Well, the North Koreans have had those three elements for at least 10 years and no one has felt sufficiently endangered to do anything really forceful about them..
I suppose there would be no doubt the capability existed if North Korea were to launch a missile and blow up a piece of ocean in the eastern Pacific Ocean. But such a demonstration would justify an immediate attack on North Korea by the United States, and the North Koreans are not going to provide that essential bit of information freely.
As noted in the article, the question is not a matter of IF the North Koreans can miniaturize their nuclear weapons design sufficiently to fit into a missile warhead. It is a matter of when. Until that time, the North Koreans don’t, in fact, have a strategic nuclear armed missile. They just have the very strong likelihood.
Sophistry, to be sure, but diplomatic negotiators will insist they still have time to finally convince the North Korean government to abandon a program it has pursued doggedly for over 50 years. And even after the fact of a complete weapon system is established, the diplomats will then argue that they only have a few such missiles and it would be suicide to attack the United States until they had many more. Then the diplomats will argue about the number of nuclear ballistic missile systems necessary to trigger a military response and that the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council seem to accept that other nations,some big, some small, possess nuclear weapons.
And on, and on, until a North Korean nuclear warhead comes down in ...wherever and extinguishes the lives of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Americans. Then the United States will have to respond militarily and because the missiles are on mobile launchers, it will be obliged to thoroughly destroy North Korea, taking or imperiling the lives of some 25 millions, the vast majority of whom are innocent pawns/victims of their own brutal regime.
This why I feel that the critical moment, the trigger for action, is the next and final step in developing the weapon system: successful miniaturization of the atomic bomb to fit in to a warhead. I have already listed the reasons for why the Chinese are the logical choice to deliver the attack.
The next questions are: 1) Are the Chinese willing to do the deed and 2) What actions is the United States prepared to take to support the Chinese and to compensate them for the losses they will incur?
Well said, but how do we know when such miniaturization is complete, if it has not already been accomplished.
Modern thermonuclear design is very well know, and assembly is rather easy, once you have the Pu and the Tritium for the zipper.
Our problem is if he demos one with a mid-Pacific detonation, on an arched high altitude shot, and then says, oh, by the way, I have 5 more all on easily-hidden mobile TELs, and they are aimed at New York, DC, LA, London, and another city I will not tell you about.
Now what do we do, because he could launch before we could destroy those 5 missiles?
That is the real problem.