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.
Not just north Korea, the whole world can see what happened to Ukrain after they gave up their nukes in exchange for a protection deal, mutually assured destruction is the only way to keep your country safe
That had to be the biggest takeaway every country had to have gotten over the last couple of years.
Yes, not holding up that deal was the worst move in modern US diplomatic history. The Doomsday Clock was moved from 100 seconds to midnight up to 90 seconds to midnight because of it. The message is VERY clear: you will only be protected or respected if you can launch nukes.
Proximity bias of Europoors.
What is happening in Gaza and Iran is much worse. Iran is a 3,000 years old civilization while Ukraine is a fragment of USSR, 30 years old.
This comment should win some kind of an award. How on earth could anyone think the history of Ukrainian culture began 30 years ago when a regime that itself had only existed for around 70 years fell apart?
As if the Ukrainians aren’t a culture and people going back thousands of years. What odd bigotries you have.
Humans have inhabited Ukraine since 32,000 BC. - Wikipedia
Ukraine, the official country, is just some lines drawn on a map. The people, the culture, the history has been around for thousands and thousands of years.
Ukraine is far more older civilization than you think dumbass. Actually it’s older than russia.
Not even from Europe dumbass
Your armchair must be comfy
The Security Dilemma: Any steps a state takes to protect itself also threatens their neighbours who can’t tell if those actions are purely defensive or if they might be used for an offensive war.
In the Realism interpretation, this necessarily produces an arms race: The neighbours also need to increase their own safety, in turn threatening the first state, who then needs to…
WMDs and nuclear deterrence are the escalation of that dilemma. By raising the potential cost of an attack war to the level of annihilation, this leverages the most fundamental state objective (securing its own survival) to deter from ever attacking (at least one paper; war and diplomacy never turn out quite as the theory might imagine).
Idealism would instead trust in mutual understanding between states, that this arms race will produce pointless cost for all parties, which might be better invested in infrastructure and trade to make all parties more prosperous. Which also sounds nice on paper, but greed, ego and military industrial
corruption“lobby” are working hard to separate us.Remember, you’ve got more in common with a working-class American, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, North Korean, Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian or any other other country than you do with billionaires or the leaders working so hard to spread hate and division and turn us on each other. We do what we must to protect ourselves, but we must not forget that the guy on the other side is just as much a victim.
Until we can make that unity a reality, it unfortunately does seem that nukes are a critical component in any state’s security strategy.
reinforce North Korea’s view
I think you mean conclusively prove North Korea’s view to be correct
We live in times, when if you don’t have a weapon of mass destruction, you cannot be safe. This is like having a gun in neighborhood.
That’s because nukes ARE the only path to security lmao. As soon as the first one was tested, and then fuck me used against civilians everyone watching jnmed understood this.
It sucks, and I would much prefer a world without nuclear weapons, but this is reality unfortunately. If you have nukes, you have leverage without ever having to use them
we were working toward a way for a world without nukes. building an economy so interconnected that going to war with another country destroys your economy too. but that shit is fragile. i didn’t think it was this fragile tho.
It just needs someone with power and without any fucking knowledge of economics but thinking the opposite.
Too bad that ideology drove wealth inequality which empowered populism which empowered fascism which destroyed the interconnected economy. Neoliberalism was never a solution to peace.
who said an interconnected economy needs to be neoliberal?
…The great project you were referring to was a neoliberal one…
The economy in the USA can still get a lot worse!
This is the plot of metal gear
Metal gear?!
!
I heared this.
Shit, Trump’s illegal Iran war convinces me pretty strongly that a nuclear weapons program is the only way to keep my fucking apartment secure from the despotic motherfucker. Kick in my door and millions go boom, bitch!
…that sounds ridiculous, and it is! But that’s the kind of world this sadistic, brain-rotted buffoon is trying to create. And for some reason Republicans seem to think that’s just great! Less than two dozen of them could end this nightmare if they cared. But they don’t. How many more are going to die for these bastards?
That’s the overwhelming message of the 20th and 21st centuries. If you don’t have nukes then the US or Russia is gonna mess with you. Get nukes.
Secretly get nukes.
All but impossible, the major players keep an eye on all the things necessary for nuclear weapons.
Actually, Canada got in on the ground floor and we have everything we’d need. They say we’re about two months out at any given time, going the plutonium route.
Then again, we’re pretty used to the luxuries of not being an isolated pariah state.
