Analysts: Don’t assume N. Korea will play by doomsday rules; China seen exploiting crisis

Special to WorldTribune.com

By Geostrategy-Direct, June 14, 2017

Targets of a nuclear North Korea should not assume the Kim Jong-Un regime would adhere to the rules of war that constrain Russia and the United States, analysts say.

Pyongyang would likely ignore the Outer Space Treaty prohibiting the deployment or use of nuclear weapons in orbit or space, analyst Danny Lam wrote on June 8 for Second Line of Defense (SLD).

The Kim Jong-Un regime has ‘sufficient quantities of short- and medium-range missiles to inundate the deployed missile defense in much of Japan, South Korea and nearby U.S. bases.’ / AP

What its foes have not done, “is to think like a North Korean rather than a Soviet or Chinese military.”

North Koreans would not be “squeamish about striking first … as long as they can prevail in a war termination situation,” Lam wrote.

Additionally, the threat may not come from a nuclear ballistic missile strike but an EMP strike targeting the U.S. electronic infrastucture.

“Suppose the North were to launch ‘peaceful’ satellites that orbits over the contiguous United States that contain a thermonuclear device optimized to generate EMP?,” Lam wrote.

Those scenarios “illustrate how one might consider defeating the rudimentary missile defense” of the contiguous U.S. “if one thinks like North Korea, and not a traditional First Nuclear Age power.”

Meanwhile, China continues to regard the North as an important ideological buffer needed to keep non-communist adversaries at bay.

Beijing, analysts say, is more likely to play a double game – appearing to cooperate with the United States and its regional allies in a bid to prevent secondary sanctions on North Korea’s suppliers in China and ultimately stave off any military action.

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