As speculation mounts that Kim Jong-un and Trump could meet this month, analysts say Pyongyang will continue to see nuclear weapons as a matter of survival
North Korea’s launch last week of a missile from a naval destroyer elicited an uncharacteristically prosaic analysis from the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un. The launch was proof, he said, that arming ships with nuclear weapons was “making satisfactory progress”.
But the test, and Kim’s mildly upbeat appraisal, were designed to reverberate well beyond the deck of the 5,000-tonne destroyer-class vessel the Choe Hyon – the biggest warship in the North Korean fleet.
His pointed reference to nuclear weapons was made as the US and Israel continued their air bombardment of Iran – a regime Donald Trump had warned, without offering evidence, was only weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.
There’s also that pesky calculation of how many nukes can I deliver effectively. I believe you pointed out that Russia wants to protect its main cities. The scale of your arsenal would have to be able to overwhelm counter missiles for a small nation to get to MAD scale would cost a fortune.
You can look at it from an IR perspective. You can look at it by game theory we can look at the historical context. It’s all quite frightening to me.
I personally believe we should be disarming the things. I liked growing up in that period of history where there wasn’t a constant threat of nuclear extinction. Hate to see us go back in that direction.