The Not-So- and All-Too-Real World of North Korea

[Aresen]

By now, everyone who pays attention knows he has nukes; he has nothing more to gain (but quite a bit to lose) by continuing missile tests which even China has told him to quit.

It's like, you already know I have a gun and ammo, plus the willingness to use it; periodically shooting out of my window is not going to increase my personal safety, but might very well piss off enough people to make my personal situation worse.

It isn't expected that he will be able to mount a warheads on a ballistic missile until 2018. The minaturization will take the bombs from UPS truck-sized to porto-potty or smaller, small enough to put on a missile.

So, you expect him to get his shit together.
*runs*

[Fin Fang Foom]

No Aresen, if he gets his shit together, we will all have the runs.

[Jennifer]

Damn, I wish we had ANYBODY other than Trump in the White House right now. Even Pence would be an improvement -- there's at least the hypothetical possibility he'd talk to actual competent advisers about this mess, rather than surround himself with toadying flatterers.

[Aresen]

Damn, I wish we had ANYBODY other than Trump in the White House right now. Even Pence would be an improvement -- there's at least the hypothetical possibility he'd talk to actual competent advisers about this mess, rather than surround himself with toadying flatterers.

Myocardial infarction is our friend.

[fyodor]

This is a Longshot for Kim, but it's kinda like Robert Deniro's last round of Russian Roulette in the Deer Hunter: better than the 100% chance of dying.

I haven't seen the Deer Hunter and thus don't get that specific analogy, but: even with the orange man-child in the White House, Kim only faces that "100% chance of dying" if he does something stupid like attack a US missile base. If all he wants to do is continue being the scumbag dictator of a shithole, his best bet is to STOP behaving in ways so awful

Yeah from where I sit, that seems fairly obvious, that the best thing for him to do is to relax and do nothing and he gets to keep being the scumbag dictator of a shithole. Maybe from where Un sits, it looks Shemian and Foomian and he's thinks he's sure to get invaded by the US and deposed if he isn't as aggro as possible towards the US at each and every turn? But it sure seems crazy from here. Which I guess is Lunchie's point, and maybe a foregone conclusion. But, well, yeah, I guess that's what it is..... (Though Shem's point seems to be that it's the perfectly rational way to look at it?)

[Sandy]

Nobody truly abandons a nuke program, but some programs run as back-burner insurance policies while others run as high-priority initiatives. One of these things is less bad than the other.

Not quite true. AFAIK, there is no evidence of a Brazilian or South African nuclear program anymore, though both had active ones. Taiwan supposedly did, too, but I'd be mildly shocked if there weren't at least plans around. And while Japan theoretically never had one, the consensus used to be that they could assemble one in a couple of months, mostly from spare parts strategically left lying around various public safety locations.

[Shem]

Any country with a self-sufficient nuclear power system has the hardest part of getting a nuke. That's why Europe and the US are so eager to provide "technical assistance" to anyone who wants to build a nuclear plant. They give you the fuel on the cheap so you have no excuse to make your own, and you can't start making a little more, just to have sitting around in case you decide to help Junior make a hydrogen bomb for his science fair.

[thoreau]

Not to mention that "technical assistance" means that your technical people get to talk to their technical people. You can get a sense of whether people are only doing what they say they're doing or have other projects going on. Not a perfect intelligence-gathering approach, of course, but still a useful item in the toolkit.

[JasonL]

The bargain for no nukes can work if the goal of the potential nuke state include integration into markets and normalization of behavior. If you are in the Hobbes club though - you have all national wealth as personal wealth. You have no interest in foreign influence or cessation of murderous thuggery. There's nothing anyone can give you that's better than a nuke.

[fyodor]

Somebody explain Hobbes club?

[JasonL]

Shem's characterization of that special group of nightmare tyrants like Un and Saddam.

[Taktix®]

Somebody explain Hobbes club?

Leaders who believe their nation is just one agent engaged in Bellum omnium contra omnes, a.k.a. when you ran out of fucks like 400 years ago...

[nicole]

Dude's surname is Kim guys.

[Taktix®]

Dude's surname is Kim guys.

Yep, it's reversed in East Asia...

[Aresen]

Dude's surname is Kim guys.

Yep, it's reversed in East Asia...

And in schools, universities, military, motor vehicle offices....

[Kolohe]

Dude's surname is Kim guys.

Yep, it's reversed in East Asia...

He's a Mik? No wonder he wants to fight the world.

[Hugh Akston]

[fyodor]

Um...

Damn how do you paste on a phone?

NK missile fired over Japan...

[Kolohe]

Over Japan?

[fyodor]

Over Japan?

Yeah.

Surprised there's not more buzz about it. Seems like quite the provocation/escalation. Though I guess as long as they aim to miss it may be considered just more chest thumping? Friend in Japan was reporting alarms going off over it....

[Mo]

Bombs over Japan is the worst NK Outkast cover yet.

[Ellie]

It's getting low ratings due to the hurricane.

[JasonL]

I wonder if we will get to a stable state of nobody believes his missiles mean anything. He's doing this often enough it's normal.

[nicole]

Of course we will. I mean what else are we going to do.

[JasonL]

I guess I meant relatively sooner than we'd have thought. Like if you think marginal steps of escalation are supped to buy you something in the way of bargaining, but you've already launched so many missiles nobody reacts, the marginal bargaining power of each launch may be quickly decreasing.