It seems that’s what Iran was doing actually. They enriched uranium up to 60%. Bomb grade is 90%. But there’s really no reason to enrich that high except to make nukes. And nuclear enrichment is not a linear thing. Half the work is just to get to 5% enrichment.
It seems they designed their program to be right on the edge of nuclear breakout. In retrospect, they probably should have gone straight for the bomb.
Yeah, there’s an annoying amount of controversy over whether “Iran was trying to make a bomb”. It gets mixed answers from experts, because the literal answer is one thing, the effective answer is another, and there’s no way to explain it responsibly in a word or two.
Iran was/is trying to almost-but-not-quite get the bomb. Whether just going for it would of worked better or if the US would have stepped in sooner is an interesting question. It’s possible the Ayatollah wasn’t lying about having personal moral issues with it, though.
You guys aren’t quite as turnkey as, say, Japan. They’ve got reprocessing and rocket production from JAXA and really would have to just put together an implosion device.
TIL.
Delivery would be an issue for sure. Then again, if the potential target is America “guys on quads” would work. If the target isn’t America, America will do it for us. Edit: Because they own the Western hemisphere, and we’re their bitch.
As an American I sincerely hope that’s true, though I’d wager most of the people within “guys on quads” distance are pretty sympathetic to the effects our federal government is having on old allies.
Uh, so other side of the border from me is red state Montana. Anyway, I think the idea is you load it onto something else once it’s in and take it to an actual target. It’s just a long border that’s hard to seal perfectly.
If there’s a note of disbelief in there, I’d like to point out America has nukes and uses them as a deterrent the same way. Like, whether proliferation is morally justified, of if we should just accept our fate in that scenario, is a serious question we should ask, but you don’t really have a moral highground about it.
Obviously I’m not saying killing people is cool, and we know that 2/3 of Americans didn’t ask for any of this.
Just do what Pakistan did and make a publicized nuclear team and nuclear infrastructure that acts as the fall guy for the real nuclear team and real infrastructure.
Also probably maybe have a government and military that isn’t susceptible to espionage.
Am Canadian. Want nukes.
I’m an American. I want nukes. Not for my country, me specifically. We should legalize the private ownership of nuclear bombs!
Am German. We can definitely be trusted with nukes.
I think the lesson here is no one can be trusted with nukes, which is why I want them.
Checks and balances.
I know that it’s an unpopular opinion, but I firmly believe that we were at least marginally safer when the USSR was still a superpower acting as a check on American fuckery.
Once the USSR fell, US went masks off on the international stage because they had no reason to pretend to be the good guys anymore.
They convinced all their allies to disarm themselves, and then went full “nice country here…shame if something happened to it” the moment they were the only big dog left.
The world can’t re-arm itself fast enough as far as I’m concerned.
Better to have it and not need it. You can only have respect when your facing someone at an equal level of power and respect. Clearly even if some administration does have love for your people the next administration might not.
Once the USSR fell
For a brief time with Yeltsin at the helm.
And not just North Korea’s.
Just like Putin is the best NATO marketer, Trump is the best nuclear weapon marketer.
Since Putin attacked Ukraine half a dozen European countries are considering their own nuclear arsenal separate from US nuclear sharing. Sweden, Germany, Ukraine, Italy, Poland, Netherlands, Denmark.
Putin attacking Ukraine has certainly played a part here but the big and much more impactful final push for this has been NATO members losing trust in the USA and its nuclear umbrella because of Trump. After all every one of these European nations except for Ukraine which is the only non-member was happy with the NATO guarantees for a very long time before this.
If they have a bigger brain they would make a bigger stockpile with more capable strike capability. Having global nuclear reach is the only way to have sovereignty in 2026.
Instead of using our combined resources to elect, better governments, and what not we could just make nukes. The poor will be starving still but we will have nukes.
Idealism vs Realism in International Relations:
Of course it would be preferable that we all realise just how much money and resources are being wasted on war that could do more good for eveyone when invested in constructive measures such as infrastructure and trade.
Unfortunately, enough awful people exist to make that idea (currently) unfeasible. We will have nukes, but at least we might still live.
(That’s not to endorse the status quo, and we absolutely should change it. We need to acknowledge where we stand in order to plan how we get where we want to go, but go we should.)
Realism = looking at your neighboring countries and wondering if it’s worth turning them into a toxic wasteland because you felt a little scared. The repercussions of nuclear armament in these psychotic times will be all consuming.
