John Brennan, the former head of the C.I.A., estimates the chance of a war with North Korea at 20 to 25 percent.
Joel S. Wit, a Korea expert at Johns Hopkins University, puts it at 40 percent.
Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says the odds may be somewhere around 50/50.
.. Almost no expert believes that sanctions will force Kim Jong-un to give up his nuclear weapons or halt his missile program. That puts us on a collision course, for North Korea seems determined to develop a clear capacity to target the U.S. with nuclear weapons
.. the White House hints that it would rather have a war than allow the North to become a nuclear threat
.. Tammy Duckworth, a former military pilot who is now a Democratic senator from Illinois, says that from what she hears, the chance is greater than 50/50 that the president will order a strike.
.. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, has said that Trump told him he’d choose a war with North Korea over allowing it to continue on its course.
.. “There is a military option: to destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself,” Graham told the “Today” show, relaying a conversation with Trump. “If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here — and he’s told me that to my face.”
Graham said that if North Korea continues to test intercontinental ballistic missiles, a war is “inevitable.”
.. Eerily, on my last visit, North Koreans repeatedly said that a nuclear war with the U.S. was not only survivable but winnable.
The U.S. must now choose among three awful options:
- A “freeze for a freeze” deal, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seems to be pursuing;
- Long-term deterrence, just as we have deterred North Korea for decades from using its chemical and biological weapons;
- A conventional war that might escalate into a nuclear exchange.
.. North Korea may also inflame the situation with provocations at any time, such as firing a long-range missile into the sea near Guam, or conducting an atmospheric nuclear test that would send radioactive fallout drifting toward the United States.
Russia held a big military exercise this week. Here’s why the U.S. is paying attention.
with this underlying message that if you thought we were in decay, we’re not,”
.. Because Russia used exercises as cover ahead of both its operations in Ukraine and its 2008 invasion of Georgia, its neighbors were cautious this time as the Kremlin fired up its military machine.
.. some of the basics of effective large-scale warfare — an ability to pick up and move large numbers of troops, and then command them effectively — were on clear display.
.. Military analysts also said the exercise was a chance for the Kremlin to shoot a message straight to the Pentagon and its allies that Russia has a formidable fighting force capable of mobilizing across its enormous territory — and it needs to be reckoned with.
.. scenario of the exercises — an enemy from the West tries to overthrow the government in Moscow’s ally, Belarus, and is beaten back
.. Moscow says it is convinced it is under threat of assault by a hostile force in the West that is determined to bring its military to Russia’s borders. This, as President Vladimir Putin sees it, has already been done in the Baltics. He believes the United States and NATO were the instigators of street protests that forced Ukraine’s president to flee to Russia in 2014.
.. Adding a nuclear edge to the war gaming, Russia carried out two tests of its new intercontinental ballistic missile, the RS-24
.. He said his initial estimate was that between 65,000 and 72,000 troops took part.
.. The weapons were not only a fearsome show of Russian firepower, they were also a sparkling advertisement for the nation’s arms exporters.
.. “In 24 to 48 hours, some parts of the Russian armed forces could be ready to invade one Baltic state or all of them,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis said in an interview. “It’s clear that it’s not only defense but it’s also about offense.”
.. Part of the exercise rehearsed cutting off the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from the rest of NATO, Latvian Defense Minister Raimonds Bergmanis told Latvia’s LETA news agency. That is a nightmare scenario for the alliance because Russia has stationed powerful antiaircraft missile systems in its exclave of Kaliningrad, creating challenges for any Western attempt to retake the region.
.. they are rather far from being combat-capable
.. The “Russian Air Force is feeling the pressure of the protracted deployment in Syria,” Baev said. “Typically, maintenance is the weakest link, and accidents multiply,” he said.
North Korea Missile Test Appears to Tiptoe Over a U.S. Tripwire
Instead of going for distance, he has stepped up the testing of missiles that fly high into space — on Sunday, one reached a height of more than 1,300 miles — and then plunge down through the atmosphere, mimicking the kind of fiery re-entries a nuclear warhead would undergo if fired over a much longer distance.
.. “They can simulate an ICBM warhead on this kind of trajectory,”
.. Analysts said Sunday’s test flight, if conducted on a normal rather than a high trajectory, would have traveled about 3,000 miles. That is well beyond the sprawling American base at Guam, some 2,200 miles away.
.. In political signaling, he added, what the North’s test is telling the West is: “Hey, we’re on our way. If you want to talk, now’s the time to do it.”