dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Anonymous ID: de9624 May 24, 2025, 5:29 a.m. No.23076540 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>6542

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>Parade

Anonymous ID: de9624 May 24, 2025, 5:43 a.m. No.23076570 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>6587

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>PATIENCE

'Strategic Patience" the Bridge.

The Obama Administration’s approach to the problem of North Korea has been termed strategic patience, and is in fact the same approach employed by previous administrations. At the heart of strategic patience is a belief that the status quo, while less than ideal, is better than many possible consequences of taking action. The premise of this argument is incorrect. What we see in North Korea is not a status quo, similar today to what it was decades ago, but rather a situation worsening at an exponential pace. Sooner rather than later, this pace will lead to a North Korea capable of sending nuclear weapons around the globe. While Pyongyang may not be the gravest threat to the United States, if handled carelessly, the situation could distract Trump from other threats and derail his Presidency.

During his transition out of office, former President Obama told President Trump that North Korea is the problem he should worry most about.[1] In April, amidst rising tensions between the U.S. and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a joint statement that North Korea is “an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority.”[2]

The U.S. seems to have tried a small dose of everything under the sun to address the threat in North Korea. Yet over the past quarter century, nothing has improved. There will be no magic bullets for North Korea. Our best option for the future must consist of some combination of tools we have already employed against North Korean obstinacy. But we should employ them simultaneously, consistently, and attentively. It is important to understand why these tools have not worked in the past and, if used differently, whether they can be successful in the future. Before exploring tools used to reach an objective, however, the US should first give careful consideration to what that objective should be, which is informed by what we know of the DPRK’s nuclear capability.

NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES TODAY

Nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, one of the few individuals the North Korean regime has allowed into the country to observe their nuclear capabilities, explains that three pieces are needed for North Korea to have a viable nuclear threat: fissile materials, weaponization, and delivery.[3] Fissile materials determine the size of the arsenal; the US has high confidence in their estimates of North Korea's plutonium, which is produced mainly by a single 5 megawatt reactor, and low confidence in their estimates of its enriched uranium.[4] Based on Hecker's seven visits to the country and analysis of secondary sources, he estimates—with the caveat that our understanding of their enriched uranium capacity may be lacking—that the country has enough fissile materials for 20-25 bombs today (six to eight of plutonium), and the capacity to build seven additional bombs each year. We know very little about their weaponization capabilities, but the fact that they have developed the bomb over ten years, including conducting five nuclear tests, means that it is likely sufficiently small and sophisticated to reach all of South Korea and Japan. North Korea’s progress in their delivery capability has improved over the last few years. We know that North Korea can deliver short and medium range missiles, with increasing versatility and decreasing detectability. In his New Year's Day address, Kim Jong-un claimed the country had “entered the final stage of preparation for the test launch of intercontinental ballistic missile” and that they will “continue to build up [their] self-defense capability, the pivot of which is the nuclear forces, and the capability for preemptive strike.” Hecker says, "The question that people then ask is … do they have a warhead they can put on an ICBM and reach the United States. The answer is, in my opinion, no.” Hecker believes this will require more work. He emphasizes, however, “One of the worst scenarios, and the one that worries me the most, is they can strike South Korea and Japan. That’s the nuclear crisis. We have that nuclear crisis now.”[5]

Way moar

https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017/9/29/the-end-of-strategic-patience