Vipin Narang

Nothing says I love you like a shakedown. by Vipin Narang

Nothing says I love you like a shakedown.

It is Japan that is most threatened, and probably the primary target of such a capability, so openly acknowledging it underscores Tokyo's acute fears that North Korea's nuclear program continues to grow unabated with no foreseeable plan to slow its growth, let alone eliminate them.

2019 is weird, the President has more respect for Kim Jong Un than The President does for South Korea... our formal ally.

This ends up being a nightmare for missile defenses, you can downplay it, but it obscures the fact that North Korea has been improving North Korea missile capabilities. It's a real problem for regional missile defenses national missile defenses.

A freeze on fissile material, nuclear weapons, and missile production at Yongbyon and beyond — when North Korea does not even acknowledge enrichment facilities outside Yongbyon — without some sanctions relief, seems unlikely.

North Korea has had a decade-long nuclear testing sequence where they have presumably learned a lot about designs, they probably do not need full blown tests to go into serial production of warheads. And they can improve components and perfect designs with subcritical and hydrodynamic tests which we wouldn't be able to monitor or detect.

Both secret and That Yongbyon facilities can continue operating and expand the fissile material stockpile, we have no way to stop this or verify any pledges to freeze.

Its command and control structure while Kim is traveling is unlikely to be robust enough for him to be able to reliably issue or stop launch sequences.

Indirectly, they've talked about conditions of denuclearization in the past, reaffirming denuclearization on South Korea is like vanilla ice cream now, it's par for the course.