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Kim Jong Un appears to be a little man with a very large mission: see how far he can push Donald Trump until he gets pushed back. Bigly.
The Wall Street Journal reports, North Korea said it conducted a sixth and significantly larger nuclear test Sunday, stepping up pressure on President Donald Trump in what is shaping up to be his biggest foreign policy crisis.In a televised statement, North Korea described the underground explosion, which triggered a large earthquake, as a “perfect success in the test of a hydrogen bomb for an ICBM.” Pyongyang said “the creditability of the operation of the nuclear warhead is fully guaranteed.”
The test came just hours after leader Kim Jong Un showed off what he described as a hydrogen bomb capable of being mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The latest nuclear test was estimated to have a yield of as high as 100 kilotons—about 10 times the power of the North’s previous test and roughly five times that of the atomic bomb that the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, according to Kim Young-woo, a South Korean lawmaker who is chairman of the legislature’s defense committee and received a briefing from military authorities.
The test unleashed a torrent of tweets from the president.North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017
..North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017
South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017
What is that “one thing?” Perhaps we shall soon find out.
Japan is apparently mulling a pre-emptive strike of some sort. According to AP, Japan is debating whether to develop a limited pre-emptive strike capability and buy cruise missiles - ideas that were anathema in the pacifist country before the North Korea missile threat.
But in that case, they’d be striking a missile already en route. The question is whether or not the U.S. will decide to take out North Korea’s capability to launch before it gets to that point.
You can be certain (well, at least we hope it’s certain) Trump and SecDef Mattis are discussing these options now.
Why let Kim get even further along? If there are no consequences for bad behavior, you’re guaranteed to get more bad behavior. Every parent knows that…
[This article was written by Michele Hickford, author of the brutally honest and bitingly funny Do I Need To Slap You?
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