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Opinion, book, North Korea, nuclear weapons:
By Tim Wallis on Jun
26, 2024 04:05 pm
Annie
Jacobsen, Nuclear
War: A Scenario,
Transworld, London,
2024.
“Nuclear
war is insane,” writes
Annie Jacobsen in her
best-selling non-fiction
thriller, Nuclear
War: A Scenario.
Jacobson interviewed
more than 40 retired
military officers and
civilian professionals
directly involved in
planning and
preparations for nuclear
war, including a former
Secretary of Defense.
“Every person I
interviewed for this
book knows [that nuclear
war is insane]. Every
person.”
Jacobsen
describes in great
detail how a nuclear war
could unfold, ending in
global nuclear
Armageddon over a period
of just 72 hours. It’s
an important story, well
told.
Jacobsen
explains that part of
the reason we teeter
daily on the edge of
sudden nuclear
catastrophe is that
strategic missiles are
designed for “launch on
warning.” If one nuclear
nation believes that its
missiles are under
attack, then it has the
strongest possible
incentive to
pre-emptively launch
those missiles before
they can be destroyed in
their silos like sitting
ducks. That decision to
“use it or lose it” must
be made in mere minutes,
with consequences that
could last for thousands
of years.
And
the belief that one is
under attack does not
have to be based in
reality to spark a
full-blown nuclear war.
Nuclear Armageddon may
also be sparked by a
radar error, a
misinterpretation of
data, a
miscommunication, an
accident, or an act of
sabotage or terrorism.
Indeed, the Cuban
Missile crisis is only
one of 13 times the
world has come
dangerously close to a
nuclear exchange as a
result of such mishaps.
This
makes it all the more
surprising that Jacobsen
has chosen for her
otherwise realistic
scenario a “bolt from
the blue” nuclear attack
on Washington, DC from
North Korea. Jacobsen
knows that such an
attack would be
“national suicide… all
but ensuring [North
Korea’s] total and
complete destruction.”
And yet she offers no
attempt to explain why
North Korean leader Kim
Jong-un might launch
such a suicide attack,
except to assume that he
is a “nihilistic madman
with a nuclear arsenal.”
A nihilist madman
presumably doesn’t need
a reason.
And
yet, the reality is that
North Korea, just as the
United States, might
well decide to launch
its nuclear weapons if
it had good reason to
believe that those
weapons were about to be
attacked and destroyed
(along with much of its
population and
infrastructure). In
other words, Kim Jong-un
does not have to be a
nihilistic madman to
decide to launch nuclear
weapons. He merely has
to follow the exact same
nuclear logic followed
by his American
counterparts and
described in such great
detail in Annie
Jacobsen’s book.
Every
US President since
Clinton has been advised
by numerous military
advisors, think-tanks
and academic strategists
to attack and destroy
North Korea’s nuclear
weapons infrastructure
“before it’s too late.”
The only reasons no
President has so far
done so are that a) this
can’t be done without
the use of nuclear
weapons because these
facilities are too well
fortified to be
effectively destroyed by
conventional weapons,
and b) to attack North
Korea with nuclear
weapons would have
devastating consequences
on South Korea and
Japan, two crucially
important allies in the
region, not to mention
on the more than 75,000
US servicemen and women
based in those two
countries.
Kim
Jong-un knows that these
factors make his country
less likely to be
attacked by the United
States. But he also
knows the danger is a
real one. The US has
long considered his
regime part of the “axis
of evil,” along with
countries like Iraq,
Iran, Syria, and Libya.
He has seen what has
happened – and may still
happen – to the other
countries on that list.
He can reasonably assume
that his country is
next. It is not
irrational for North
Korea to gird itself
against this
ever-present threat.
If
Kim Jong-un were to
believe that a US attack
on his country was
imminent, he could well
decide to launch his
nuclear weapons at the
US before that happens,
perhaps in the hope of
being able to prevent
such an attack, but more
likely as “pre-emptive
retaliation” for the
impending destruction of
his own country. Such is
the logic of any leader
– madman or not –
cornered and facing
certain destruction,
with nothing left to
lose.
That’s
a more realistic
scenario for nuclear
war: North Korea does
not launch a nuclear
weapon at Washington, DC
as a “bolt out of the
blue.” It attacks the
United States in
anticipation of being
attacked by
the United States. That,
of course, also changes
the rest of the scenario
in this book, since it
must be assumed that
North Korea would not
believe an attack was
imminent without the US
already being in a
heightened state of
alert and readiness to
launch such an attack.
Indeed,
an even more realistic
scenario for nuclear war
begins with the US
thinking it is about to
be attacked by North
Korea, and launching a
pre-emptive attack on
North Korea, despite all
the risks mentioned
above, to try to prevent
or minimize such an
attack. In this
scenario, it is the US
that launches the first
nuclear weapon(s) and
North Korea who then
retaliates with all
they’ve got.
That
particular scenario is
unfortunately made all
the more likely because
of the fear of a North
Korean attack that will
inevitably be generated
by Jacobsen’s book. And
by basing her whole
scenario on an
unexpected, unprovoked
attack from North Korea,
Nuclear War: A
Scenario is
actually reinforcing the
idea that the real
threat of nuclear war
comes from an unhinged
dictator in North Korea,
rather than from our own
foolish foreign and
military policies that
push countries like
North Korea into a
corner with nowhere else
to go.
Imagining
that there are madmen
out to destroy the
United States for no
reason blinds us to the
complexities and nuances
of the real world. It
leads to the belief that
events like 9/11, the
2022 Russian invasion of
Ukraine, or the 2023
Hamas attack on Israel
all took place
unprovoked and in a
complete vacuum. And it
results in policies that
are overwhelmingly based
on the use of force and
threats to use force
(“because force is the
only language these
people understand”)
rather than on dialogue
and diplomacy. Without
dialogue and diplomacy
to negotiate our way
through differences of
opinion and belief, we
really are on
the road to Armageddon.
Ironically,
back in 2016, in a vote
at the UN, only one of
the nine nuclear-armed
countries was willing to
negotiate a treaty to
ban these weapons. Which
country was willing to
quit the rush to build
up its nuclear arsenals
with a whole new
generation of
world-ending weapons?
North Korea.
Trump’s
“fire and fury” speech
subsequently changed all
that, but the Treaty on
the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons was
negotiated and adopted
in 2017. It entered into
force in 2021 and has so
far been ratified by 70
countries. It remains
the best – and only –
pathway we have so far
for the total
elimination of these
weapons.
And
every year that goes by
without our own
government taking this
treaty more seriously,
the greater becomes the
likelihood of nuclear
Armageddon unfolding as
described in Annie
Jacobsen’s book. She
ponders in her final
paragraph the loss of
everything in a nuclear
war, including the
knowledge of what caused
it:
“With
time, after a nuclear
war, all present-day
knowledge will be gone.
Including the knowledge
that the enemy was not
North Korea, Russia,
America, China, Iran, or
anyone else vilified as
a nation or a group. It
was the nuclear weapons
that were the enemy of
us all. All along.”
The
post The
Stark Reality of
Nuclear War
appeared first on NuclearBan.US.
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