Headline Dec. 09/ ''' NORTH KOREA'S NEVER '''

''' NORTH KOREA'S NEVER '''

NORTH KOREA'S LATEST intercontinental ballistic  missile test  has provoked understandable alarm, particularly among Americans worried about the threat.

If there was a message in North Korea's launch of a new missile capable of reaching anywhere in the United States -it was that:

America's strategy toward that country is failing   -and that war may be looming. The American public is far too complacent about the possibility of war with North Korea, one-

That could be incomparably bloodier than any U.S. war was for the last many decades. One assessment suggests that one million people could die the very first day.

''If we have to go war to stop this, we will,'' Senator Lindsey Graham. Republican of South Carolina, told CNN after the latest missile test. 

''We're headed towards war if things don't change.''

President Trump himself has said he stands ready to  ''totally destroy'' North Korea. 

His national security adviser, H.R.McMaster, says Trump ''is willing to do anything necessary'' to prevent North Korea from threatening the U.S. with nuclear weapons    -which is precisely what Kim Jong-un did.

One lesson from History : *When a president and his advisers say they're considering a war, take them seriously*,  reasons Nicholas Kristof.

*The international security experts that I have consulted offer estimates of the risk of war from 15 percent to more than 50 percent. That should be staggering*.

Trump said one recent Wednesday that new sanctions were in the works and that  ''the situation will be handled.'' 

But he has already been quite effective in increasing the economic pressure on North Korea, and it's difficult see how a 10th round of sanctions -after nine rounds so far since 2006  -will make a huge difference.

The problem is twofold. 

First, the U.S. goal for North Korea -complete denuclearization -is implausible.  

Second, America's strategy of economic sanctions is ineffective against an isolated regime that earlier accepted the death by famine of perhaps 10 percent of its population.

''In short, we have a failed strategy to achieve a hopeless goal,'' adds the author.

In the same context, there is no evidence that Kim Jong-un, North Korea's current leader, or his father or grandfather, ever contemplated getting into a direct nuclear exchange with the United States.

Depending on whose estimates one believes, North Korea has 20 to 60 nuclear weapons; the  United States has more than 1,500 currently deployed, and thousands more in storage.

For North Korea, it would be, as one senior American military strategist put it, a case of assisted suicide.

But that hardly means nuclear weapons are useless for a 33-year-old leader, who has made clear he has ambitious goals for how he would make use of the power conveyed by a global nuclear reach.

If the previous leaders of North Korea were interested mostly in a survival strategy  -and saw a small nuclear arsenal as the country's best guarantee  -Mr. Kim appears to have far greater ambitions, reasons author David E. Sanger.

South Korea may have all the technology and the money, but the North has the purity of purpose, in Mr. Kim's mind, that will ultimately give it control of the entire Korean Peninsula.

And with it Mr.Kim believes, will come the respect of the larger powers that have been waiting for decades for the North to be swept away by forces of history.

That goal only works if an American president -President Trump or his successors    -contemplates risking  Chicago in order to save Seoul.

Part of Mr. Kim's vision, some of those who have watched him most closely speculate,  is to sow doubt in Asia that the United States would really come to their allies aid-

And splinter the alliance that has teamed up against North Korea for 70 years.

''Kim is determined to be a Great Leader' in his own right,'' said Han Sung joo, a former South Korean foreign minister, who still walk around carrying a shrapnel he was shot with as young boy, when his family was escaping North Korean forces during the Korean War.

''And to do that,'' Mr Han said last month, ''he needs to accomplish something his grandfather and his father did not  :    

Building an  intercontinental missile that can strike anyplace in the United States.     

      

All hopes. or whatever hopes there were got dashed with the latest, and most impressive,   North Korean test. 

The ballistic missile it set off went roughly  2,800  miles into space, before returning to the  'Sea of Japan'; it was intended to demonstrate that the  North was now able to reach any corner of the  United States.

It is not clear whether  Pyongyang really can, or it whether it would keep a nuclear warhead from burning up in the return to earthy   -the real rocket science of launching nuclear missiles.

But one thing is clear : Whatever threats that  Washington and Beijing issued in the past few months    -sanctions, and the threat of oil cutoffs  -have clearly  not deterred Mr. Kim.

Now. he is betting that he can complete his project   -solving the last technical detail    -before the  United States and its allies and China can agree upon a unified response.

And with every passing day it's getting more and more obvious that deterrence wouldn't meet  Trump's stated goal to solve the problem of North Korea. 

With North Korea everything, every strategy is likely to go more and more complex.

So, any Cold War strategy for new nuclear state?

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all register on !WOW! -the World Students Society  and  Twitter- !E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Nations & Nuclear '''

Good Night and God Bless

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