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from the he-might-be-a-little-nuts-too dept.
North Korea's defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities, dramatised by last weekend's powerful underground test and a recent long-range ballistic missile launch over Japan, has been almost universally condemned as posing a grave, unilateral threat to international peace and security.
The growing North Korean menace also reflects the chronic failure of multilateral counter-proliferation efforts and, in particular, the long standing refusal of acknowledged nuclear-armed states such as the US and Britain to honour a legal commitment to reduce and eventually eliminate their arsenals.
In other words, the past and present leaders of the US, Russia, China, France and the UK, whose governments signed but have not fulfilled the terms of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), have to some degree brought the North Korea crisis on themselves. Kim Jong-un's recklessness and bad faith is a product of their own.
The NPT, signed by 191 countries, is probably the most successful arms control treaty ever. When conceived in 1968, at the height of the cold war, the mass proliferation of nuclear weapons was considered a real possibility. Since its inception and prior to North Korea, only India, Pakistan and Israel are known to have joined the nuclear "club" in almost half a century.
To work fully, the NPT relies on keeping a crucial bargain: non-nuclear-armed states agree never to acquire the weapons, while nuclear-armed states agree to share the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology and pursue nuclear disarmament with the ultimate aim of eliminating them. This, in effect, was the guarantee offered to vulnerable, insecure outlier states such as North Korea. The guarantee was a dud, however, and the bargain has never been truly honoured.
[Ed Note: Since this story was submitted there has been at least one additional ballistic missile test by North Korea.]
(Score: 3, Informative) by JNCF on Saturday September 16 2017, @02:22PM (3 children)
Who has veto power over a US President ordering a nuclear strike? Radio Lab couldn't find anybody. [radiolab.org] There are other people in the chain of command, but they don't have the authority to veto.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:04PM (2 children)
All members in that chain of command swear an oath. Not to the president (first). For example, here's the US Air Force (PDF warning!): http://www.airman.af.mil/Portals/17/002%20All%20Products/006%20Trifolds/Oath_Pamphlet_for_Officer.pdf?ver=2015-12-22-113949-437 [af.mil]
Veto authority over a nuclear strike doesn't have to be explicit. Disobeying an illegal order covers a lot of territory.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:42PM
By that flimsy standard, the US government has had a "prudent dissipation of the authority" to carry out all of the atrocities which have occured during all of the military actions it has ever taken. I don't think this is what OP was talking about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 18 2017, @04:53PM
The military makes great attempts to weed out the sort of people who would disobey such orders. See what happened to this guy: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_spectator/2011/02/an_unsung_hero_of_the_nuclear_age.html [slate.com]