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Would the US retaliate if the price were San Francisco or Los Angeles incinerated and radioactive? Why does the North Korean leadership insist not only on havi

Would the US retaliate if the price were San Francisco or Los Angeles incinerated and radioactive? Why does the North Korean leadership insist not only on having the nukes necessary to preserve their reign -- the ability to strike South Korea or Japan should be enough to guarantee that they won't be invaded -- but also an intercontinental missile capable of destroying mainland American cities? One thought is that they still harbor dreams of taking the South. In this view, they wish to neutralize the Americans by holding their cities hostage. They attack southward, and the Americans do nothing lest the SF Bay -- including Y Combinator -- is destroyed.

Someone 9y ago
Another thought is that their best defense against an attack from South Korea is to keep the USA out of such a war, and that having the ability to seriously hit the USA is the easiest way to guarantee that. They didn't need that ability earlier because they always had a big brother (always at least one of the USSR and China) that would do that "seriously hit the USA" part for them, if the USA supported South Korea in attacking them. Nowadays, they can't be that sure about that support anymore. The USSR is gone, Russia has its own problems, and China seems to only support them because they don't like giving the USA more influence, not because they share a view on communism. The logical (in the logic of deterrence/arms races) conclusion is that they need their own capability for doing that.