h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was surprised to not see this morning's stunning news already being discussed on the forum.

So here is your chance. What do you think will happen now? How significant do you think this will prove to be in future years?

I have an idea of my own forming but I was hoping to contribute to a debate rather than start one - so here goes. 3, 2, 1 go....

Clive

Worst nightmare is that NK transfers weapons to Al-Qaeda or their fellow travelers. Anybody have a feel for NK's historical track record as a supplier of weapons to terrorists?

It's a sort of "shrugs shoulders" moment. We've been told for so long they've got nukes, so what's changed?

What can the world do? Sanctions won't work as by all accounts the ordinary people are poor & oppressed anyway. The military always find the money when they want it. It's a bit like Pakistan really. Squealing for Earthquake money but aiming to build 30 warheads a month.

The UN will do diddley-squat when presented with a fait accompli.

The real effect of this may well be to force America's hand on Iran.

I'm agreeing with SWL on the shoulder shrug (but not necessarily on the rest.)

Here are a couple of takes on the subject:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100906E.shtml

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100906A.shtml


So, we've got a crazy Korean with less than a dozen bombs and not a whole lot of delivery range. We've lived the last six years with a crazy man who has 10,000 bombs that he can send into any living room on the planet. We got through the break up of the Soviet Union when nobody was really sure who controlled about 10,000 bombs. And, most of the world got through the *actual use* of 2 bombs in 1945.

Any particular reason George Bush didn't follow through on the promise of peaceful reactors for North Korea after they shut down their weapons programme (thereby pretty much forcing North Korea to restart its weapons research)?

Has it been proved it was actually a nuke? There was no radiation detected and the yield of the bomb was quite small. It's just be like NK to blow up a HELL of a lot of conventional explosives and then crow they got themselves nuclear weapons...

Ste

the bomb is also huge in size, supposedly, so it would have to be moved in shipping container. That makes terrorism tougher.

Japan has initially said the will not go nuclear, although they 3-4 years ago they said they would go nuclear if NK did, and that they could produce 400 nukes/year.

I thought keeping Japan non-nuclear was a good reason for China to apply pressure to NK. Same with SK, they could go nuclear rapidly. This will make Russia and China sad so that is probably why they're going to be very stern towards NK.

ps. I heard reported that the bomb was 5-20 kilotons - I'm not sure how hard it would be to obtain that much conventional exposives. It regiseterd 4.? on the richter scale.

5000 to 20 000 tonnes of conventional explosives?


I'm sure it wouldn't be horribly difficult for a country to get their hands on it, but it would be bloody hard to get it all to detonate in a second or so in a confined space.

For comparison, the Divine Strake test was aimed at exploding less than 600 tonnes.

just read this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/world/asia/09cnd-nuke.html?ei=5094&en=e294c996e3f77f14&hp=&ex=1160452800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

Russia says it was 5-15 kilotons

US says it was < 1 kiloton.

I'm not sure to beleive. Generally speaking US science is currently better than Russian. I'm not sure how this applies to seismic readings. Plus, Russia's instruments are physically a lot closer to the source.

South Korea reckons it was 3.58 magnitude tremor and the Japanese prime minister in SK estimated it as equivalent to 550 tons of TNT.

So, as ever, lots of estimates and guesses most likely all of which are somewhat tinged but political motivation. Although you'd have thought Japan might have upped it a bit since they're trying (with the US backing apparently) to get out of some of their post war military regulations.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C52E7FA6-6848-48A1-97C7-198AA85A6CF9.htm

And if you are any good at reading seismic graphs, the grauniad has a piccy to help!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,,1891655,00.html
(they also quote the USGS as saying it was 4.2 magnitude)

From Nature:

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061009/full/061009-3.html

I think that whether or not Iran was going for a bomb, they will be now. The US has shown that it won't do anything to anyone who actually has nukes, and it won't do much to stop them from getting them. Iran can only see this as good news. The only difference between NK and Iran is that NK hasn't got a neighbour willing to nuke it, I think Israel will be only too happy to nuke Iran.

It'll be interesting to see what Japan and South Korea do, I have no doubt they could have nukes very quickly, possibly before the year is out for initial tests.

I was also shocked when I saw this on the news, and I was surprised that it wasn't the lead item on the Beeb this morning. I was also kinda shocked that my new housemates, postgrads all, didn't care.

I'm inclined to go with the Russians who say it was a rather large explosion, they don't really have any vested interests in lying (apart from embarrasing the Americans and that's too easy already), while the US will want to make it seem small to save themselves some blushes.

here's a quote from the nature article:

"To create a blast this size without a nuclear reaction, a huge amount of TNT would be needed — and a very large underground hole would have to be excavated, which would be easily spotted by spy cameras."

So they think it was either a fizzled nuclear detonation (if < 1 kiloton) or a nuclear detonation (if the Ruskies are correct, 5-15 kiltons)

Also, according to the nature article, satelitte detection of radiation/particles will help confirm/deny, but that will take a couple days.

Here's an enlightening recap of a decade of history:

'In his first weeks in office, Bush cast aside the Clinton administration’s delicate negotiations that had hemmed in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The new President then brushed aside worries of Secretary of State Colin Powell and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung about dangerous consequences from a confrontation.

At a March 2001 summit, Bush rejected Kim Dae Jung’s détente strategy for dealing with North Korea, a humiliation for both Kim, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Powell, who wanted to continue pursuing the negotiation track. Instead, Bush cut off nuclear talks with North Korea and stepped up spending on a “Star Wars” missile shield.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Bush got tougher still, vowing to “rid the world of evil” and listing North Korea as part of the “axis of evil.”

