Kim made the remarks during a speech to battalion commanders and political instructors at a Korean People’s Army conference on Friday, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

“The line of strengthening the nuclear force has long since become an irreversible policy for us, and the only thing left is for the nuclear force to be more fully operational so that it can carry out its mission of deterring war,” Kim said, according to KCNA.

“We will ceaselessly continue to strengthen the self-defense power of the country centered on nuclear weapons without limit and without complacency,” he said.

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Source: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2024/11/18/Kim-Jong-Un-North-Korea-nuclear-weapons-Russia-Ukraine/3811731911729/

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As the neighbouring North rapidly expands nuclear and missile capabilities, more South Korean officials and members of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s conservative ruling party have called in recent months for developing nuclear weapons.

The prospect of another term for former U.S. President Donald Trump, who complained about the cost of the U.S. military presence in South Korea and launched unprecedented talks with the North, has further fuelled the debate.

But Shin, a former three-star army general who also served as a lawmaker in Yoon’s party, said having a homegrown nuclear arsenal risked devastating fallout to the South’s diplomatic standing and economy, akin to what analysts called Black Monday this week for the stock market’s worst losses since 2008.

“You’ll face a huge crack in the U.S. alliance, and if we withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, it would bring various penalties, starting with an immediate shock in our financial market,” he said in an interview.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/south-korean-nuclear-weapons-would-fracture-us-ties-defence-chief-says-2024-08-07/

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Speaking to Reuters after he briefed EU foreign ministers on the subject, the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said that while the pace of uranium enrichment had slowed slightly since the end of last year, Iran was still enriching at an elevated rate of around 7 kg of uranium per month to 60% purity.

Enrichment to 60% brings uranium close to weapons grade, and is not necessary for commercial use in nuclear power production. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons but no other state has enriched to that level without producing them.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/iaea-chief-says-irans-nuclear-enrichment-activity-remains-high-2024-02-19/

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The exact nature of the weapon – and whether it actually exists – is unclear. But threatening satellites could cause all sorts of mischief – undermining communications, surveillance, intelligence and command and control around the world, including in the nuclear sphere.

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In the first visit by a G7 leader to China since the pandemic, Scholz pressed Xi to prevail on Russia to end the war in Ukraine, saying Beijing had a responsibility as a major power to do so.

Xi agreed that both leaders “jointly oppose the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons”, according to a readout by the state-run Xinhua news agency, though he refrained from criticising Russia or calling on Moscow to withdraw its troops.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/german-chancellor-scholz-lands-beijing-2022-11-04/

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Kim told top military officers that to “maintain the absolute superiority” of North Korea’s armed forces, the country should be able to “pre-emptively and thoroughly contain and frustrate all dangerous attempts and threatening moves … if necessary,” the official KCNA news agency reported.

Pyongyang should continue to build up its arsenal so that it can have the “overwhelming military muscle that no force in the world can provoke,” Kim said, calling it the “lifeline guaranteeing the security of our country.”

The leader’s comments followed similar remarks at a military parade on Monday, when he said he could use his atomic arsenal if North Korea’s “fundamental interests” were threatened.

Kim made his latest comments at a meeting with top brass to praise their work on Monday’s parade, which commemorated the 90th anniversary of the country’s armed forces and showcased its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Despite biting sanctions, North Korea has doubled down on Kim’s military modernization drive, test-firing a slew of banned weapons this year while ignoring U.S. offers of talks.

Last month Pyongyang test-fired an ICBM at full range for the first time since 2017 and satellite imagery has shown signs of activity at a nuclear testing site.

The string of weapons tests comes as South Korea prepares for an incoming president, Yoon Suk-yeol, who takes a more hawkish approach to Pyongyang and has not ruled out a pre-emptive strike if necessary.

Analysts say Kim’s warning shows he is not open to dialogue with Seoul’s new government.

“Kim’s remarks demonstrate no interest in engaging with the incoming Yoon administration in South Korea or restarting denuclearize talks with the United States,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul.

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/04/30/asia-pacific/kim-jong-un-nuclear-weapon/

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The conventional inter-Korean stalemate is deadlocked on the ground. In fact, North Korea is gradually losing that stand-off as American and South Korean technological prowess outstrip its large but antiquated conventional forces. The North knows this too. It has therefore invested for decades in nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. These capabilities help it level the playing field.

Those investments are coming to fruition. The North probably has around fifty nuclear warheads now. It has many more missiles, probably hundreds. These rockets include intercontinental ballistic missiles to establish direct deterrence with the US homeland. They also include short and medium-range missiles which can strike all of South Korea and Japan, including US bases in those countries and in Guam.

