NK pushing US closer to war?
WASHINGTON — Would exploding a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific, as North Korea has threatened, push the current war of words between the US and North Korea closer to actual war?
As with much that has transpired lately in the US-North Korea nuclear crisis, no one can be sure where this would lead or whether the North will even carry out its threat. It does, however, raise many questions, including: How would the North undertake such a nuclear test, what risks might it pose to Japan and how would the US respond?
After the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, said President Donald Trump would "pay dearly" for threatening to "totally destroy" North Korea if the US were forced to defend itself or its allies against a North Korean attack, Kim's foreign minister told reporters his country's response to Trump "could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific."
All six of North Korea's nuclear tests thus far, dating to 2006, have been conducted in underground tunnels. Experts say the most likely way the North would conduct an atmospheric test over the Pacific is to launch a long-range missileprobably overflying Japanand have its nuclear warhead detonate in the skies over a remote part of the Pacific.
"I strongly suspect they have the capability to do this," said James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and that the North likely would do a couple of trial runs with unarmed missiles in coming months before performing the test with an actual H-bomb aboard.
North Korea has said it intends to build a missile capable of striking all parts of the United States with a nuclear bomb. Trump has said he won't allow it, although the US so far has not used military force to impede the North's progress.
North Korea says it needs nuclear weapons to deter a US invasion, but Susan Thornton, acting secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, contended that the North ultimately seeks to take over US-allied South Korea.
She said Kim's aim in developing nuclear weapons is "to fulfill a long-term desire on the part of the North Korean regime to reunify the Korean Peninsula under the Kim family regime, proliferate these weapons and blackmail other countries.