Nuclear shift: North Korean nuke law reflects global trend

Seoul (AFP) – North Korea's Kim Jong Un declaring he will never give up his nukes and enshrining a "first-strike" doctrine into law are part of a worrying new escalatory dynamic in nuclear weapons policy around the world, analysts say.

Since the height of the Cold War, nuclear arsenals have served primarily as a deterrent to be used only as a last resort -- but when Russia invaded Ukraine in February, everything began to change, experts say.

Russian officials have refused to rule out the possibility of a nuclear strike against Ukraine, and President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made thinly veiled threats of nuclear war, vowing Wednesday that Moscow would use "all the means at our disposal to protect Russia".

North Korea -- long a global pariah for its nuclear weapons programme -- revised its laws this month, declaring itself to be an "irreversible" nuclear power and offering an array of scenarios when it would use its nukes.

With talk of "automatic" first strikes and tactical nuke deployments, North Korea's new policy "reflects Kim's response to changing nuclear dynamics around the world", he said.

It is not just Putin that Pyongyang is responding to: the United States has also played a role, the analyst added, pointing to the revival of its tactical nukes -- smaller weapons designed for battlefield use -- under president Donald Trump.

The Pentagon under Trump had pointed in 2018 to Russia's tactical nukes to make the case for the United States to have matching weapons as a credible deterrent.

"We should not equate Pyongyang's latest move as an irrational decision or Kim being unpredictable. Kim is being nimble in adapting to a new global trend," he said.

Well, pretty soon, I expect, everybody will have the weapons.
It gives you a huge power leverage.
If Ukraine held to her nukes, what would be happening now?
Iran is about to get some, then I expect Saudi Arabia and Israel, Turkey, ..
Ukraine may be also working on something?
Vietnam, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, Poland, Germany, Switzerland...
???
Hundred years from now, who knows, may be even e.g. Trinidad and Tobago.

“After all, nukes are 75 year old technology from the first half of the last century.”

And they are just as threatening as they were then with the inclusion of a whole lot more power to do harm.

There has always been a possibility of some off kilter leader or person of position, to get his/her 15 minutes of fame by getting something launched. It just indicates the “dark side” of nuclear capacity.

The article opened up North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. He is a perfect example of one of those that is, and should be, feared. Will he launch, maybe. He’s just stupid enough to do it and find out what suicide really is. Unfortunately he’s taking millions of others with him. So he’ll gain nothing more than a record of foolish ignorance.

But if you look at how he got to that point it is filled with names of people screwing up. The top of the list is Bill Clinton along with Hughes and Loral corporations. He provided the supercomputers that were changed to handle weapons grade so Korea could enrich uranium to use in their weapons. That’s what got Secretary Ron Brown killed. He also provided the MRV program to China, with the help of Hughes and Loral, and it went directly to Korea so they could target their missiles. The design for the missiles came from Russia. Only the names were changed to protect the guilty.

So it isn’t who is the bad guy. It’s how many and where are they hiding. As you can see, some are in this country.

wy69

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