So first off, I don't like the headline. All US subs are nuclear, but this feels like burying the story: parking an SSBN at South Korea is a very specific message. It carries 20 Trident II missiles, each capable of carry 8 475kt warheads (but likely only armed with 4 due to treaty limitations).
38 Megatons of independently targetable nuclear destruction.
That said, the story also talks about how this will drive KJU from the table - as if he was ever there in the first place. Given the state of their current activities, I don't think reminding him that he's fucking around with a country that worked out nuclear delivery via ICBM half a century ago is overly aggressive.
IMO, at some point, someone (and I'm not saying the US necessarily) is going to have to go in and depose the regime and integrate the population into modern society. North Korea is a bigger threat to world stability than Russia, and today that's really saying something.
Russia may threaten and posture the use of nuclear weapons, and have started a losing war with their neighbor, but it's far less likely that they would actually use the weapons. Even if Putin ordered it there's a lot of people between him and the weapons that could prevent the use. He's a dictator but barely, he needs to keep the oligarchs happy to keep his office, and the oligarchs don't want to live out the rest of their lives in cramped bunkers in Siberia when the earth is irradiated. DPRK on the other hand is an actual dictatorship, with few people between Kim and a launch, and is actually unstable enough to do it. Also, with their carelessness around their "test launches" they're much more likely to cause an international incident by dropping a half-fueled rocket stage on Japan.
How would you feel if you were a South Korean? Knowing that your brothers to the North want to kill or conquer you simply because they're not happy with the half of the continent they chose because, ultimately, the US was a better development partner than Russia and China?
How would you like to live in Japan and get actual missle launch warnings?
That alone is pretty fucked up and should be dealt with.
So first off, I don't like the headline. All US subs are nuclear, but this feels like burying the story: parking an SSBN at South Korea is a very specific message. It carries 20 Trident II missiles, each capable of carry 8 475kt warheads (but likely only armed with 4 due to treaty limitations).
38 Megatons of independently targetable nuclear destruction.
That said, the story also talks about how this will drive KJU from the table - as if he was ever there in the first place. Given the state of their current activities, I don't think reminding him that he's fucking around with a country that worked out nuclear delivery via ICBM half a century ago is overly aggressive.
IMO, at some point, someone (and I'm not saying the US necessarily) is going to have to go in and depose the regime and integrate the population into modern society. North Korea is a bigger threat to world stability than Russia, and today that's really saying something.
Russia may threaten and posture the use of nuclear weapons, and have started a losing war with their neighbor, but it's far less likely that they would actually use the weapons. Even if Putin ordered it there's a lot of people between him and the weapons that could prevent the use. He's a dictator but barely, he needs to keep the oligarchs happy to keep his office, and the oligarchs don't want to live out the rest of their lives in cramped bunkers in Siberia when the earth is irradiated. DPRK on the other hand is an actual dictatorship, with few people between Kim and a launch, and is actually unstable enough to do it. Also, with their carelessness around their "test launches" they're much more likely to cause an international incident by dropping a half-fueled rocket stage on Japan.
How would you feel if you were a South Korean? Knowing that your brothers to the North want to kill or conquer you simply because they're not happy with the half of the continent they chose because, ultimately, the US was a better development partner than Russia and China?
How would you like to live in Japan and get actual missle launch warnings?
That alone is pretty fucked up and should be dealt with.