It's official. North Korea has nukes.

It's also withdrawing from all talks. They basically told everyone and America in particular, to go stuff themselves.

So, what now?

And was this inevitable?

Now we treat them with kid gloves, like we have Pakistan in the past (before they became our "allies" in the War on Terror). I don't think even George Bush is insane enough to start a nuclear war.

And yes, it was inevitible. Ever since the 2002 (?) State of the Union where they were lumped into an "Axis of Evil", diplomacy with this administration was doomed. You're not going to negotiate with someone that's going around calling you evil; what's the point? You've been demonised, so there's no real chance of having concessions made.

Maybe not insane enough... but then again, a couple of years ago I remember thinking "He's not insane enough to start an invasion without UN apporval is he?"

I no longer put anything past him...

Claiming to have nukes isn't that new - they've done it before. Last time I rememer reading an in-depth argument that they couldn't possibly have developed them yet, and were basically just trying to make the US scared to invade. Whether that still holds true a couple of years down the line, I don't know.

It doesn't particularly matter if they have any weapons actually in hand at the moment; we know they've got the technological expertise to produce them, and in a crisis (in, say, the face of an invasion) they'll have the wherewithal to change their production to the point they can make one or more. They have ICBMs capable of reaching quite far - I think the West Coast of the US isn't out of their range. It'd only take one nuclear warhead to create a disaster.

They might not have any now, but it's pretty sure they could have them soon enough to make an invasion a recipe for a disaster. Especially since they've had at least two more years to perfect their technology and have no viable alternative to securing nuclear weapons; nothing short will protect their sovereignty with the rhetoric coming from the White House.

Memo to self: don't go to Boston. Ever again.

Care to explain that statement a little bit?

I dunno.

US foreign policy has, for quite some time, been acting on the assumption that North Korea had nukes. It is, therefore, quite unlikely that the current administration's treatment of North Korea will not be significantly changed from that of the past four years.

One important question to remember: we know they have nukes, but we don't know what they're able to do with them.

Hey, more proof that the 80's are coming back into vogue. A bush in the White House and a Cold War!

It's sad that our only comfort is that if they bomb us, we could bomb them into oblivion ten times over. I'd miss Korea, though. I like kim-chee.

The triumph of Bush's program of positive reinforcement for nuclear proliferation!

I'm gonna sing the doom song now! DOOM DOOM DOOMDOOM, DOOOOOM!

I think this is the first time North Korea's announced officially that they have nuclear weapons, though they've been saying it in private for a while.

I know little about the state of their missile technology, but I've never heard they could reach California. Japan, certainly.

The scariest bit is that they're withdrawing indefinitely from all talks. Not with America, not with China, not with Japan or South Korea or anybody. Wonder what will happen if Japan, South Korea and China try to withdraw food and oil aid?

They're not going to bomb Berkshire County.

Also, I should probably minimize my time near Camp Edwards...

I for one think that an ICBM launch of a nuke against mainland USA is highly unlikely. However, 20 MIG-21s with a freefall nuke flying over Seoul and Tokyo is more likely.

Though i do feel bad for Anchorage Jeuno and Seattle. Because those are the big 3 targets inside the USA that are within range of N.K's ICBMs.

Last year, Dubya made a deliberate political choice to kill the measure that would increase spending on inspecting cargo containers coming into the US; hence, we still inspect about 1 in 20 of them. Instead of spending a few billion dollars to try to spot bombs in boxes ourselves, Dubya expects the rest of the world to do this time consuming and expensive searching for us in exchange for coffee money (25 million bucks). That'll be the day.

So don't spend too much time pitying the Pacific north-west. Dubya made sure that every port in the country (and every city linked to a port by rail) is deliberately vulnerable to North-Korean nukes, which have a 94-95% chance of sailing in undetected on a container ship.

Btw; planes are almost certainly not how NK would bomb Seoul or Tokyo, they'd be too easy to shoot down. They tested a missile which flew right over Japan and landed on the other side a couple of years ago; so that's probably how the bomb would be delivered.