Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

The willow is too close to the house.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

I really should read my own blog.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

When I was faster i was always behind.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

One way or another, he’s a liar.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

No one could have predicted…

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / A Nuclear Faceoff

A Nuclear Faceoff

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I went out to a nice dinner party (with flamenco!), and I come home to find that Kim Jong Un is threatening to do a nuclear test over the ocean.

One of the things Kim is very sensitive about is being taken seriously. He wants to play with the big boys, to be a real ruler of a real country. Look at the spectacles they put on with their national day parades and card stunts. He tells all those people to make those missiles and to regiment themselves to pay tribute to the glorious leader. He is powerful, and other leaders should take note.

But parades and card stunts go only so far. The way to be taken seriously internationally is to have nuclear weapons. That is part of the reason that Kim has had his people developing them.

Donald Trump has taken his usual route of playground nicknames for Kim. His UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, has praised him for that. A number of commentators have pointed out that Donald Trump’s bluster is an admission of weakness. That is how Kim is taking it, and said so in his latest statement. So Kim is doubling down. He doesn’t like the disrespect.

A part of the commentary has been about how North Korea couldn’t have developed nukes and missiles by themselves. They may have had some help from A.Q. Khan and others, but what they have shown looks to experts like they have done significant development. There’s a lot of information available on how to make nuclear weapons, and your cellphone has more computing power than all of the United States’s weapons complex had in the 1950s, when we developed hydrogen bombs.

So yeah, they could have done it.

There’s also commentary about well, they haven’t put it all together. The fact is that there have been very few tests, probably no more than 5, of missile delivering nuclear weapon, which explodes. There are many ways to get information to make a reentry vehicle containing a bomb robust. We are pretty sure they’ve gotten telemetry from some of their missile tests to tell them what the stresses are, and there are things like shake tables on the ground to test the bomb to reentry stresses.

But if you will not believe, then Kim will show you.

Apparently Kim has made a video to speak directly to Donald Trump.

Kim is difficult to deal with, but there have been signals for some time, if one cares to read them, that could have meant he was willing to talk. Some of us have been saying that that is the only way to resolve this crisis.

Sorry I don’t have links. I saw most of this in my Twitter feed when I got home. Will add them as I can.

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  2. 2.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    A number of commentators have pointed out that Donald Trump’s bluster is an admission of weakness

    .

    Yup… he comes across like a grade school bully when he does that… and bullies are almost always cowards underneath it all… it is one of the few rules of human behavior that is axiomatic…

    Almost all bullies can be cowards and almost all cowards will turn into bullies when they get the chance…

  3. 3.

    Arm The Homeless

    So how much is China loving the fact that they’re positioned as the only rational, stable actor in this nuclear melodrama?

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    Dunno if anyone has yet mentioned the very recent moderately long read on North Korea in New Yorker by one of their staff writers who wangled a visit there this summer. A little bit from the end of the piece which parallels some of what Ms Rofer has said above:

    Van Jackson, a scholar of international relations who served in the Pentagon from 2009 to 2014, spent years analyzing the Kim family’s handling of crises, including the seizure of the Pueblo. The grandfather’s theory of victory still drives North Korea toward provocation, he said, but the regime also knows its limits; to survive, it chooses violence but avoids escalation. “When South Korea blares giant propaganda speakers at the North from the D.M.Z., North Korea fires warning shots nearby but doesn’t dare attack the speakers themselves,” he said. “When South Korean N.G.O.s send propaganda leaflets into North Korea using hot-air balloons—which really pisses them off—North Korea threatens to attack the N.G.O.s but instead just fires at the unmanned balloons.” In Jackson’s view, North Korea is not irrational, but it very much wants America to think that it is.
    [snip]
    In 1966, Thomas Schelling, the deterrence expert, wrote that brinkmanship hinges, above all, on “beliefs and expectations.” Our grasp of North Korea’s beliefs and expectations is not much better than its grasp of ours. To go between Washington and Pyongyang at this nuclear moment is to be struck, most of all, by how little the two understand each other. In eighteen years of reporting, I’ve never felt as much uncertainty at the end of a project, a feeling that nobody—not the diplomats, the strategists, or the scholars who have devoted their lives to the subject—is able to describe with confidence how the other side thinks. We simply don’t know how Kim Jong Un really regards the use of his country’s nuclear arsenal, or how much North Korea’s seclusion and mythology has distorted its understanding of American resolve. We don’t know whether Kim Jong Un is taking ever-greater risks because he is determined to fulfill his family’s dream of retaking South Korea, or because he is afraid of ending up like Qaddafi.