It’s just a really funny thing to see casually thrown around with the context of the last hundred years. I can’t imagine any of you guys have looked into the Cold War nuclear policies.
Realism in this case is one approach to examining international relations, which models states as self-interested actors in an anarchic global system. It assumes that there are no other rules than reasonable self-interest constraining decisions. In essence, it takes a “worst case” approach to human decency, but also a “best case” approach to rational government.
It’s not a “perfect” model, because no model is, but it can offer explanations and predictions for some decisions, which makes it a useful tool in talking about national security.
wondering if it’s worth turning them into a toxic wasteland because you felt a little scared
Not quite.
- The idea is to obtain and demonstrate that you have the capability to do so, not to strictly do it. In fact, actually using it is a risky move: Every nuke you detonate expends some of your capability, and if you run out of nukes before you run out of targets, you have a lot of pissed enemies and no ace up your sleeve.
- Toxic Wasteland is as useless to you as it is to the enemy. Infrastructure destroyed in conventional strikes may be repaired and used to your own advantage. Whatever valuable resources might be available in the area will be inaccessible for a good while, which will have an impact on global trade and may have repercussions to you as well.
- The investment into that capability scales with the threat environment. In a safe neighborhood, most people don’t erect double fences with barbed wire to ward off invaders, because it’s expensive, inconvenient and usually excessive. Likewise, nukes are expensive, require Infrastructure to develop and store them, a way to deal with the radiation and byproduct, constant maintenance and vigilance and pose a permanent risk of accidents and contamination.
The objective of a defender is self-preservation. The way they achieve that is typically to make attacking them unattractive by raising the cost of the attack and eroding the will of the attacker. If they can no longer afford to keep pushing, or if their own people are rebelling against the austerity of wartime measures, they will eventually either have to negotiate or collapse.
The sooner the enemy comes to the conclusion that they won’t get a favourable result, the sooner they’ll want to cut their losses. Ideally, they will come to that conclusion even before attacking at all. That is where nuclear deterrence comes into play: Not to be used (lightly), but to communicate “A war with me may become so horribly expensive that the risk isn’t worth whatever you stand to gain.”
You don’t nuke your neighbour because you feel a little scared. You build nukes because you’re no longer sure that conventional weaponry is enough to deter a potential attacker. Your rival isn’t sure whether you’ll use them offensively, accordingly unsettled by the possibility of getting nuked and starts building their own.
And then we arrive at the principle of MAD and the cold war: if either attacks the other, they risk getting destroyed as well, but if either disarms, they risk losing that deterrence that keeps the other from attacking first.
To make all of this worse, I’ll return to my introductory note: This line of reasoning is built on the premise that all involved parties are rational. We can safely say that this doesn’t hold up to reality.
On one hand, a state is larger than its leader, and a lunatic in charge can’t launch the first strike without the cooperation of his people. If they act rationally and refuse to carry out the order, that might prevent the irrationality of individuals from fucking up everyone.
On the other, deception or error may lead to the launch of a “second” strike where no first one has taken place, fucking up everyone.
The Cuba crisis stands as an example for both of those “deviations” from the rational premise of Realism. Fortunately, one ended up compensating for the other, but the idea that it took two “wrongs” at once to make a right is scary.There is also another premise that doesn’t entirely hold, one that can break the dilemma and led to the disarmament: having faith that the other will take the same risk to break out of the stalemate isn’t strictly self-interested, but humans aren’t all evil and paranoid. Human decency can help us build a better world.
We “just” need to get the pricks out of the way…
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.
Realism is more nukes = more chances for an all out nuclear war that wipes out 80% of humanity. Probably more like the 99% that don’t own bunkers
Realism as a framework for studying International Relations models states as rational actors in a global system without rules.
Under that framework, more nukes should mean less war because the risk of MAD raises the potential cost of aggression past the primary objective of the state: self-preservation. A rational actor won’t start a war that might see the enemy pressed to the point where they decide that the risk of using nukes is acceptable.
Of course, that framework fails to account for irrational behaviour. The problem isn’t (strictly) nukes, but unchecked megalomaniacs and growing nationalist hatred.
Yes, more nukes means that a potential devastation might be much worse, but if you wonder what less nukes means, ask Ukraine how that turned out for them.
It’s the mentality of “the other guy bad” we need to tackle. That’s the fuel that feeds populist warmongers and the glue that sustains fascism.