The North has also announced interest in a wide range of adjacent technologies: submarine-launched ballistic missiles, low yield tactical nuclear weapons, rail-mounted launchers, hypersonic missiles, solid-fuel rockets, and so on. It is also suspected of possessing biological and chemical weapons.

In short, the North is building out a full-spectrum missile force, complete with powerful warheads, flexible launch capabilities, and faster, maneuverable missiles. Were the North to use this missile force, even conventionally armed, against the South in a conflict, it would be a potent battlefield tool. And if used against South Korea’s few, highly dense cities, it could throw the country into chaos behind the lines. Indeed, were weapons of mass destruction placed on these missiles, the North Korean rocket force would grow from a strategic to genuinely existential threat to the Southern republic.

Yoon’s answer to this expanding threat is obviously not ideal, but at least he is addressing it, which too much of the North Korea debate in South Korea is not doing. South Korea needs some kind of answer to this growing problem, and the two most obvious alternatives to Yoon’s aggressive proposal also have problems:

Missile Defense: Voters in modern countries often assume their nation has some manner of protection, a ‘roof.’ Missile defense would shoot down enemy rockets. And indeed, the US has multiple missile defense programs, including the controversial THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) battery stationed in South Korea. South Korea too has halting sought to deploy a ‘Korean Air and Missile Defense’ system.

These systems are a good start and better than nothing of course. Even if they shoot down only some of North Korea’s missiles, that is a great success, especially if those are nuclear missiles. But missile defense is not mature enough technologically to reckon with dozens or hundreds of inbound tracks. A large Northern strike could simply overwhelm the US and Southern anti-missile systems at present. And missile defense is extremely expensive. The ‘offense-defense balance’ between missiles and missile defense is heavily tilted toward offense (missiles) today and likely will be for another decade or two.

Negotiation: The ideal answer to the North’s spiraling nuclearization and missilization would be a deal with Pyongyang which capped or even rolled back these programs. Indeed, South Korean doves, including current President Moon Jae-In and defeated presidential candidate Lee Jae-Myung, routinely make this argument.

We all hope for this of course, but that is a slender reed against an arguably existential threat. Moon made the most determined outreach to the North in the history of South Korea. He even managed to cajole an American president into meeting a Northern supreme leader, which doves have argued for decades could break the ossified stalemate through dramatic, direct action. Yet nothing came of five years of constant effort; Moon could not even pull a toothless ‘end of war’ declaration out of Pyongyang. More broadly, the US and South Korea have tried for decades – at least since 1992’s inter-Korean declaration to forego nuclear weapons – to tie Pyongyang into binding agreements. The North’s response has frequently been evasive if not mendacious. Relying on a deal and North Korean restraint is hugely risky.

Worse, even if we clinch a deal to cut the North’s missiles and nukes, Pyongyang will almost certainly not cut enough to relieve South Korea’s strategic dilemma. The North’s economic backwardness and conventional military inferiority make these weapons so valuable that Pyongyang will almost certainly retain enough of them, despite any negotiation, to credibly deter South Korea, Japan, and the US. ‘Complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament’ was always a myth, even if the US and South Korea were to make major concessions to get some rollback.

This is a grim outlook. Negotiations may bring some cuts to the North’s missiles and nuclear weapons, but the price would be very high – such as the withdrawal of US forces from South Korea – and Pyongyang would almost certainly not reduce enough to obviate the strategic problem. Or the North would just build more missiles and warheads later. Missile defense too is a mixed response at best. It is better than no roof at all, but it simply cannot defeat as many missiles as the North will field. Indeed, an assured capability to overwhelm missile defense is probably why the North so regularly tests missiles.

Yoon and his team likely know all these arguments. They are likely skeptical of a deal, especially after Moon spent five years reaching for one and failing spectacularly. Nor does Team Yoon likely believe Pyongyang will ever make the scale of cuts necessary. And missile defense’s insufficiencies against a large strike are well-known.

Hence preempting an imminent North Korean launch become a much more attractive option. No one wants this outcome, but South Korea’s foreign policy community, especially its doves, need to work a lot harder on options if it wants to avoid Yoon’s conclusion carrying the debate.

Dr. Robert E. Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly; website) is a professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University. Dr. Kelly is a 1945 Contributing Editor as well.

Source: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/03/north-koreas-missile-program-keeps-growing-more-dangerous/

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During an event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Robert Malley said that the US has made clear to Iran’s representatives that “we are prepared to remove all of the sanctions that were imposed by the Trump administration that were inconsistent with the [nuclear] deal, and therefore we could get back to the business that we should have been on.”

