Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

5-MINUTE EXPERT:

Experts address the North Korean threat

Where nuclear fears meet deterrence policies and geopolitical realities

North Korean missile

(Lee Jin-man / Associated Press

A man watches a TV news program showing a file footage of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with letters reading: “The North fired a missile” at the Seoul Train Station in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017. North Korea reportedly fired a ballistic missile early

The first year of Donald Trump’s presidency has been filled with aggressive rhetoric, some of it pushing the U.S. closer to nuclear war than it has been in at least a generation.

Taunting North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un with the nickname “Rocket Man,” Trump has said an American attack would “totally destroy” the East Asian nation, using language like “locked and loaded” and “fire and fury” in tweets and statements about the mounting conflict.

Potential targets within North Korea’s range:

• Las Vegas

• Los Angeles

• San Francisco

• Seattle

• Dallas

• Houston

A tactical map featured in a 2013 propaganda photo suggested Kim Jong Un might target:

• San Diego (a major Navy hub)

• Hawaii (base of the U.S. military’s Pacific Command)

• Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana (housing the Air Force’s Global Strike Command, the seat of the nation’s nuclear response)

• Washington, D.C.

As the U.S. began joint training Oct. 22 with South Korean forces off the southern shores of the Korean peninsula, Kim labeled Trump a “war merchant” and “strangler of peace.” Back in September, he called Trump deranged in a formal response to the president’s tough talk at the United Nations General Assembly, adding that he would tame his enemy with fire.

A video released by the North Korean state media in April showed its missiles blowing up a fictionalized San Francisco. Such posturing is nothing new, but tensions haven’t been as high since the Cold War.

North Korea’s nuclear capabilities (for now)

Jonathan Pollack, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, said North Korea had made “meaningful but not definitive” advancements in nuclear capabilities since Kim Jong Un took power in 2011. Pollack added that while the small nation was “not there yet,” the threat shouldn’t be ignored. “They’ve pulled rabbits out of a hat for far too long for me to simply discount what they say and what they seem to be pursuing.”

Sheila Smith, senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, said Kim Jong Un had come “closer than ever before” to equipping his country for a nuclear strike on the U.S. mainland and would be consistently capable of reaching it by March.

Kim Jong-un's recent show of force

Did you know?

Over 35 years, North Korea has performed nearly 200 high-level weapons tests.

54 have taken place just since President Donald Trump took office in January.

What makes a missile intercontinental?

The designation is for weapons that travel great distances via rockets using two-stage fuel systems.

• May 14: A Hwasong-12 test missile demonstrated a range of about 3,000 miles, which could reach the U.S. island territory of Guam.

• July 4: A Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile was tested successfully for the first time, with a range that could reach Alaska.

• July 28: Another test of the Hwasong-14 upped the range to 6,500 miles, meaning it could make landfall as far inland as Chicago.

• Sept. 2: North Korea tested a bomb seven times more destructive than the one dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II. While it lacks the technology to unleash such devastation on U.S. shores, North Korea has shown it can reach the U.S. mainland with bombs on par with what hit Hiroshima.

Ballistic Missile Defense System

The U.S. defense layers complex elements addressing hostile missiles in all phases of flight, from sensors that detect and track threats to interceptor missiles. Systems shown below would likely be employed if North Korea launched an attack.

• Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense: Artillery systems carried on U.S. and Japanese warships made to intercept short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

• Terminal High Altitude Area Defense: Land-based batteries designed to destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles inside or outside the atmosphere in the final phase of flight.

Click to enlarge photo

This Aug. 29, 2017 photo distributed on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2017, by the North Korean government shows what was said to be the test launch of a Hwasong-12 intermediate range missile in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Checks on the conflict

• Nuclear deterrence policy: Experts believe that despite heightened tensions, nuclear war is unlikely. They cite the massive number of lives at stake for both nations and nearby allies. That outcome is known as MAD, or mutual assured destruction. It’s one of the linchpins of nuclear deterrence policy, in which the U.S. has engaged since the Cold War. The Soviet Union had stockpiled nuclear weapons, so the U.S. followed suit in an effort to create “the credible threat of retaliation to forestall enemy attack,” according to the National Museum of American History.

• China’s influence: The Council on Foreign Relations describes China as North Korea’s biggest trade partner, arguably with the most leverage on the regime. Their alliance dates to the Korean War in the 1950s, and China has since backed the country politically and economically. However, Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed negotiation to extinguish “the flame of war.”

While Xi wasn’t calling out North Korea directly in that September statement, China recently imposed some sweeping sanctions on its ally. According to The Economist, the Chinese central bank ordered an end to new loans and the wrap-up of existing financial deals. In addition, fuel sales to North Korea were suspended in June, though China indicated that was based on a lack of confidence in payment.

If nuclear war is unlikely, what about conflict on the ground?

While wary of the tense situation and unpredictability of the leaders involved, national experts contend that a nuclear war between North Korea and the U.S. is not likely because of the number of lives at stake for both nations and allies that could be affected by fallout.

If war broke out, it would more likely be on the ground. It would start on the Korean peninsula, where the more than 25 million residents of Seoul, South Korea, would be at risk within minutes of the first act of war.

North Korea has 1.2 million soldiers, plus 600,000 in the infantry reserves and about 6 million in the paramilitary reserves, according to analysis by London-based think tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies. South Korea’s armed forces are about half the size.

But with the U.S. military in the mix, experts say North Korea would lose and Kim Jong Un’s regime would collapse. The second Korean War would produce extreme numbers of casualties, they say. Troops from the North Korean Army stationed at Kaesong on the northern side of the peninsula’s Demilitarized Zone have about 500 artillery pieces, according to sources quoted by The Washington Post. About half of those pieces are multiple rocket launchers, including 300mm guns that could fire eight rounds every 15 minutes at a range of about 44 miles.

Only 35 miles away, Seoul could lose more than 64,000 lives in the first 24 hours of shooting, according to projections. Some of those killed would likely be American, as the U.S. military has nearly 30,000 troops stationed across South Korea.

The war would be devastating for North Korea too, as the U.S. and South Korea have spent more than 50 years developing a joint counterstrategy to take out its infrastructure with airstrikes.

Asked in June to break down basic logistics of a potential war, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis told the House Appropriations Committee that it would result in more human suffering and lives lost “than anything we’ve seen since 1953.”

“It (would) involve the massive shelling of an ally’s capital, which is one of the most densely packed cities on Earth,” Mattis said of Seoul, adding that the consequences would be “catastrophic” for innocent people across U.S.-allied countries in Asia, including Japan. “It would be a war that fundamentally we don’t want, but we would win at great cost.”

What if a nuclear warhead detonated here?

For a sense of what would happen to U.S. targets, the NukeMap hosted by the Stevens Institute of Technology is a useful and chilling tool.

Based on its calculations, if a missile bearing 15 kilatons of TNT (equal to the blast in Hiroshima) detonated over downtown Las Vegas at an altitude of about 1,970 feet:

• There would be an estimated 28,260 fatalities and 62,060 injuries.

• Depending on the warhead’s pound-force per square inch, the air blast could cover more than 1,000 feet and demolish concrete structures.

• Anyone within 3/4 of a mile would be exposed to radiation at a level causing 50-90 percent mortality from acute effects alone without medical treatment.

• Anyone within about a mile and a quarter would be exposed to thermal radiation at a level causing third-degree burns leading to severe scarring and disablement.

(Note the disclaimer: “Modeling casualties from a nuclear attack is difficult. These numbers should be seen as evocative, not definitive. Fallout effects are ignored.”)

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