Armed For Nuclear War
Posted on April 26, 2009
Filed Under Documentary, Facts, International News, Nuclear Facility | 10 Comments
THE world’s intelligence agencies and defense experts are quietly acknowledging that North Korea has become a full nuclear power, with the capacity to wipe out entire cities in Japan and South Korea. The new reality has emerged in off-hand remarks and single sentences buried in lengthy reports. Increasing numbers of authoritative experts — from the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency to the US Defense Secretary — admit North Korea has miniaturized nuclear warheads to the extent they can be launched on medium-range missiles, according to intelligence briefings. This puts the country ahead of Iran in the race for nuclear attack capability and alters the balance of power between North Korea’s large but poorly equipped military and the South Korean and US forces ranged against it. “North Korea has nuclear weapons, which is a matter of fact,” IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei said. “I don’t like to accept any country as a nuclear-weapon state, but we have to face reality.”
North Korea carried out an underground nuclear test in 2006 but until recently foreign governments believed such nuclear devices were too unwieldy to be mounted on a missile. With 13,000 artillery pieces buried close to the border between the two Koreas, and chemical and biological warheads, it was always understood the North could inflict significant conventional damage on Seoul, the South Korean capital. But Western military planners had calculated it could not strike outside the peninsula. Now North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-il, has the potential to order the killing of millions in Japan as well as the South, and to lay waste to US bases and airfields in both countries. This will force Western military strategists to rethink plans for war in Korea and increase the potential costs of any future Korean war. The shift from acknowledging North Korea’s nuclear weapons development program to recognizing it as a nuclear power is controversial. South Korea resists the reclassification because it could give the North more negotiating leverage.
The successful work of enabling the nuclear devices to be mounted on weapons happened towards the end of last year, according to Daniel Pinkston, of the International Crisis Group think tank. The US Forces Joint Command published an annual report Last December that for the first time listed North Korea, alongside China, India, Pakistan and Russia, as one of Asia’s nuclear powers. The US Government insisted this did not reflect its official policy — but then former US defense secretary James Schlesinger delivered a report from a Pentagon task force saying the same thing. “North Korea, India and Pakistan have acquired both nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems,” he said. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates published an article in Foreign Affairs in January in which he referred to the “arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east”.
According to Dr Pinkston, the long-range Taepodong 2 rocket North Korea fired this month is unsuitable for a nuclear bomb because it takes weeks to assemble, fuel and arm, giving ample time for it to be destroyed on the launch pad. The danger lies with shorter-range weapons, often difficult to detect. They include variants of the Scud, which could strike South Korea, and the Nodong, which could reach much of Japan. Pyongyang also has a short-range weapon called the Toksa, accurate up to 120km. The Musudan, which can be transported by road, could hit US military bases on the Pacific island of Guam.
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10 Responses to “Armed For Nuclear War”
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[...] Armed For Nuclear War [...]
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