More substantively, Bush sent to Congress a “nuclear posture review,” which laid out future U.S. strategy for deploying nuclear weapons. Leaked in 2002, the so-called NPR put North Korea on a list of potential targets for U.S. nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration also discussed lowering the threshold for the use of U.S. nuclear weapons by making low-yield tactical nukes available for some battlefield situations.

By putting North Korea on the nuclear target list, Bush reversed President Clinton’s commitment against targeting non-nuclear states with nuclear weapons. Clinton’s idea was that a U.S. promise not to nuke non-nuclear states would reduce their incentives for joining the nuclear club.

But to Bush and his neoconservative advisers, Clinton’s assurance that non-nuclear states wouldn’t be nuked was just another example of Clinton’s appeasement of U.S. adversaries. By contrast, Bush was determined to bring these “evil” states to their knees.

In March 2002, however, Pyongyang signaled how it would react, warning of “strong countermeasures” against Bush’s nuclear policy shifts.

North Korea accused the Bush administration of “an inhuman plan to spark a global nuclear arms race” and warned that it would “not remain a passive onlooker” after being put on the Pentagon’s list of nuclear targets.

A commentary by the official Korean Central News Agency cited Bush’s threat in the context of the U.S. nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

“If the U.S. intends to mount a nuclear attack on any part of the D.P.R.K. [North Korea] just as it did on Hiroshima, it is grossly mistaken,” the communiqué read.

In March 2002, the New York Times reported that “North Korea threatened … to withdraw from the [1994 nuclear suspension] agreement if the Bush administration persisted with what North Korea called a ‘hard-line’ policy that differed from the Clinton administration’s approach. North Korea also renewed its complaints against delays in construction of two nuclear reactors promised in the 1994 agreement to fulfill its energy needs.” [NYT, March 14, 2002]

The North Koreans were telegraphing how they would respond to Bush’s nuclear saber-rattling. They would create a nuclear threat of their own.

But Bush was in no mood to seek accommodation with North Korea. During one lectern-pounding tirade before congressional Republicans in May 2002, Bush denounced North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il as a "pygmy" and "a spoiled child at a dinner table," Newsweek magazine reported.'

etc.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/101006.html

You know, regardless of the incompetence of the Bush administration, this is still 100% NK's decision.

To be fair anhaga, why don't you list the evils of NK?

Question is, from the North Korean leadership's point of view, for what reason should they not be attempting to develop nuclear weapons when threatened with the same?

Here's a different track. Consider in Conservative circles the fall of the USSR if often attributed to the US building up its threat and forcing the USSR to follow, thus bankrupting it. Leaving aside whether or not that's a valid interpretation, could Bush be attempting the same with North Korea? The country is very, very poor compared to its close neighbours. Surely not a stable position.

"Worst nightmare is that NK transfers weapons to Al-Qaeda or their fellow travelers. Anybody have a feel for NK's historical track record as a supplier of weapons to terrorists?"

This is something NK will possibly use as a bargaining chip. NK's main reason for developing the weapons is to secure the regime from outside invasion. Revolutionary Communism is essentially dead and the NK government does not, I think, have the slightest intention of exporting it's ideology (even to South Korea). However, NK knows that the Americans are afraid of Islamist terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons and the potential for Pyongyang to "pass on" some of its weapons might well become the elephant in the room in any future deals with the West - treat us right and the terrorists won't get any atomics from us.

Of course, communists and Islamists are theoretically deadly enemies but in the current world situation I don't think Al-Quaida or North Korea seriously considers the other a priority enemy and so for NK to pass atomics (or "dirty bomb" technology) to Al-Quaida does not place North Korea in any danger.

In the long run, though, I doubt that much will come of this. North Korea will never use the weapons because they would provolk a US response. The US will not use any military force against North Korea because of the atomics and because of North Korea's capability of devastating South Korea even with conventional weapons.

"Here's a different track. Consider in Conservative circles the fall of the USSR if often attributed to the US building up its threat and forcing the USSR to follow, thus bankrupting it. Leaving aside whether or not that's a valid interpretation, could Bush be attempting the same with North Korea? The country is very, very poor compared to its close neighbours. Surely not a stable position."

First off, this interpretation is not restricted to conservative circles, secondly I think it's false. The USSR collapsed because it's Marxist-Leninist economy was a failure and slowly declined after the initial boom caused by Stalin's industrialisation programme. Gorbachev and other CPSU officials knew the Soviet Union was headed for meltdown before Reagan came to power and held an emergency meeting on the very subject. Of course, it caused shockwaves in the CPSU because it essentially admitted that Communism didn't work. North Korea has the same problem - its economy doesn't work and its people are starving. It's essentially kept alive by foreign money. The regime is simply interested in surviving and has, to be honest, managed a better job of it than anyone could have anticipated in 1989.

I agree that the country is poor but it's not unstable. The Communist Party's control of the country is extremely strong and dissent (which is rare) is apparently dealt with ruthlessly. As with Iraq under Saddam, it is a rotten unhappy state that nonetheless remains internally very strong. And unlike Iraq, its military is still capable of seeing off a foreign invasion and there is no real evidence (as far as I know) that the population wants to see the back of their government (I hope I am wrong about this, if anyone can provide links to a credible article).

"To be fair anhaga, why don't you list the evils of NK?"

Work it out.