You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more
Does anyone, on either side of the political aisle, actually think that the DPRK would give up its nuclear capability without receiving in exchange commitments that the US would not be willing to give? If the answer is "no" — what happens when this (inevitably) becomes clear?
Let me phrase this another way. People like to talk about North Korea as "crazy." The absolute "craziest" thing they could do is give up their nuclear deterrent in a situation where they have an aggressive nuclear-armed enemy. Does anyone think they are *that* crazy? I don't.
It's probably my own Twitter bubble speaking but I see literally no informed voices who seem to think that DPRK is actually interested in truly disarming. So what's the game plan? Is it negotiating on sanctions? Is it stalling to defuse tensions in that time-honored DPRK way?
Is it flexing some kind of cultural muscle, getting the attention and respect they think they deserve, by saying a few magic words to an American president very eager to hear them? I don't know.
What I do know is, taking seriously the idea that they'd spend SIX DECADES building up the infrastructure necessary to have nukes, and then just give it up relatively cheaply... that's the bizarro idea. Is it impossible? I don't know. But it's bizarro.
(And yes, they've been working towards this end since the 1950s!! From Richelson, _Spying on the Bomb_. Though the dedicated, make-me-a-bomb production program started in the 1970s, apparently.)pic.twitter.com/mikAGqKar5
Playing the game of "if I were a North Korean" — if I were KJU, I'd be playing the US for time. Endless ways for discussions to get bogged down indefinitely.
If we take the "we don't need to test anymore" rhetoric seriously, they seem feel their missiles and warheads are adequate enough to deter. But they probably lack quantity. So slow everything down for several months or a year. Roll out a real stockpile.
Get things to the point where the US intelligence and military community can no longer whatsoever maintain the delusion that the US homeland wouldn't just get their hair mussed in some kind of "exchange."
I've been following your work on nukes for a good long while, and I'm puzzled by something to which you may know the answer. Why are we still stuck in brick-and-mortar nuclear technology? Are we really not working on something far more devastating? I was led to believe we were.
I'm not sure what you mean by "brick-and-mortar." The state-of-the-art is not "giant bombs" but "very compact weapons that you can fit a bunch of on the end of a single rocket." We developed that in the 1960s-70s. It does the job one would want very well, better than big bombs.
By the late 1970s work on weapons design in the US was, as some designers put it, "polishing a turd." Squeezing just a little more efficiency or safety out of a fundamentally solved problem. No new breakthroughs or concepts in the warhead field.
In any case your body of work for The New Yorker has been riveting...and chilling.
What is likelihood that DPRK doesn't have a very viable nuke program? They can't afford it, can't get technology right to produce a meaningful deterrent. And they have a deadly conventional deterrent. Maybe plan was always to give it up.https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-tunnel/tunnel-collapse-may-have-killed-200-after-north-korea-nuclear-test-japanese-broadcaster-idUSKBN1D018L …
I think any nation that has half a dozen nuke tests (including in the hundred-kiloton range) and several successful ICBM tests has gotta be considered having a "viable nuke program." They can certainly threaten US interests in the region (e.g., Tokyo); that counts as a deterrent.
But do we know their capabilities? Are we overestimating given their many failures? Serious question, I have no expertise in this.
Every failure is a lesson learned in nuclear matters. So just because a test "fails" it doesn't mean the test was useless. You test to make sure the failure does not happen when a contingency arises.
I guess one possibility that occurred to me over the past couple of days is that Trump might have made an extreme gangster-like threat — disarm now or else.
I’m also puzzled how the US can make a credible commitment to NK, especially after what happened to Libya.
If I were KJU, I'd certainly want to see what Trump is willing to put on the table. It's pretty clear at this point that Trump does not consider many traditional strategic interests to be strategic interests. He may value nearly 30k troops home over Pacific security alliances.
I think there will be enough pushback on that idea that its not feasible domestically, but Kim doesn't have much to lose since there was very little diplomatic engagement before this.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