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    One of the things Kim is very sensitive about is being taken seriously. He wants to play with the big boys,

    trump first ran for president because he was mad he didn’t get called to do cable hits on the economy like Bloomberg and Buffett

    Look at the spectacles they put on with their national day parades

    trump watches them with seething envy, and wants to stage them

    He tells all those people to make those missiles and to regiment themselves to pay tribute to the glorious leader. He is powerful,

    “biggest inauguration audience ever. period.” “many people are saying trump was right”

  9. 9.

    Davebo

    I’m doubtful that any meaningful and productive negotiations could be had with Kim.

    I’m positive they couldn’t be productive with Trump/Tillerson/Haley at the table.

  10. 10.

    Arm The Homeless

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:

    Not to be needlessly contrarian, but there are some bullies who aren’t necessarily cowards. Most bullies I’ve crossed are simply sadistic assholes who only understand having their faces collapsed by a 2×4. YMMV

  11. 11.

    Mike J

    Three European airlines have shifted their main flight routes between Europe and Japan to avoid the Sea of Japan. North Korea has fired many missiles toward those waters.

    Germany’s Lufthansa, Swiss International Air Lines, and Scandinavian Airlines introduced new routes by last month. Their aircraft now fly along the Japanese archipelago over the northern regions of Hokkaido and Tohoku as the planes approach Tokyo or other Japanese destinations.

    https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20170922_01/

  12. 12.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Davebo: I am seeing that very point being made on Twitter right now with regard to Iran. If the people involved don’t know how to negotiate, and it’s clear that Trump et al. don’t know how, negotiations won’t work.

    But there are people in the State Department who could do it.

  13. 13.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Arm The Homeless:
    But what if the bully wants revenge and decides to get his friends to help him beat the shit out of you in retaliation? In all those movies and our collective zeitgeist, beating up the bully is supposed to be the end of it. Real life rarely works like that.

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: The real problem here is that it is currently too easy to flip the script like this:

    We simply don’t know how Kim Jong Un the President really regards the use of his country’s nuclear arsenal, or how much North Korea’s his desire for America First seclusion and mythology has distorted its his understanding of American the DPRK’s resolve. We don’t know whether Kim Jong Un the President is taking ever-greater risks because he is determined to fulfill his family’s national-isolationaist dream of retaking South Korea of a retrenched, inward focused Fortress America, or because he is afraid of ending up like Qaddafi Nixon.

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: And not that I want them doing it, but Secretary Mattis, Gen. (ret) Kelly, and LTG McMaster are all accomplished at military to civilian (MIL-CIV) diplomacy. Especially Mattis and Kelly as former Geographic Combatant Commanders.

  17. 17.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Adam L Silverman:
    He’ll end up worse than Nixon, hopefully. And yeah, it is scary how easy that can be flipped back on us. Trump and the GOP endanger the entire world.

  20. 20.

    Arm The Homeless

    @Arm The Homeless:

    That’s when you plant a bag of coke in their car trunk and drop an anonymous call to the cops about some dude trying to sell drugs to kids.

    This is also where metaphors about random assholes and nuclear-armed nation-states break down.

  21. 21.

    Dmbeaster

    Trump wants to threaten war for the thrill it gives him to display dominance. He has no plan other than to repeat the threats and hope something good happens. It wont, and at some point he is going to do something more dramatic. I am waiting for the rhetoric to foreshadow that, or maybe he will launch ballistic missles to overfly North Korea in a surprise move.

  22. 22.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: No argument. Just a statement of fact that we’ve spent a lot of time and money teaching those three how to do this sort of thing. And that Mattis and Kelly as geographic combatant commanders spent a lot of time doing it.

  23. 23.

    Mike J

    SwiftOnSecurity‏ @SwiftOnSecurity 1 hour ago
    You voted for Jill Stein because she promised to stop WiFi cancer, and now we’re all getting a dose of ionizing radiation.

  24. 24.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Jihye Lee 이지혜‏Verified account TheJihyeLee
    The Korean original statement said “늙다리 미치광이,” which means old beast lunatic — which was translated into “dotard.

  26. 26.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    OT: could the shit ICE is pulling get the US sanctions placed on it?

  28. 28.

    Arm The Homeless

    All I want to know is when these bad shrooms wear-off. I’m stuck in a trip where Dennis Rodman is now our greatest bulwark against nuclear annihilation

  29. 29.

    Redshift

    Haley’s sucking up to the boss was pretty appalling. She claimed that Lord Smallgloves’ nickname jibe “worked” because some other countries’ officials were repeating it.

    So, what US interest did it “work” to advance? A successful Trump branding exercise doesn’t count. Could Haley make it any more clear that she has no idea what a diplomat’s job is?

  31. 31.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Okay y’all. I’m signing off now. I’ll post if Kim’s video comes out overnight.

    One caution if I’m not around. The translations that the cable stations have been doing (from Iranian, as well) are frequently poor and occasionally wrong. Stuff coming out of Middlebury Institute of International Studies should be reliable.