I agree fully. I wish we could go back to 2022 and give Ukraine the full support of the US military and honored our treaty. Wish they got let into NATO. Hate that we gotta talk about nukes. Don’t think 20 nukes would deter Russia or USA from belligerent aggression, considering the regimes in charge.
Ya and I don’t think getting every country a nuke is realistic. There’s a reason why we started disarming the nukes and getting rid of them. And like the reason is now they are not OK to have around unstable government. The US is an unstable government with the most advanced nukes in the world. And more of them than most countries combined. It’s just not really a sane move to be trying to arm yourself with weapons of mass destruction in the face of an unstable country willing to use them.
You’ll never build enough nukes before we come bomb you for trying to build nukes you know? That’s what’s happening in Iran. You screech about getting a nuke and bombing America for 30 years and you kind of don’t get any sympathy when the insane government comes to bomb your ass. These people would love to nuke Iran they just know they couldn’t survive it poltivally yet…
Maybe the lesson to be learned is that publicly calling for a nuclear weapon to use against a nuclear power is probably not a good political stance. You should try to keep it hush-hush.
Yes, sir, when I look around and see a deteriorating global peace, the first thing I think is nuclear proliferation. It’s like clearly humans can handle more destructive power and need to be threatening each other on a more existential scale.
If they have a bigger brain they would make a bigger stockpile with more capable strike capability. Having global nuclear reach is the only way to have sovereignty in 2026.
It should be the goal of all politically unstable countries to control nukes. Fuck feeding your population or dealing with internal corruption. Just do nukes!
You spend your life building a beautiful home. Right when you pay the mortgage off and finish the last detail…a drunken maniac busts in the door, shoots you, and moves into your former home. And he just gets away with it because there’s no cops in your town.
Or, more concretely, you build a magnificent culture, industry, society, and economy. You invest in your people and technological innovation. You turn your nation into an economic powerhouse. Then the neighboring country, who put all of their more limited resources into the military, storms across the border and takes over your little paradise. Now you’re still paying the tax levels of a Nordic welfare state, but all of the money just goes into the pockets of the warlords and oligarchs of the mafia state that just conquered you.
Yea the Ukraine war is a real tragedy. But I don’t think the EU in America are afraid of Russian nukes. I think they’re addicted to Russian money.
If they have a brain they will never relinquish their nukes. Not just because of the US either.
Because they’re such a good use of national resources. They sit around costing money being a clear and present danger to all. Marvelous idea.
Costs less than defending your land with conventional weapons and lives.
As long as you plan on nuking someone I guess. Have you ever seen the infographic from the Cold War when everyone launches their nukes? Mutually assured destruction ringing any bells? What kind of sovereignty do you expect to have of your nuclear wasteland?
The future comes down to one thing - management.
they exist to prevent conflict at all because everyone knows the consequences of using them.
As I said to the other guy, I’m pretty sure the people in charge of the United States right now would happily let their people get hit by three nukes so they could new nuke you back. It’s a win win for them.
I’m not so sure about that since it’s still possible for them to hit stuff and people they care about even though they may not care about the country or its people in general.
And no doubt the S&P500 would tank so there’s that. Seems to be the one thing Trump cares about more than anything else.
With the administrations effort to collapse the value of the US dollar, I think we may be getting to the point where they stopped caring about the stock market gains too. Which would make them irrational actors. They already own most of the stock market anyway. They can crash the market and still control the companies.
They only prevent conflict if you have enough to annihilate your enemy. We have a full nuclear umbrella over the globe so no matter how many nukes you throw at us we are still going to be around to throw them back at you. 3 nukes won’t save you. 3,000 might?
There’s still a significant deterrent effect even if you’d “only” lose a few major cities worth while others stay around. There’s also potential for extended responses by other nuclear weapons states that further increase deterrence for such a scenario.
I’m trying to think of how Ukraine acquiring nukes would work with Russia? Do you think Ukraine having a nuke would deter Russia or would it make them an existential threat and have Russia nuke them? Let’s look at this from two different countries stand points and take the USA out of it for a second.
In science, we prefer observational to speculative evidence.
If you prefer observational evidence do some research on a proper nuclear counter and check out what happened to those USSR nukes.
