This leads to the next thing. Violating Japan's airspace with a missile may be a provocation for war. If that's the case, you're going to hear from our (US) president that we're officially going to war or conflict with North Korea. Unfortunately, in this case, I believe that Bannon is right. (We're screwed in that situation)
We aren't going to war, at least not intentionally. The downsides of a conflict with a nuclear state, even one with questionable capabilities like the DPRK, vastly outweigh the upsides. And Kim knows this, which is why he feels free to continue to call our bluffs.
Trump's inability to bluff (or communicate with precision in general) has really messed things up at this point. I mean, taking his words as spoken he has already threatened to nuke them if they even so much as continue issuing threats. Not only did they up the threat ante within hours of that remark (c.f. "attack the waters around Guam"), they've now put a weapon straight through an ally's airspace. Where do we go from here?
Where do we go from here? To the very brink, at least if Trump is left to his own (mobile) devices. My guess is he will reroute a CBG or two towards the Korean peninsula and make a lot of bluster about whatever new line he is prepared to draw.
Meanwhile, everyone else works frantically on a backchannel plan that allows both Kim and Trump to save some face. I don't see how this happens unless brokered by China, who emerges the big winner on the world stage.
We get the leaders of Japan, China and South Korea together on a conference call and all agree not to start World War 3 when China decides to push through some "regime change." Why would China do this? Because North Korea is useful to them as a buffer state and a proxy to aggravate the West, but only so long as they can be controlled. Once they pose a real threat to their neighbors, they also pose a real threat to China. And China would rather have the chance to prove its dominance than let US do so.
So, Kim Jong-Un accidentally trips down the stairs and lands head-first on a bullet, along with his entire regime, and we all look the other way, and the US sends everybody lots and lots and lots of money.
The problem with that plan is that China has only marginally more control over Kim than we do. He's a rogue from their perspective too, and their ability to effect a "regime change" is limited by the same "don't poke the nuclear nutjob" problem we have.
There's some truth to that (see the recent Malaysian assassination under the nose of Chinese security), but China very clearly has benefited from the status quo and I would bet that there are powerful people in the NE region of China who do have influence and are pedaling it like mad right now.
"I don't see how this happens unless brokered by China, who emerges the big winner on the world stage."
NK is entirely dependent on China, and every administration has tried to get them to do something about their unruly vassal state. Unfortunately the status quo is what they desire most, so absent escalation they won't do anything.
Imagine you're North Korea. Like you give a fuck if the US starts flying things close to your borders. They know that if the US attacks it's game over for South Korea, so unless the US is willing to throw South Korea under the bus the US won't do a damned thing.
The US will also have to convince China it was attacked in order to get support. Otherwise China will sit out any conflict, as ugly as it might get.
North Korea is really smacking the bear around with a stick here seeing how far they can go before they get bit.
China doesn't want this mess getting any messier. At the end of the day, both Trump and Kim are wild cards, and a simple fuckup could blow nuclear fallout and/or waves of refugees over the Chinese border.
Meanwhile, China can come out a big winner by seizing this opportunity to play the adult in the room while simultaneously embarrassing the US. Trump has handed this win to Xi in a tidy little gift box.
Even if we just remove the missile sites, and any sort of nuclear ordinance on the first attack, they don't really have nearly as much as they claim capable of hitting Seoul[1], and even then it can only hit the northern 3rd of the city, which is less populated. The city itself has put a lot of work into infrastructure in preparation, enough bunkers and shelters to house 20 million. Yes, it will get hit, people will die, but as long as no nuke comes down, I'd consider than a win, for eliminating such a dangerous tyrant.
Of course, coming to terms with China will be an entirely different matter.
I don't think you have any idea how many pieces of artillery they have, nor how many tunnels there are going beneath the DMZ. They are ready to cause as much destruction and chaos as their 1950s era arsenal can inflict.
It would take thousands of cruise missiles to even dent their defenses. You can't use bombers until the anti-aircraft systems are down. It's going to take hours to finish the job, and even then who knows what they've launched in that time. Seoul is an easy target, very hard to miss.
As much as I hate Trump, none of this is his fault. If we have to address this at the root, it's China, the pink elephant in the room. China, our biggest trading partner and also an authoritarian government (US is probably kicking itself allowing such a horrible actor to be so powerful), is propping up this vassel state and prevent any progress made in the peninsula. If China wasn't propping them up, North Korean government would have already fell long time ago.
So what happens now? Do we just let China keep protecting its puppet until the puppet has shipped a nuclear bomb to a port in Los Angeles? I hope not. I hope the world takes action before then.
North Korea's brinksmanship isn't Trumps fault. The ham fisted diplomacy which has left us with no good options in the face of their escalation absolutely is. The Obama administration managed to keep the system in something like a steady state for eight years, after all. It's getting out of control now for a reason.
That is it. China has full control over its huge border to NK. No way for them to import missile parts unless China is OK with that. Everything of value that NK has and that its elite enjoys is imported from China: Cars, buses, flat-screen TVs, mobile phones...
Plus, China could cut or reduce the oil/gas supply any day to zero.... if they wanted.
I agree. DPRK should keep its nuclear weapons. I am more concerned about nukes in the Indian peninsula when it comes to world security. How good is Pakistan at keeping its nuclear arsenal safe? How good is India? Can we trust them to be competent?
What we should focus on is strengthening the democracy and the economy of ROK so when DPRK fails, ROK can be independent and strong like Germany was in the nineties in its unification. We are nowhere close.
The idea of NK dropping a nuke anywhere is just utter non-sense. It's obvious that all the threats, from both sides, are nothing more than sabre rattling and when you look at the actual actions of nations the US has done really terrible things, while NK has done very little, yet everyone seems to be OK with the US having thousands of nukes under the control of a psycho leader, but can't handle the idea of NK having some nukes to protect themselves.
