoke on Saturday by phone and committed to "continuing to take steps to strengthen deterrence and defence capabilities and to maximize economic and diplomatic pressure" on North Korea, according to a White House statement.
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Caught between Trump and Kim, Japan is nervous and alone

North Korea’s nuclear test, by far its largest, came less than a week after it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile that flew over northern Japan, triggering a national text-message system known as the J-Alert.

For Japan, the security implications of both these tests are immense. The missile test showed that Kim Jong-un’s regime now has the capacity to strike the Japanese mainland with relative ease, while Pyongyang’s apparent grasp of hydrogen bomb technology means it could potentially vaporise a chunk of the continental US mainland. That changes not just the magnitude of the North Korean threat, but the very foundations of Japan’s national security.

The US’s commitment to protect Japan is currently based on the idea that the American mainland remains safe from North Korean retaliation. But faced with the reality that North Korea could soon be able to strike American soil, there is now a serious question mark over how willing the US will be to come to Japan’s aid while its own security is at risk.

This puts Japan in a highly difficult position. Its alliance with the US has been the bedrock of its foreign and security policies since at least the 1960s, and until now, any countermeasure against North Korea was based on the assumption that Washington will come to Tokyo’s help. In other words, Japan has for decades been able to invoke American military power as part of its own diplomatic clout. No more.
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Amid tensions with North Korea, US to test anti-missile system in Alaska

The US military is preparing to conduct another test of a missile-intercept system in Alaska, the Pentagon said today, amid continued tensions with North Korea over its ballistic missile program.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said a routine test of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system had been scheduled to go ahead "soon".

"These tests are done as a routine measure to make sure that the system is ready," he said.

"They are scheduled well in advance of any other real world geopolitical events going on."

A notice to mariners put out by the US Coast Guard said the test could occur as soon as Saturday.

THAAD is designed to intercept and destroy short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles during their final phase of flight.

THAAD is not designed to stop an ICBM -- that job is left primarily to the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) interceptor system.
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Why did sanctions against North Korea's missile program fail?

North Korea’s successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), allegedly with the capability to hit Alaska, is the latest in a series of significant advances for the country’s missile program.

North Korea has been seeking to develop long-range missile technology for over 20 years. For much of this period, the international community has been trying to stop that from happening.

My research on how states illegally obtain missile technologies and my experience conducting outreach related to UN sanctions give me some insight into the methods North Korea used to make illicit procurements and the limitations in using technology-based sanctions to prevent them.

Technology-based sanctions
In 2006 – following North Korea’s first nuclear test – the UN Security Council prohibited the “supply, sale or transfer” of “items, materials, equipment, goods and technology” that could contribute to the country’s missile program.

Efforts to prevent North Korea’s acquisition of missile technology by certain nations – notably the United States – were underway by the 1990s. However, the UN sanctions went further by placing standardized legal requirements on all states to prevent the development of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction programs.

These sanctions are “universal” – obligatory for all states around the world. However, each nation is responsible for implementation within its borders. Missile, nuclear and military technologies are regulated through national export control systems. Exports of certain goods and technologies need to be granted an export license by the government. This allows governments to do a risk assessment on transactions and minimize the diversions to undesirable uses, such as WMD programs or human rights abuses.
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North Korea threatens nuclear war as US deploys bombers near its border

The People's Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Friday has warned of imminent nuclear war following the US live-fire bombing run near its border.

In a Sunday editorial of the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the DPRK accused Washington of engaging in "military provocations," designed to commence nuclear conflict in the region.

"The Korean peninsula is the largest gunpowder area in the world with the highest risk of nuclear war, and is the largest hot spot in the world where there is always a risk of nuclear war," reads the DPRK editorial, cited by RT.

"[Washington] is surely spreading into a new world war," the Rodong Sinmun editorial asserted, adding that American military moves in the region were merely an attempt to distract from US  President Donald Trump's "serious crisis of power" on Capitol Hill.

Pyongyang's launch of what it claimed to be its first ICBM, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) held an emergency meeting and the US deployed two B-18 strategic bombers to the region, Sputnik reported.

While the B-18 bombing runs were escorted by US, South Korean and Japanese fighter jets.

The Pentagon, through its Pacific Command, tweeted that the runs "demonstrated America's ironclad commitment to the defence of our allies," according to RT.

Moscow has already provided evidence to the United Nations (UN) that the missile Pyongyang launched on Tuesday was a mid-range, not a global ballistic missile.
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