"political" comment. This is ALL being orchestrated by China. The narrative that Kim is some uncontrollable maniac is misinformation. The missile tech and bomb tech is all coming from Beijing. The missile launch and bomb tests are all being timed from China. Don't be fooled. This is all about control of the South Pacific and the eventual reunification of Taiwan.
It sure makes a person wonder. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the USSR outright shipped nuclear-tipped missiles to Cuba. In this case China could be helping in clandestine ways. Where does NK get the diesel trucks and equipment for transporting the solid propellant ballistic missiles? In the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis Pres. Kennedy stated that an attack on the US would be considered to be an attack by the Soviet Union. In the current situation since NK has home-grown missiles it appears that China has completely clean hands. How convenient. NK inflicts major economic damage on the US and China is completely untouched. Obviously, China and Russia are major actors in this situation and our news media just assumes that China is our friend. You just know that there are factions in China that like the current situation.
There are many reasonable future scenarios. Here are some that come to mind:
1) Accept the current situation and practice some kind of containment strategy like the US did with the Soviet Union decades ago. Even our news media is now talking about this out loud.
2) Pre-emptive military strikes that lead to all kinds of scenarios with large losses of life on the Korean peninsula and open ended scenarios with China and even Russia.
3) A naval blockade would be difficult because the US would need a fleet on both sides of the peninsula. The blockade would be never-ending because land trade could still be done on the Chinese and perhaps Russian border. Perhaps, NK could be stopped from trading nuclear arms with foreign countries.
4) Arming S. Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons, but this could really be just a variation of scenario no. 1.
5) Perhaps, NK could be persuaded to give up its nuclear weapons plans in exchange for a promise of cessation of US/S.Korean joint military exercises. However, it seems that the US does not want to trade away the military exercise option. Also, there is the possibility that NK does not want to give up their weapons program for anything, which takes us back to scenario no. 1. There is the possibility of public embarrassment here. The US could publicly offer this kind of trade and NK could refuse making the US look bad and emboldening NK even more.
6) Helping S. Korea and Japan with missile weapon defense systems, which is something we are already doing. Also, we have our own short range and long range anti-missiles. This again is something like scenario no. 1. S. Korea, the US, and Japan could start firing anti-missiles at NK ballistic missile launches, but what if they miss. The public embarrassment would be great. Also, it is cheaper in the long run to build MRB's, IRBM's, and ICBM's than it is to build anti-missiles. (This is why MIRV's were developed in the first place. At the moment NK is a long way from developing MIRV's. ) One thing about launching anti-missiles is that it might slow down the NK missile development program, like good targeting ability and good re-entry vehicles.
7) Along idea of scenario no. 6 is the possibility that the US could resurrect SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) that Ronald Reagan was so found of. In a away the current long range US anti-missile program is a limited variation of this. While the current long range anti-missile program does not put a dent in the mutually assured destruction (MAD) that the world lives by, it might be effective against a rogue nation as NK or evenutally even Iran. However, SDI envisioned many ideas like orbiting chemical lasers, directed particle beams, brilliant pebbles, etc. One interesting idea was envisioned by Teller as a nuclear bomb aligning x-ray laser beams toward ballistic missiles just as the bomb blew itself out of existence.
