“Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned on Thursday that North Korea was within five years of being able to target the continental United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile, and said that, combined with its expanding nuclear program, the country “is becoming a direct threat to the United States,” today’s New York Times reports.
According to the Times, “In comments to reporters during a visit to Beijing, Mr. Gates said he was worried that within the relatively short time frame North Korea would simultaneously continue to develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, a combination he said had increased the need for pressure on Pyongyang, particularly if there is another provocation on South Korea by the North like the deadly artillery shelling of a South Korean island in November.”
Well, I hate to show skepticism towards any statement made by the architect of victory in Afghanistan, but frankly this is bullshit. North Korea has tested two atomic bombs, and both have been partial successes at best. The bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 released about 10-15 kilotons of energy. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki released about 20-22 kilotons. The 2006 North Korean bomb released less than a kiloton, while the 2009 bomb released about 4 kilotons. Both were “devices,” rather than bombs, constructed in place and detonated underground. A skeptic might conclude that in neither case did the North Koreans achieve anything like a full success with their devices.
The Hiroshima bomb weighed 8,900 pounds. The Nagasaki bomb weighed 10,200 pounds. The North Korean missile of which Secretary Gates proclaims himself to be so afraid, the Taepodong 2, has a range of maybe 3,500 miles, carrying an 1,100 pound payload. In its last test, the Taepodong 2 failed to launch a satellite into orbit. So if the North Koreans can’t successfuly detonate a nuclear device of unlimited size and weight, how likely is it that they’re going to manufacture an effective 1,100 pound warhead in the next five years? And if they did, what good would it do them, since they don’t have an operational missile to put it in?
All in all, North Korean nuclear missile technology appears to be as lame as U.S. anti-missile technology, which ought to prove a comfort to the military-industrial complexes in both nations. They can continue to make unlimited expenditures on extravagant military technology for decades to come, without encountering the inconvenience of ever having to put that technology to the test. If only we could work out a similar arrangement in Afghanistan! Guys! Guys! Why should we fight? Let’s just threaten each other for a few decades!
Afterwords
Timesfolk Elizabeth Bumiller and David E. Sanger don’t help much by claiming that “Exploding a nuclear device underground, which North Korea did in 2006 and again in 2009, is comparatively simple. Manufacturing a warhead that is light, small and reliable is a far more complex art.”
If it’s so easy to explode a nuclear device underground, why can’t the North Koreans do it? And, since they can’t, we should we expect them to master the “far more complex art” of making a warhead that is “light, small and reliable”?
