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North Korea’s Threats: Empty or Require Caution

(US Navy: Adam K Thomas)

In the news North Korea threatens a nuclear response to massive war games being held by the United States and South Korea which would escalate into nuclear war. The question is will it come to that? Will things become that worse? North Korean rhetorical threats come at a time of heightened tension brought on by Pyongyang’s unprovoked March 26 attack on the Cheonan and greater concern over the stability of the reclusive regime.

U.N Responds to North Korea’s Attack

Although the U.N. Security Council responded weakly to North Korea’s attack, this week the Obama Administration pledged to impose additional, more wide-ranging economic sanctions on Pyongyang’s illicit activities. In the past, North Korea has responded strongly to what it perceived as threats or insults to the regime though often in an asymmetric and delayed manner. Given this situation is nuclear war inevitable?

The Effects of World War I and World War II

Since the seventeenth century, wars have progressively become more destructive and inhuman, no doubt the result of an industrial revolution that put a weapon in every peasant’s hand. Democracy has been no cure, and in fact may have added to the inhumanity by fomenting intense nationalism and partisanship as in the American Civil War, when six hundred thousand fellow countrymen lost their lives over the democratic question of states’ rights. World War I saw 10 million men killed in the trenches of a senseless stalemate egged on by nationalistic pride.

World War II saw another 50 million perish, most of them civilians in bombed-out cities and concentration camps, justified in the name of “total war” that was started by a free and democratically elected chancellor of the German Third Reich. If the world is to reverse the tide of history and survive the atomic age, we must soon recognize the incompatibility of weapons of mass destruction with the political nature of warfare. Only then will we begin to change the counterproductive strategies that threaten us all.

Should Nuclear Weapons be Banned?

Nuclear weapons have only deterred nuclear war, and, ironically, very nearly caused one in the process in the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nuclear weapons, like chemical and biological devices, should be banned from civilized warfare. The truth is we would be better off militarily and economically, for there are far more productive ways of convincing opponents to accept our political will than by attacking their passions. We might even find it more civilized.

There is in fact a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two opposing sides would effectively result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender.  It is based on the theory of deterrence according to which the deployment of strong weapons is essential to threaten the enemy in order to prevent the use of the very same weapons. North Korea is out to protect itself and not want its own demise which would be visited on it if it ever makes good on its threat. It does not want any of this.

September 1, 2010 - Posted by John Villager | News, Ready | American Civil War, Cuban Missile Crisis, German Third Reich, North Korea, nuclear response, Pyongyang, South Korea, United States