  33. 33.

    Brachiator

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:

    Yup… he comes across like a grade school bully when he does that… and bullies are almost always cowards underneath it all… it is one of the few rules of human behavior that is axiomatic… ..

    Problem is we’ve got two bullies facing each other. And both may be cowards.

    Mitt Romney was also a coward, and I feared if he became president, he might be pushed into doing something massively stupid to prove that he was really a man.

    I get a similar vibe with Trump, only a hundred times worse. It way be a good thing that Trump’s generals appear to be sober and secure in their own skin. But Trump also loves to wriggle free of his restraints, like an insane Houdini, so that he can hold a rally and run wild with with his supporters and do something vile to prove how tough he is.

  34. 34.

    hovercraft

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Look at the spectacles they put on with their national day parades

    trump watches them with seething envy, and wants to stage them

    Didn’t he say this week during his bi-lat with Macron that he was so impressed with the Bastille Day parade with all the military on display, that he was looking into staging something similar in FC next year for the Fourth of July.
    I guess his hands really are small.

  35. 35.

    fuckwit

    @Arm The Homeless: That is true. And the hard part is guessing which they are before confronting them. It’s a gamble. Win the bet, you defeat the bully as he cries all the way home. Lose he bet, and the bully destroys you.

  36. 36.

    mike in dc

    So, worst case scenario…NK fires off an ICBM into the Northwest Pacific(not the Pacific Northwest), flying over Japan…and we fire interceptor missiles…and miss…and it detonates somewhere over the ocean. What next?

    The only stronger deterrent/provocation they can throw out is to threaten to load a bunch of cobalt-60 into the next missile.

  39. 39.

    Mike in NC

    Blowhard Trump famously resists all attempts at adult supervision, and will be tweeting to pals Flynn and Gorka at 5 AM tomorrow for guidance on how to measure his little pecker against Kim’s.

  41. 41.

    Gvg

    It’s not true all bullies are cowards. Most of them are because it’s often pretty easy to be a bully and surprising how far they can get without pushback. I do think Trump is that kind. His money has allowed him to get away with it until now when there are other actors who have the power and the need to stand up to him. He has no idea what to do when someone just doesn’t give in. It’s not even cowardence. There is nothing he can do in some of these cases and he didn’t know that. He thought being President and “most powerful” meant he always got his way. The game isn’t working like his fantasy. His supporters are actually in the same boat. They may not yet realize that tough talk or “straight talk” isn’t magic.
    I don’t think Kim is a coward tho he is a bully. He comes from a brutal environment where losing is death even if you are family. I understand there are other possible heirs and what was done to his uncle could have been him instead if he didn’t win. He faced real danger within a family of snakes and surrounded by other brutal generals…I don’t think he could have survived without some courage. The problem is we know they don’t understand us a lot. We can’t send signals and be sure they understand where the real lines are.

  42. 42.

    Frank Wilhoit

    How do you solve a problem like Kim Jong Un? Or Donald Trump, for that matter? Or any other real problem, not just one more perennial irritant, but the kind that can grab the future and break its arms just above the elbow?

    There is only one answer and it is always the same: time travel.

  43. 43.

    Another Scott

    @NotMax: Thanks for posting that. I saw the link at TheBulletin’s daily news summary yesterday but didn’t have time to note it here.

    Looks like a great read.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  44. 44.

    Cheryl Rofer

    From 40 minutes or so before, Trump’s response:

    Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!

    This is, of course, exactly the wrong response, but at least he didn’t threaten a nuclear attack.

  45. 45.

    sherparick

    @Thru the Looking Glass…: 1. Trump is a bully. 2. Trump is also a coward. 3. Watched Ken Burns the “Vietnam War” last night. Trump was 21 in 1967, but somehow managed not to be “tough” enough to fight in Vietnam. But he already to threaten “fire and fury” and war with others.

    He is twittling like crazy this morning. The really sad thing 35% of the country loves it.

    God (or FSM) loves his little ironies.. 72 years after the end of WWII, the United States is led by authoritarian, white supremacist, plutocrat and the Chancellor of Germany is a woman and leader of the free world.

  46. 46.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: Not to keep beating that dead horse, but … Politico Magazine:

    Iran is on the mind of nearly every senior Marine I’ve ever come in contact with, including Mattis. It was back in 2012, while he was still in uniform, that Mattis said that the three gravest threats facing the U.S. were “Iran, Iran, Iran.” In the years since his retirement in 2013, he’s been even more outspoken. He repeated his “Iran, Iran, Iran” mantra last April (in addition to an entirely predictable reference to the Beirut barracks bombing) during an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and then explained himself. Iran, he said, is “the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East,” and not really a nation-state at all but “a revolutionary cause devoted to mayhem.”

