Trumps North Korea red line could come back to haunt him
WASHINGTON – In three words of a tweet this week, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump vowed North Korea would never test an intercontinental ballistic missile.
“It won’t happen!” Trump wrote after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said on Sunday his nuclear-capable country was close to testing an ICBM of a kind that could someday hit the United States.
Preventing such a test is far easier said than done, and Trump gave no indication of how he might roll back North Korea’s weapons programs after he takes office on Jan. 20, something successive U.S. administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have failed to do.
Former U.S. officials and other experts said the United States essentially had two options when it came to trying to curb North Korea’s fast-expanding nuclear and missile programs — negotiate or take military action.
Neither path offers certain success and the military option is fraught with huge dangers, especially for Japan and South Korea, U.S. allies in close proximity to North Korea.
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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/01/04/asia-pacific/trumps-north-korea-red-line-come-back-haunt/#.WGyRbtQrLMp
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There has been nothing close to what could be credibly claimed as a hydrogen bomb test, and only by stretching things do they even have a workable fission bomb. Even if that's true, it is a rather very small yield, meaning that there are conventional explosives that could easily reproduce the same effects as their tests.
Then there's the most secret element of a nuclear bomb. I can even name it and describe what it does and it would still not do anybody any good in making a successful nuclear bomb. It is called the initiator whose sole purpose is to provide a couple of neutrons of appropriate energy to begin the chain reaction at the precise moment that the rapid assembly of the fissionable material reaches its maximum. Without this, the weapon will not successfully explode, at least beyond the conventional explosives required to get the fissionable material assembled. It is a really difficult problem to solve, which is why one can believe that NK does not have a successful nuclear weapon. The evidence of their test yields attest that fact. Their claim that they have a fusion weapon is ridiculous.
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