“That’s where we are today, and I think that’s the choice that Iran faces,” Malley said. “Are they prepared to go back to that or do they want to choose a different path?”

Despite the White House’s overtures, Malley added, “the Iranians have refused to have direct communication with us, direct contact with us, so everything has been done through intermediaries.”

“It’s not a particularly constructive [format], it’s one that lends itself to delays, it’s one that lends itself to misunderstandings, and all of that has happened.”

Then-President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear deal in May 2018. Representatives of the other five nations who signed the pact — China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom — have taken part in six rounds of face-to-face meetings in the Austrian capital this year, with the US participating indirectly.

Iran has hinted it’s ready for more talks, but has not committed to a date. Meanwhile, it has blown through limits on its nuclear activities that had been set by the deal.

Last month, a US-based think tank reported that Tehran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for an atomic bomb within a month.

“Every day that goes by, we’re getting a piece of Iran’s answer,” Malley said Wednesday. “Every day where they [the Iranians] are not coming back to the table, every day where they’re making statements about how little was achieved in Vienna, which is what the current team is saying, is telling us that this is a team that may not, in fact, be prepared to come back into what we would consider … full mutual return to compliance.”

“And so, of course, we have to prepare for a world, which we’re doing now in consultation with our partners from the region … where Iran doesn’t have constraints on its nuclear program and we have to consider options for dealing with that, which is what we’re doing even as we hope that we can get back to the deal,” he went on. “That is by far our preference. But as I said, Iran is giving us its answer by what it’s doing and not doing every day and we need to take that into account.”

Malley said he would be traveling soon to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to discuss the matter with leaders there.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said Wednesday that they have opened discussions on “other options” for action should the US rejoin the nuclear deal and Iran reject an offer to come back into compliance with it.

“Time is running short,” Blinken said at a joint event with Lapid and UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. “We are prepared to turn to other options if Iran doesn’t change course, and these consultations with our allies and partners are part of it.”

Blinken did not elaborate on what those “other options” were, but noted ominously that “it takes two to engage in diplomacy, and we have not seen from Iran a willingness to do that at this point.”

“There are moments when nations must use force to protect the world from evil,” Lapid chimed in. “If a terror regime is going to acquire a nuclear weapon we must act. We must make clear that the civilized world won’t allow it. If the Iranians don’t believe the world is serious about stopping them, they will race to the bomb.”

Lapid had met Tuesday with Vice President Kamala Harris as well as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to convey Israel’s concerns about the US rejoining the nuclear deal and restoring sanctions relief.

With Post wire

Source: https://nypost.com/2021/10/13/biden-special-envoy-warns-us-must-prepare-for-fully-nuclear-iran/

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“We believe, given the increasingly difficult security environment surrounding Japan, it is appropriate to make steady and realistic progress toward nuclear disarmament while maintaining and strengthening our deterrence capabilities to deal with threats,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said at a news conference.

“Japan shares the goal of this treaty, the abolition of nuclear weapons, … but as we differ in how to approach the issue, we will not become a signatory,” he said, referring to the pact that is set to take effect in January.

As the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack, Japan has sought to present itself as a leader in international efforts for nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.

But Japan also depends on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to protect it from threats including North Korean missiles, preventing it from endorsing an all-out ban on the production, use, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is set to enter into force on Jan. 22 after Honduras on Saturday became the 50th country to ratify it. No nuclear powers have endorsed the pact.

Survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and other antinuclear activists have urged the administration of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to sign onto the historic but largely symbolic treaty.

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/10/26/national/japan-un-nuclear-ban-treaty/

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A new arms race with Russia will drain funds from the forces that influence and deter Beijing.

Joe Biden, much like the president he is attempting to replace, is anything but a dove when it comes to China. Be it trade or geopolitics, the Democratic presidential candidate has made it a point to match, if not out-hawk, President Trump on Beijing. One such area where hawkishness would be unwise for the United States, however, would be the topic of New START extension. Choosing to extend the bilateral nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia is a low-hanging fruit that would serve U.S. interests in a multitude of ways, including buttressing Washington’s position vis-à-vis Beijing.

Nuclear and China hawks alike have teamed up for more than a year now to push a common goal: the inclusion of China in talks to extend New START, a 2010 agreement between the U.S. and Russia to verifiably decrease one another’s respective strategic nuclear arsenals. Critics of such attempts allege the Trump administration’s persistent drive to include China in a trilateral arms framework is unrealistic at best and at worst a transparent attempt to make New START the latest in a string of fruitful arms control arrangements President Trump has scrapped.