    Then, Mattis linked Iran to the rise of ISIS. “I consider ISIS nothing more than an excuse for Iran to continue its mischief,” he said. “Iran is not an enemy of ISIS; they have a lot to gain from the turmoil that ISIS creates.” What Mattis said next was eerily reminiscent of George W. Bush’s claim that because Al Qaeda wasn’t attacking Saddam Hussein, the two must be linked: “I would just point out one question for you to look into,” Mattis intoned. “What is the one country in the Middle East that has not been attacked by ISIS? One. That is Iran. That is more than happenstance, I’m sure.”

    If those quotes are accurate, and if he still thinks that way, then he strikes me as a very dangerous man to have as Secretary of Defense, and not someone I would want negotiating on behalf of the USA.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  47. 47.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Another Scott: This is scary to a lot of us. So far he hasn’t said much about Iran as Secretary of Defense. People do change their minds, but I would like to know how he thinks.

    There were a couple of articles over the last few days about how Mattis manages to disagree with Trump without calling down his wrath. One of the secrets seems to be not to get more news coverage than Trump. Mattis has recently dialed down his news coverage, leaving reporters off his plane and having fewer press availabilities. Probably better to have him as Secretary of Defense than Luther whatshisname from Alabama when he loses the election, but the lack of transparency is worrying.

    Edited for clarity.

  49. 49.

    sherparick

    @Gvg: North Korea is a real life “Game of Thrones” apparently. You either win the crown or die.

    As for help building a nuke. The solution of the technical issues were pretty much in the public domain by the late 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Progressive,_Inc. Also, just Google “How to build an H-Bomb. https://balloon-juice.com/2017/09/21/a-nuclear-faceoff/#comments The engineering and industrial system needed to create a bomb is the hard part, and apparently Pakistan and North Korea shared information in the 1980s and 90s on building a bomb. North Korea also received reactors from both Russia and China and sent students to countries for technical studies. http://thediplomat.com/2016/08/the-long-history-of-the-pakistan-north-korea-nexus/

    Although Trump often criticizes China and asks for more help from them on the DPRK, and the sanctions announced yesterday could directly impact China and Pakistan, he is very careful to avoid a break and to avoid criticizing the Chinese leadership in any personal way, a curious exemption that Trump also grants to Putin and Russia. Since the election, the Chinese, as Trump would like to say, have been very “nice” to him and his family since the election and honored him by meeting for a summit at Mar el Lago. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/trump-chinese-trademark/517458/ Notice that it is ex-aide Bannon, who seems to be crazy about the topic of China.

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Another Scott: @Cheryl Rofer: Perhaps, then, it is fortunate that ISIS attacked Iran a couple of months ago to disabuse Secretary Mattis.

    Is this a problem/issue? Yes. He has a preconceived grievance that he’s brought to his current position. What he’s missing here is which great power enables Iran – their nuclear program, their attempt to establish a near abroad and sphere of influence through Iraq and Syria into Lebanon? Russia.

  51. 51.

    J R in WV

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I was pretty sure ISIS is a Sunni organization willing to purge Shi’ia by sword and fire; Iran on the other hand is a Shi’ia nation led by theocrats, willing to purge Sunni by sword and fire.

    So this seems contrary to the facts on the ground for Mattis to believe ISIS and Iran are connected in any way…. how strange. I understand the history, Beirut barracks, etc, yet still. If ISIS had a real government/national army wouldn’t they be attacking Iran first thing? Their religious enemies? I dunno, like living in a Furry Freak Bros cartoon sometimes.

    Visited Colorado recently, like being in a different world! Really different feeling in the air.

  54. 54.

    TenguPhule

    @mike in dc:

    So, worst case scenario…NK fires off an ICBM into the Northwest Pacific(not the Pacific Northwest), flying over Japan…and we fire interceptor missiles…and miss…and it detonates somewhere over the ocean. What next?

    Markets start to panic.

    People start to panic.

    Situation becomes chaotic.

  56. 56.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    Funny everyone always ignores that one reason Iran hates the US is because the CIA backed the coup that over threw their (elected) government in 1953. But , it’s OK when we do it…
    I realize there are many other complex political realities at work in the region currently but honestly, why would they ever trust anything we said?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-role-1953-iranian-coup

    “The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,” reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.”

  58. 58.

    J R in WV

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone:

    I think the people of the USA are pretty popular with the people of Iran, actually.

    The Government of the US via a vis the Government of Iran on the other hand have difficulties relating with each other since 1953.

    We get mailings from the Archaeological Institute of America, which partly funds its research by arranging tours to famous ancient sites all over the world. They include trips to Iran, which being an ancient land is covered with fabulously ancient ruins and cities from the first civilizations of mankind, if mankind can be said to be civilized yet at all.

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