by Stephen Bryen
Kim Jong-un had better think more than twice about making another threat about incinerating the United States. As things now stand, one more threat will be fatal for him and for North Korea.
This message, loud and clear, has been sent by the president.
I believe that the president has the support of the American people. That is all he needs.
It is really foolish of North Korea and her myopic leaders and sycophantic generals to threaten the U.S., the world’s only true superpower. They cannot defeat the United States, and they cannot survive an air attack from the United States.
Probably we will launch B-1 and B-2 bombers, followed by B-52s to carpet-bomb some of the missile factories and nuclear installations. The United States does not need to use nuclear weapons to do the job; the bunker-busters and the biggest conventional bomb of them all, the GBU 43/B, sometimes called the Mother of All Bombs, will do the job. The MOAB was tried out this past April in Afghanistan, where it was pushed out the back of a C-130. It destroyed deep underground caves to the point where there was nothing left.
That’s the sort of bomb, now proven to work, that can destroy North Korea’s nuclear stockpile, her underground facilities, her reactors, and the government’s underground network in Pyongyang. Kim will have no place to hide, and afterward, it is unlikely that anyone will find any single part of him worth burying.
Why would North Korea be so brazen and make such dangerous moves?
For a long time, it was thought that if a country had nuclear weapons, even if it couldn’t feed itself, it had a strange kind of ultimate leverage over civilized countries and peoples. That’s why South Africa (when it was still an Apartheid state) was building nuclear weapons. No more. South Africa realized that nuclear weapons were more of a hazard than a benefit.
Today, many other wobbly countries have tried to obtain nuclear weapons. Libya made many efforts over the years to buy ready-made weapons or the technology to produce her own. Perhaps it was Gaddafi’s dream. Iraq tried to do the same thing, but the Israelis smashed their reactor, and the United States and coalition forces flushed out whatever other nuclear weapons technology survived thereafter. Syria built a reactor like the one at Youngbin, hoping it would not be discovered, but the Israelis found it and ruined it utterly. And Iran is still in the midst of developing nuclear weapons, although she is supposed to be in a “pause” under the deal made under the Obama administration.
Some have gotten away with it – India, which is a very large country, and Pakistan, which is not. They are a danger to each other, and Pakistan is responsible for spreading nuclear technology around the Third World. The country remains a true menace still tolerated by the United States, which is bizarre, given her inherent instability and the fact that no solution exists if Pakistan falls completely into the hands of radical Islamists.
Others have tried to get nuclear weapons but for one reason or another failed. Some other countries may have them but don’t say so, such as Israel and Sweden. Indeed, it is Israel’s policy to maintain a posture of strategic ambivalence. It is Sweden’s to keep quiet.
Mock up or the real thing? Kim Jong-un inspects miniature nuclear warhead
Mother of all Bombs –between 21,000 and 30,000 lb explosive
But overall, it is clear that the promise of inviolability to be gained from nuclear weapons does not always pan out. In the case of North Korea, she does not yet have delivery systems for her missiles, although the U.S. apparently now thinks North Korea has succeeded in miniaturizing her bombs so they can be put on top of a rocket. Why, then, should we allow the North Koreans to keep threatening us at a time when they can’t deliver on their threats, and where, if we allow them time, they will be in a position to incinerate our cities in a few years?
That’s why President Trump could attack North Korea at any time with or without new threats. But even the president of the United States needs a casus belli. Kim is about to hand him just that.