While earnest engagement with China on the arms-control front is a laudable longer-term goal, the Trump administration’s attempts to include Beijing in a trilateral framework have been flatly rejected and have yet to produce so much as even a vague outline of what such an arrangement would look like. While the U.S. and Russia are both estimated to possess over 6,000 nuclear warheads, China’s approximate figure is less than 300. Even this vast disparity only tells part of the story. Given China’s relatively minimalist nuclear posture, it would only be accountable for a small fraction of the warheads that the U.S. and Russia are under New START rules, which only count deployed warheads and heavy bombers. With these factors in mind, Beijing’s reluctance to entertain Washington’s attempts at creating a trilateral framework make sense.

Nonetheless, the clock is ticking. This final major bilateral arms treaty is set to expire on Feb. 5. Failure to renew the agreement would leave the world’s two biggest nuclear arsenals unconstrained for the first time in a half-century.

Such a failure would bring a multitude of strategic and fiscal consequences. It would reduce what the U.S. knows about Russia’s nuclear arsenal, thereby reducing America’s national security. The consequent effort to shore up nuclear security would, for example, divert finite resources from Washington’s conventional force posture in East Asia to balance China.

This year’s defense budget of $738 billion may be massive, but amid economic pressure thanks to the coronavirus fallout, hard choices must be made to prioritize where and how the U.S. delegates its finite resources to secure vital national security interests.

Given China’s rapid economic rise, it seems prudent to consider China the predominant foreign issue worth expending resources and attention to address from the U.S. standpoint, both now and into the future. As such, extending New START and ensuring that the U.S. will not need to divert funding from priorities at home or in Asia to bankroll an arms race with Russia makes sense, particularly when one factors in the price tag of Washington’s ongoing nuclear modernization efforts.

Nuclear weapons and the means to reliably deliver them do not come cheap. The U.S. nuclear triad is currently in the midst of extensive modernization and life extension, manifesting itself in next-generation complexes ranging from a new ICBM to an upgraded nuclear-capable stealth bomber. The projected cost of this modernization effort is upwards of $1.7 trillion, a figure that even the Trump administration Nuclear Posture Review concedes is “substantial.” The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that spending on modernized nuclear complexes will peak at around $50 billion annually in the late 2020s and early 2030s, consuming upwards of 15 percent of DoD’s acquisition costs and 8 percent of national defense expenditures.

All of these costs are predicated upon the assumption that Washington’s nuclear force posture will be within New START-imposed limits on force size. As Frank Klotz, a former Air Force Global Strike Commander, noted, New START is “baked” into modernization efforts, which are more or less a one-for-one replacement program for existing nuclear systems. Allison Bawden, GAO’s Director for Nuclear Security, found that NNSA hasn’t considered the implications of New START expiration on its modernization plans given DoD’s assumption of its warhead and delivery system limits bracketing the U.S. arsenal. Even with these assumptions, GAO says the rising modernization costs could come at the expense of other weapons procurement initiatives with DOE seeking $15 billion more than expected in 2021 through 2025 in its 2021 budget estimate.

Any potential diversion of funding from conventional complexes to fund a nuclear arms race would disproportionately hurt what is already an overburdened U.S. posture in the Pacific. Speaking bluntly, Gen. Dave Goldfein, previously Air Force Chief of Staff, said tradeoffs will be necessary to fund nuclear modernization while simultaneously bolstering Washington’s conventional edge, and even this presupposes New START treaty limits.

These offset impacts have already been felt by the Navy, a vitally important service branch for projecting power to deter China, which was forced to not only cancel plans to add 10 years to the life of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer but also cut five of the planned ships to prioritize funding for the modernized nuclear missile submarine. Officials were also forced to make cuts to planned Virginia-class attack submarine and FFG(X) guided-missile frigate procurement plans. With the Navy’s widely publicized plans for a 355-ship armada already being squeezed by SSBN modernization costs, it is easy to see how New START’s demise could further hurt the Navy’s ability to project conventional power in East Asia.

As U.S. power relative to China continues to shrink, it will only become more imperative for policy-makers to make sharp decisions and prioritize resources for the most important task at hand: preventing China from becoming a Eurasian hegemon. While still a great power, Russia is a country in decline and is hardly the geopolitical menace the Soviet Union once was. Engaging in an arms race with Russia—a country with which we already have a strategic relationship characterized by mutually assured destruction—would be an imprudent use of finite resources better spent elsewhere. China is the most important strategic challenger to the United States—the next president would be smart to extend New START to bolster America’s ability to compete.

Alex Moore holds a Master’s degree in International Conflict and Security from the Brussels School of International Studies.

Source: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/09/deter-china-extend-new-start/168681/

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