Why Would North Korea Use Nuclear Weapons?

Ryan Pickrell has an excellent analysis of what would happen in the event of a war with North Korea that is well worth reading.  It offers a reasonable, but quite sober analysis of what would happen in such a war.  the bottomline (which sounds right to me) is that the United States and its allies would prevail, but the loss of life and damage would be huge--with millions dead in Korea and Japan, and with the possibility of a successful nuclear attack on a U.S. city.

To me the most interesting part of the paper is Pickrell's analysis of when North Korea would use nuclear weapons:

 “Putting this in a North Korean perspective, they see themselves as facing the world’s largest single military and nuclear power in a potential conflict. The pursuit of nuclear weapons, then, is intended as a deterrent, to counter their weaker military position,” Baker explained.

North Korea’s primary aspiration is “to stop a buildup of U.S. forces around them and protect North Korea from the fate of Iraq,” Pollack told TheDCNF. The aim is primarily nuclear deterrence.

Were North Korea to use a nuclear weapon, it would most likely be in the event of a conflict, if a conflict appeared imminent, or if some external factor posed an immediate threat to the country’s survival. How each side perceives these conditions varies, making it difficult to determine which actions might push the Pyongyang over the edge.

“It is not clear, for example, if they consider a limited strike against their nuclear or missile facilities as an imminent threat, or if they would initially respond with conventional systems,” Baker explained, “Though given the military disparity, even a limited strike could be seen as the beginning of a more concerned military effort, leaving the North needing to use its WMDs quickly or risk having its capability knocked out.”

Despite North Korean threats, the probability that North Korea would choose to launch a nuclear strike is relatively low, but at the end of the day, Kim Jong-un, while not irrational or crazy as some suspect, is very much a two-dimensional thinker who might decide to do the unthinkable if push came to shove.

Read it all here.