Japan Considers Strike Against North Korea
BY Herschel Smith
18 years, 5 months ago
Here is a link to the current goings-on over Japan and North Korea. This is a followup post to my “Will Japan go Nuclear?”
Japan is indeed worried, and they are talking big on rethinking a first-strike option for North Korea. I just have four words for them: they had better not. They are not prepared, do not have the air force or navy to pull it off, and do not have the missile defense capabilities right now to properly defend themselves from a North Korea missile attack.
They should go nuclear first. It might take some time (a half a year to a year, I would guess, to make the weapons grade fissile material). In the mean time, they can be beefing up their offensive and defensive capabilities. Nuclear capability in Japan is the penultimate strategic defense (and it would forever modify the politics of the far east). North Korean nuclear capabilities would not hold a candle to Japanese capabilities (I say this based on two things: (1) the availability of fissile material in Japan from commercial nuclear fuel, and (2) the capabilities of Japanese nuclear engineers).
An interesting thing appears in this little article I posted a link to at the top. We hear this from Christopher Hill:
Still, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill questioned just how influential Beijing was with the enigmatic regime.
“I must say the issue of China’s influence on DPRK is one that concerns us,” Hill told reporters in Tokyo. “China said to the DPRK, ‘Don’t fire those missiles,’ but the DPRK fired them. So I think everybody, especially the Chinese, are a little bit worried about it.”
I am not buying it for one second. This is bluster from China. They want the appearance of having tried to reign in Kim Jong Il. They could do it quickly if they wanted. Too much aid comes from China across the boarder to N. Korea. The country would quickly starve without China.
So why did Hill repeat this? Does he believe it, or does he know better but want the rest of the world to believe that China tried to stop the missile launches?
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