Russia had about 10,000 of the biggest bombs in the world. Same doctrine just splatter anything close to being considered a friend of the US. So like it’s not having a nuke. It’s having enough nukes to outnuke the next guy and an survival plan for when your whole civilization turns to glass
OK well the USA will launch 3200 nuclear missiles at just about anything that threatens it with a nuclear missile. We will basically hit every known nuclear missile site and every related population center… so I guess when you are thinking about nuking the United States before they invade you…. Just know they will nuke the entire world and they will dump more nukes on you. Then you could create in a lifetime… that’s our actual nuclear doctrine
Works both ways, while the USA is thinking about invading another country with nuclear weapons they have to know that will lead to nukes from that country hitting their major cities which will probably make them think twice.
Then the discussion moves to pre-emptive strikes which have the same problem if the other country already has nukes. Eventually we end up in this situation where some might see even pursuing a nuclear weapons technology as justification for a war of aggression like we’re seeing in Iran so you certainly need to be careful during that phase but once you get there you’re in a much safer place than you used to.
The US is a big place, and we starve our citizens for fun. I don’t think the higher ups would care if you dropped a handful of bombs up.
A true nuclear deterrent is a combination of icbms and sub launched missles. A lot of them. I’m thinking 300 before I even start to get scared. 3,000 and I’m shitting bricks. If you build 3 nukes and think that will stop the USA from invading it’s just nonsense. They’d happily let those hit so they could glass their enemies and start the apocalypse.
You’re dealing with mad men.
Well the UN definetly isnt guaranteeing it. Who can blame the north Koreans and others for having nukes as deterrence?
The UN was never a guarantor of peace. It was an effort to provide a forum for diplomacy to facilitate peaceful solutions, created in a time where international relations were much more fragmented.
Diplomacy can never prevent war, only ever seek to avoid it, and that’s what the UN is for. It’s not any member’s extended army to enforce their idea of peace. That’s why the great powers got veto rights: to prevent weaponising it.
This isn’t on the UN. It’s on the aggressors that start wars and prove that you cannot trust in international goodwill and a shared desire for peace.
The great powers got veto rights for them to participate at all in it and for them to be able to do as they please in the future. I don’t think “weaponising” is the correct framing because from the point of view of probably pretty much everyone else other than them (and of course even for them when it comes to the other ones) it would absolutely be a good thing if the UN was able to limit their actions too. The people who came up with the whole concept of international law certainly would not have preferred this situation where the law is not the same for everyone, it’s against the basic principles of rule of law.
The great powers got veto rights for them to participate at all in it
Yes, of course. But what would the alternative achieve? If a great power decides to defy a (binding) resolution, how would the others enforce it? Bear in mind that client states or otherwise allied nations wouldn’t want to intervene against their masters or allies. You’d either end up splitting the UN, at which point it’s no longer United, or form alliances outside of it, like the sanctions against Russia (which not everyone implemented either).
The people who came up with the whole concept of international law certainly would not have preferred this situation where the law is not the same for everyone, it’s against the basic principles of rule of law.
International law (like any other law) only works if it is either respected or enforced. Criminal cartels also defy the law, and if they’re powerful enough to resist enforcement, the law might as well not apply to them.
So yes, this isn’t how law should work, but power corrupts a lot of things, the rule of law included.
I’m not saying this state of affairs is good. Reality often isn’t, and I wish it were.
And unfortunately, North Korea is very correct in this assessment :(
shit, i’m in canada and we are having a new conversation about acquiring nukes. USA is making the world a very dangerous place, and it’s all because grossly rich turds like trump want more.
when you type USA, do you mean the divided states between Canada and Mexico?
Ununited states of amerikkka
Sadly, that’s a lesson I’ve already learned from war in Ukraine. Before it I had "hope"s and "might"s about civilization. Now I have a substantial amount less
I sincerely don’t give us 50 years. We will almost certainly destroy ourselves. Whether that’s by war, economic or environmental collapse, or otherwise, we’re speed running it on all fronts.
I used to hold so much hope for humanity. It feels so naive now.
If it makes you feel any better, we will probably survive and restart the cycle.
True. Perhaps a better way of mentally framing it might be that modern society is but one of many temporary states, not the end all be all of humanity and life on Earth in general. Still sad. We could be so much more.
North Korea doesn’t understand that you must have something worth taking like oil before you need to build nukes to protect it
They do.
Not oil but minerals.
The United States dropped 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,557 tons of napalm in North Korea, more than what was spent on the entire Pacific Theater of WW2.
While I don’t doubt the US would drop that many bombs just to cause suffering, I don’t think it adds up financially if they didn’t want something.
The situation Ukraine and Iran reinforced that position too. Ukraine believed that the US would have its back if it gave up its nukes
And Libia before