NK will not be going to war, unless by miscalculation. Kim knows that of all the scenarios in a war, none end with him munching on caviar in a palace. There are two major powers that would make certain of that. Why do you think he was so keen to assassinate his half brother?
Because Kim's reign is predicated on maintaining credibility with his generals. He does that by rattling his saber and extracting economic concessions from the global community in general (and the US in particular).
Why he needs to go precisely this far is a good question. Possibly because Trump has consistently misplayed his hand and made a series of stupid bluffs that were quick and easy to call. Kim is probably testing the edges of his geopolitical box, figuring that it's a bit roomier than he'd previously calculated.
> they've now put a weapon straight through an ally's airspace.
Have you studied a map around NK? To get a missile to a target that's free of people in international waters, you have to fly through at least one country's airspace.
According to Washington Post, the rocket has not entered Japan's airspace, it went into the outer space before coming back to Earth to the east of Hokkaido. (Yes, it did cross the projection of Japan onto the heavens.)
Many people are blaming China for the whole NK situation for their "support" and asking for a regime change.
What do you propose that China can do after the regime change?
Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and great examples that you cannot just throw away a dictatorship. What follows is practically a game of thrones of powers in the region which is a lose-lose situation for everyone, specially people of the "free'd" country and the neighbors.
I think it's wrong to compare North Korea to those countries. For one, the post-regime change problems in those countries have been caused by Islamic insurgencies, which is not something I'd expect to happen in NK.
They certainly are, but I think it's foolish to think that a regime change would play out the same in NK as it did in countries with very different cultures. I'm skeptical that NK's ideology would be able to sustain an insurgency after too much contact with the outside.
Also, the Viet Cong were supported by a state, North Vietnam. They also weren't able to defeat South Vietnam; that took a withdrawal of US support and the actions of the regular North Vietnamese Army.
And recall, you're playing Game of Thrones with nuclear material, so there will likely be no winning that.
Best case would likely be China just annexing the whole country and imposing martial law for the next ~30 years. At least people would be more likely to get fed, and the nukes would be safe-ish.
First of all, if there's a regime change towards democracy, there's no business with China. South Korea will liberate and take care of their emasculated, starved, brutalized relatives in North Korea. Not China, the one that's been supporting the brutalization of all of the people in North Korea.
Most ballistic missile defense (BMD) currently deployed is designed for a shootdown in the terminal phase, ie after the missile has reentered the atmosphere. Destroying a missile in the boost phase, before it leaves the atmosphere, is the best bet, but that requires advanced intelligence of when and where a launch will happen. If I recall correctly, there's currently no good midcourse BMD for when the missile is out of the atmosphere. Aegis has some midcourse capability, but it's for lower and shorter range missiles, I think. That just leaves terminal defense, like THAAD and the Aegis system, and terminal defense is the hardest phase. So there's no real good option to shoot it down, especially if it turns out your interceptor has a low probability of kill (pk). If a missile was actually coming down into Japan, you can be sure that there will be several interceptors on their way.
As for tech, Japan mostly uses the same tech as the US, including THAAD, which is a ground-based radar and launcher, the Aegis system with the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) which is a ship-based radar and launcher, and finally the Patriot system of ground-based radar and launcher. However, the Patriot's PAC-2 and -3 missiles are designed for missiles with a shorter range than ICBMs. All of them have data-sharing, so you can use an Aegis radar to track a missile for a THAAD battery to launch.
If you try to shoot a North Korean missile and miss, then either morale goes out the window if it was an NK test, or you have to fall back on the next line of defense (Aegis -> THAAD -> Patriot) and hope that it hits. The further the ICBM goes though, the lower pk you have since it's going faster and potentially has better maneuverability.
Seems like you'd be revealing capabilities. That said if I were making decisions in Japan I'd give serious thought to just sending a missile over North Korea into the Yellow Sea.
What does the Japanese Self-Defense Force's charter allow in cases like this? Are they allowed to launch attacks on foreign soil in response to immediate threats, or do they need to appeal to the US/allies to do it for them?
(Not that there's much they could usefully do to NK, AFAIK, but I'm curious about the principle.)
No: the missile peaked at 550km (probably about when it was over Japan), so unless a(n un)lucky Japanese civilian in "sparsely populated Hokkaido" was looking toward Pyongyang through a telescope at 6am and tweeted a photo of the missile in boost phase, I'd say you wouldn't even be able to tell what the object was.
Furthermore, if you don't trust reports from two nations' militaries, you definitely shouldn't trust anything on the Internet.
Hokkaido is beautiful this time of year, just sayin'
Why? NK has been launching missiles for quite some time now, and this fits reasonably well with their overall pattern of escalation. I don't really pay that much attention to NK, but this launch is utterly unsurprising to me based on my very limited and amateur interest in the subject.
Not saying they are lying but Abe has been continously playing with the fear of NK to push his military agenda (the change of constitution and surveillance laws).
I'm less worried about NK missiles than I am about a boat with an NK nuke on board, detonated in a harbor. A "smugglers war".
I'm assuming the US Coast Guard is all over this kind of threat, but I don't know how hard it is to detect a bomb hidden aboard in some cranny, shielded by multiple layers of inches-thick steel.
Im not privy to the nitty gritty of the Coast Guard's Maritime Safety ans Security Teams (MSSTs) operations, but finding a nuclear weapon on a vessel is fundamentally a needle in a haystack problem. The best way is going to be intel driven - it is just too easy to hide from a physics standpoint.
I wonder if China could just annex NK a la Russia and Crimea, but in this case bring them into the modern age. The world would probably breathe a sigh of relief.