North Korea recently threatened the United States Of America by claiming, well, they going to attack the U.S. Let's not mince words here, that was the ultimate point in it all. One has to wonder, was North Korea smart for doing this? The leader of the nation, Kim Jong-Un, loves to talk about the dominance of North Korea and how they're so far ahead of any other nation on Earth.
While China is their main partner for all imports and leads them in every single department, Kim Jong-Un would never want to talk up another country. Some wonder why China is actually helping North Korea with any sort of exports from the nation.
The reason is pretty simple.
South Korea is an ally of the West, mostly the United States of America. North Korea is a buffer from the West and their influence. If North Korea gets too ahead of itself, China has to pull them back in more often than not. They know a united Korea would occur if Kim Jong-Un does declare war on any nation that has any sort of major firepower to defend itself. This is due to North Korean leadership being taken out in a nuclear return, and South Koreans would take over to form a United Korea.
They can threaten all day long, but once nuclear weapons came into play, that was when everyone started to take them seriously. China has even been tasked with reeling them back in, but that is not seemingly working.
The real question is, would North Korea ultimately try to attack the United States? Would Kim Jong-Un actually be that stupid? The answer: he may have an ego the size of twenty football fields, but he's ultimately not stupid. At least one would hope. There are a few reasons why he most likely won't initiate nuclear war.
North Korea And The Prisoner's Dilemma
The Prisoner's Dilemma is somewhat of a war game, in that two options can be made. Let's first pretend a wall is up between two nations. You cannot see, hear, or know of anything happening on either side. Each nation has but a few years to develop their nation. They can either develop a great, flourishing economy or they can create nuclear weaponry.
The economic nation is going to make a guess that the other side would also develop a great economy. The same can be said for the nuclear nation.
The game would be that the wall would drop and each side would see what the other had. If both have nuclear weapons, then neither win in the end. There would be a tie and you most likely would see both become allies due to their closeness in geography. The same can be said if both develop economic nations. The two might even develop nuclear weaponry due to combined money helping them do so. However, if one side is nuclear and the other is economic, the nuclear side wins. Mainly because no amount of money can stop or halt a nuke.
What does this have to do with North Korea?
Kim Jong-Un knows the United States has nuclear weaponry. He can threaten the U.S. all he wants, but his best nuke cannot threaten the entire U.S. and does not reach Washington, D.C. or any East Coast city. The U.S. has weapons that can be shot off in the air to hit a nuke before it lands in a city and they have more nukes than any nation on Earth. One of them would wipe North Korea off the map and perhaps take a part of South Korea and China with it. Neither U.S. ally wants that, and obviously, North Korea doesn't either.
U.S. Defense Secretary Issues Major Warning To North Korea
The answer is pretty simple when you ask if North Korea would ever make the decision to shoot a nuke at the U.S. or any of their allies.
They won't. No one, seriously, no one, wants a nuclear war to happen. Kim Jong-Un is putting his entire nation, which consists of many innocent men and women, at major risk. There is a reason why they have a lot to fear. United States Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sent a warning to North Korea today to stop making threats and not to take any action against to U.S. If they did not listen, there would be consequences.
He said that any action would "lead to the end of its regime." He would say in previous comments about North Korea that any action nuclear against the U.S. would see a military solution that would be "tragic on an unbelievable scale."
Mattis said in a statement that "the DPRK must choose to stop itself and stand down its pursuit of nuclear weapons." He would go on to say "the DPRK should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its resume and destruction of its people.
The DPRK regime's actions will continue to be grossly over-matched by ours and would lose any arms race or conflict it initiates."
As of now, the threat assessment has not changed and it looks like if North Korea does not back off, the end of the regime will be around the corner and North Korea may no longer be a place on the map.
