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Thursday, September 21, 2017

Nuclear threats past and present

This post appears here.

3 comments:

Bozon said...

Professor
Great post and publication.Thank you for this.
A little hard to read among the ads, but that is what it is with Time.

Many details and dates I had not been aware of.

All things considered, a sad commentary really at this late date in the nuclear game.

I discuss, on my blog, what one solution, in my imperfect and hindsight judgment the best of a bad lot, might have been, in 1945.

I called it The Patton Solution.

Certainly the threat was quite as real then as it is today, or tomorrow.

All the best

Jude Hammerle said...

Dear Dr. Kaiser,

Honorable mention to our haberdasher President: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/truman-refuses-to-rule-out-atomic-weapons

Jude Hammerle

Anonymous said...

You seem to blame Trump in last paragraph but h-bomb and ICBM development takes decades so Trump bluster does not create such development by Kim in a few months presidency. These are concrete threats, to Japan, South Korea, China, Russia, USA.

A buffer state for China is the real issue like with Eastern Europe previously and now Ukraine for Russia. This is the line you don't cross. Like East Berlin, Ciuba the problem must be defused somehow. Since war is no option and nobody can force kim to stand down his threats it becomes a waiting game till his own people take him out, mass starvation gets them due to increasing sanctions or other external global pressures change the equation. CP China could lose power due to economic collapse via debt scenario, mass unemployment in next decade. In West similar could happen causing USA to close shop on international military bases. Japan debt crisis offers similar problems. Our weakness removes help for North Korea(subsidies) but also their reasons for fearing us. China collapse makes support for North Korea and buffer state superfluous. Perhaps simultaneous global economic crisis turns all countries back on themselves, own difficulties and external aggression will be ignored while civil war inUSA, China is waged and EU, NATO collapse, dissolve as in 1989. Considering the extent of local, state, national and personal insolvency, income distortions such a scenario is likely. However perhaps exactly this likelihood is what is driving Trump to distract from internal dissent with foreign enemies to unite behind him like Bush against Sadaam Hussein. We must truly wonder about the endgame of our generational winter. Scenario speculation might be helpful.