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If North Korea ever decides to uses their nuclear weapons, South Korea will be just as badly off. Actual use of nuclear weapons is a lose-lose scenario for all
by ordinary 14y ago
If North Korea ever decides to uses their nuclear weapons, South Korea will be just as badly off. Actual use of nuclear weapons is a lose-lose scenario for all parties involved (and, indeed, all parties not involved). Threatening use of nuclear weapons is another matter altogether.
It is probably also worth noting that every single western nuclear power reserves the right to first use of nuclear weapons. In fact, the only countries who have ever adopted a no first use policy are the USSR/Russia (for 2 decades, but not any more), India (this is apparently more ambiguous now) and China (who continue to hold to it).
Wikipedia briefly mentions a North Korean pledge to the same effect, but I think this latest news shows that we should probably not take that too seriously.
- arethuza 14y agoThe Soviets actually considered a first strike in November 1983 during the epic mix up that was the NATO Able Archer 83 exercise. The Soviets had always believed that the Americans wanted to attack them, perhaps understandably given that in the 1950s and early 1960s there were senior US military leaders who actually wanted to initiate a full nuclear war with the Soviets while the latter were still strategically weak. The Soviets thought that the Americans were preparing a first strike during Able Archer and were preparing to preempt it - thankfully the exercise ended and everyone on the Soviet side calmed down and took their fingers off the button. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
- iSnow 14y agoNot quite. Due to the tensions and an error in a Soviet early-warning system, it looked like the US had indeed launched a couple of rockets in a first strike. If not for Petrov's level-headed reaction, nuclear war might have started by error. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm...
- arethuza 14y agoThat was a separate incident - just happened to be right before Able Archer.
- iSnow 14y agoI see, my bad. Nice to know that we came that close to annihilation twice in 1983.
- arethuza 14y agoI can recommend watching Threads to get some idea of just how grim things would probably have been in the UK had there been a war at that time. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/ NB Threads, although it depicts an absolutely devastating attack on the UK (~90% dead within a few years), actually uses a rather optimistic attack plan - a real attack would actually have been far worse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg