North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen…he has been very threatening beyond a normal state. They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.
— Donald Trump, August 8, 2017 (Sciutto, Starr and Cohen 2017)
Trump’s promise of “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” did not produce an end of threats, nor of actions, from North Korea. Quite the contrary. It directly provoked North Korea to announce plans (now on hold) to shoot four Hwason-12 intermediate-range ballistic missiles around Guam, just outside the 12 mile territorial limit (McKirdy, Cohen and Field 2017). Whether they will go through with this, and if they do what Trump’s response will be, is impossible to predict. Much depends on what people other than Trump and Jung-un do, even you. But we can be sure that the threats from both Kim Jung-un and Donald Trump will continue. As will sanctions, testing and confrontations until… until? Which raises the real question:
What are the chances that a Second Korean War will soon break out? What might happen if it does?
The chance for war between North Korea and the U.S. and its closest allies in the region (South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand) is small, but it is real and it is growing. Slightly smaller is the chance that it will turn into a nuclear war. Smaller still, but not zero, is the possibility that China will be drawn into the conflict, leading to general thermonuclear war—an extinction level event.
The chances for war have been increasing geometrically because of President Trump’s actions in the context of the personality (and cult) of Kim Jung-un in North Korea. Since Trump’s election there has been a cycle of escalation. The U.S. has acted with bellicose rhetoric, provocative military maneuvers and trainings, increasingly severe sanctions, and testing and deploying anti-ballistic missile systems. North Korea has acted with bellicose rhetoric, provocative military maneuvers and trainings, and a series of successful ICBM and nuclear weapons tests. On September 3, 2017, North Korea successfully tested a hydrogen weapon with a yield of at least 100 kilotons, ten times more powerful than their last nuclear test (Beuge, Alex, Pablo Gutiérrez, et al., 2017). The Japanese Defense ministry estimates the size of the successful test was 160 kilotons (Westcott 2017).
A 12th round of sanctions on North Korea is making its way through the United Nations. China supported the 11th round of sanctions (cutting legal North Korean trade by 1/3 to just $2 billion) that has just been imposed. This is a sign China is growing very nervous about the chances of war breaking out. North Korea’s response to the proposed 12th round of sanctions is a promise of “pain and suffering” if they pass (Westcott 2017).
Chances of War
While war remains unlikely, it is certainly possible. And the odds are getting worse. It has long been U.S. policy to demand that North Korea not produce atomic weapons and, as that has failed, not improve them or produce a hydrogen bomb. It has also demanded that North Korea not develop ICBMs capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. Many nations of the world agree with this, and actually a vast majority thinks nobody should have nuclear weapons and recently voted in the UN to that effect. However, only the U.S. seems ready to go to war for this principle. North Korea, seeing nuclear weapons as their only guarantee that the U.S. will not attack them, is very unlikely to give them up.
While previous administrations tried sanctions (11 times) and concessions (mainly offered through South Korea) they basically kicked the can down the road. If the U.S. stays locked into its position, and so does North Korea, conflict is inevitable. While there is certainly room for diplomacy, as North Korea mainly wants survival and the U.S. wants security, there doesn’t seem to be any real desire for it.
While a great deal remains uncertain about the current situation, a few important conclusions become clear after some research:
* China cannot control North Korea
Even though China has been North Korea’s key ally, main economic relationship, and a crucial protector over the years, it does not have the kind of power over North Korea that some people seem to think it does.
North Korean culture has a particular emphasis on Juiche (a rich version of self-reliance). The North Korean regime’s mythopoetics, combines Stalinist personality cult, Korean ethnic pride, Juiche, and information control. It is strong, although probably brittle. The ruling elites do not depend on China, or anyone, except Kim Jong-un. From 1994-98 North Korea had a famine caused by nature and politics (mismanagement and the collapse of the Soviet Union). Help from outside was minimal. Up to 3.5 million died. The regime survived.
And, like most of the cultures on the periphery of China, Korean culture defines itself, in part, as not Chinese, just as Japan and Vietnam do. Debates over the origin of Korean culture are called “The History Wars” and are headline news in both Koreas and China. Two central issues, the nature of the Goguryeo Empire/Greater Korea and China’s “Chinese nationalities” concept of non-Han Chineseness (Washburn 2013).
Perhaps China could support a coup attempt, but if such an intervention had a good chance of success they would have tried it already. After all, the current cycle of instability seriously threatens China’s economy and security. North Korea has no trouble reaching China with its nukes.
China has made its position as clear as it can. It will not support a North Korean attack on the U.S./South Korea. It will not allow regime change in North Korea by outsiders (except, certainly, itself).
* If war starts, it will spread beyond Korea.
Japan and the Anzus countries (Australia and New Zealand) are directly tied to U.S. military action. There are many ways the conflict could spread to other Asian nations as well, even to Europe through the U.S.’s NATO membership. The economic and environmental impacts will be global, of course.
* Belligerence and war are good for Trump in the short term
The worse Trump does domestically, the greater the likelihood of a U.S. preemptive attack or provocations that make North Korea attack. A CNN poll from August 3-6, 2017 showed 2/3 of Americans saw North Korea as a “serious” or a “deep” threat.” 50% support military action against Korea, 43% oppose (Agiesta 2017).
For thousands of years leaders have provoked outside conflicts to unify domestic support. Who can doubt Trump would do the same for his own political survival? You don’t have to agree with Harvard professor and psychoanalyst Dr. Lance Dodes that Trump is a malignant narcissist (Devega 2017) to think that Trump will put himself first.
* It isn’t just Trump that thinks war between the U.S. and North Korea is a viable, even potentially the best, policy choice
Trump is not alone among U.S. elites in being open to war with North Korea. The Council of Foreign Relations white paper of 2016 calls for a rejection of the Obama policy of “strategic patience” and preparation for “more assertive military and political actions, including those that directly threaten the existence of the regime and its nuclear and missile capabilities.” (Mullen et al, 2016) This is a view shared by significant parts of the foreign policy establishment and military leadership, but a clear minority.
* Trump has the power to start a war with North Korea
While one Republican Senator has come forward with a claim that Trump needs Senate approval for a preemptive strike on North Korea, this is not the case. The imperial powers of the presidency, combined with something of a blank check (if there is a perceived threat) from the U.S. Constitution, give Trump all the powers he needs to go to war (Finucane 2017).
“We have a nuclear monarchy. Once he gives the command he cannot be overruled,” notes Joe Cirincione, author of Nuclear Nightmares. The good news is Trump can’t use Twitter to start a war. He must first consult with several high military officers. They could resign in protest, but then he appoints their replacements. He makes the decision in the end (Maizland 2017).
Or, as happened in the last year of Richard Nixon’s presidency, his close staff could implement a secret policy of double sign-offs. Nixon’s depression and alcoholism had produced a situation very similar to Trump’s normal baseline of narcissistic irrationality. Garret Garff (2017) has a scary article about this, entitled “The Madman and the Bomb”. It goes into the exact process Trump could use to launch nuclear missiles himself, as well as explaining the important “madman” theory of brinksmanship.
The 25th Amendment could be invoked at some point, as well. See “Is a Trump Coup Possible?” (Gray 2017) for a detailed discussion of how Trump might be removed from power in this way.
All these internal, and often illegal, ways of removing Trump depend on Republicans, and military leaders, as they have the power in these cases). It is a bit desperate to count on them to save us from war. Better would be to shift the national debate around this war, and presidential war powers in general, through protests, organizing, and pressure on Congress to legislate limits on the postmodern imperial presidency.
There has been some movement in Congress to restrain Trump. Democratic Representative Ted Lieu and Senator Markey have a bill they have put forward on restricting Trump’s ability to use nuclear weapons first. It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
* Trump isn’t the only new factor in this confrontation.
Kim Jung-un is not your father’s North Korean dictator. Nor your grandfather’s. Without Trump’s election, this would be a negotiation, but one made more difficult by Kim Jung-un coming to power He has conducted 75 missile tests since coming to power, and over two thirds of all North Korean nuclear tests. He has greatly increased North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities. (Albert 1977). He has also executed his uncle and had his brother assassinated with VX2 nerve gas in Malaysia’s international airport (Clark 2017).
North Korea is also developing a sea-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), perfecting a solid fuel rocket engine, and conducting more successful ICBM tests, continuing improving safety and yield (Berlinger 2017).
Some analysts feel the North Korean missile program is weaker than thought, and possibly compromised by U.S. cyber sabotage (Sanger and Broad 2017), but the successful tests in the five months following their article’s publication seem to indicate they were mistaken.
* Nuclear war doctrine is a problem.
The current approach to Thermonuclear War taken by all the nuclear states (including the U.S. and North Korea) is the well named Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) policy. Basically, it is “I have nukes and if you nuke me (in a “first strike”) I’ll nuke you so fucking bad you’ll be sorry.” The stability of the system depends on the credibility of the retaliation. So “first strike” weapons, such as the attempts under President Reagan to massively improve ICBM targeting, are destabilizing. So are anti-missile defense systems. If you can attack a nuclear power with such accuracy (direct hits on their weapons as well as “decapitating” their leadership, their command and control), and with effective anti-missile defenses, that their retaliatory threat is profoundly degraded there is no longer a MAD situation. It is now an insane situation, no acronym.
When faced with the potential of a decapitating first strike, with his “cap” (head) at the top of the list, Kim Jong-un’s choice is Use’em or lose’em. He must, at the least, demonstrate his ability to use his weapons. He doesn’t want to use them all, as his goals are to discourage a preemptive U.S. attack or, at the worst, stop an attack before he is destroyed. Kim Jong-un’s preemption is more a message than an actual military blow with strategic value. It could kill hundreds of thousands of people, however. But it might be aimed more carefully, at the 7th Fleet for example. One small nuclear weapon could kill thousands of U.S. sailors and sink dozens of ships. There would be no way to prevent a seaborne attack such as this under the current cease fire conditions.
* The Crisis is deepening.
Considering the many red lines, claimed rights, pathetic personalities in power and divergent goals, more confrontation is inevitable. Many legal North Korean actions, such as shooting four test missiles outside Guam’s territorial waters, could lead directly to war (Borger 2017a).
Many legal U.S. actions, such as B-1 overflights of South Korea that lead to North Korean fighter or anti-aircraft responses, could lead directly to war. A UN resolution to allow the U.S. to blockade North Korea, and an attempt to enforce it, could well lead to war (Borger 2017b). Blockades and embargoes sometimes lead to combat, not capitulation, as happened with Japan in World War II, embargoed by the U.S. from metal, rubber, and oil supplies. The Russians only “gave-in” over the Cuba blockade when the U.S. agreed to remove its missiles in Turkey. No such compromise seems tenable in this confrontation, although the U.S. could offer to remove its troops from South Korea with a North Korean promise to stop nuclear weapon and ICBM development. But the U.S. won’t make such an offer and North Korea would not trust it if it was made.
The Odds of War
A September 12, 2017 analysis by Oxford Economics, a corporate, but oh-so-British, think tank (Langlois 2017) put the odds of a Second Korean War at around 3% for a conventional (short-lived and contained military conflict) conflict. It would produce, “Abrupt, but temporary market adjustments” and global growth would be “materially below baseline.” Their estimate for a “Destructive military conflict” is less than 1%. Notice, they don’t mention nuclear weapons and they assume a “short-lived and contained conflict” would not be destructive, even though tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands, would die. But, a “destructive” conflict would be worse, obviously. It seems unlikely that most “short-lived” conflicts would stay that way, considering the two leaders involved. Once it starts, it is hard to see Kim Jung-un not using nukes unless he is removed by a successful decapitation or assassination. Oh, by the way, a full nuclear war will have “severe market and economic impacts”.
On September 15 North Korea tested another ICBM and South Korea declared “dialogue is impossible” (Wintour 2017).
On September 19th, in his first address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea and called the Iran Nuclear Treaty “an embarrassment.” Joseph Dethomas (2017), a retired diplomat and currently an academic, sees this as a horrible turning point. Why should North Korea even consider a nuclear treaty if the U.S. can’t be trusted to keep it? He concludes,
The broad sweep of US and North Korean policy make any non-military outcome to this crisis less and less likely…Any error or misstep in this highly unstable strategic environment could ignite a nuclear first strike. We are not yet at the point of war, but the gears of war are beginning to grind inexorably towards it. The lamps are going out in Asia.
These kinds of estimates are obviously only as good as their analysis. But they aren’t unreasonable. Since Trump took office there has been an escalating exchange of powerful insults (many accurate though) and horrific threats and an escalation of provocations from both sides: tests, fly-overs, exercises. While the threats, that now include total destruction promised by both sides, can’t really escalate any more, a good sign would be some back tracking… maybe not total destruction, just a few million killed? The bad news is that if you can’t escalate your threats, to “say” something new you must escalate your actions.
I would say that there is now a 5% chance of a 2nd North Korean War, and if it starts it most likely will become nuclear.
What are some of the worst signs we are spiraling toward war?
U.S. does B-1 flyovers of South Korea and North Korea scrambles fighters.
North Korea targets (lights up with radar) U.S. B-1 bombers.
North Korea shoots at U.S. B-1 bombers.
U.S. Withdraws From Iran Nuclear Treaty.
Either nation raises alert (mobilization) levels.
Someone tries to kill Kim Jung-un.
North Korea shoots test missiles near Guam.
US shoots down a North Korean missile being tested.
US blockades North Korea to enforce sanctions.
US attacks North Korean missile and/or nuclear sites.
So, what might it look like if a war is started?
Predicting the 2nd Korean War
Of course, there is no way to predict what a 2nd Korean War would look like with high accuracy. But, we can lay out the most likely scenarios and even describe the mildly improbable, if it deserves attention. We do know that it won’t go as either side plans, however. As they say in the military, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” For example, the U.S. would prefer to start the war with an extended and massive mobilization, North Korea knows this and seems unlikely to want to wait until an overwhelming first strike force is assembled.
The Economist (2017) has a very thoughtful scenario for “How a nuclear war in Korea could start, and how it might end” that begins with some “Red lines and bad choices” and ends with only about a million dead. Actually, it is a tad optimistic for an actual nuclear war, but a million seems a reasonable middle estimate for a conventional war.
Vice has their own account of “What Would Happen in the Minutes and Hours After North Korea Nuked the United States” (Pearl 2016) It is actually quite optimistic, and posits that China might move to restrain North Korea and, even more incredibly, that the U.S. would not go nuclear after being hit itself by a nuclear weapon.
One of the most detailed 2nd Korean War scenarios is from Military Times (South and Schhogol 2017). It gives a very convincing description of how a conventional war might unfold. It goes into disturbing detail about the potential for “megacity” combat. It, somewhat fancifully, doesn’t really consider an escalation to nuclear weapons even though the conventional combat lasts months in their scenario, but it does assume a cool III Marine Expeditionary Force landing.
All of these are just scenarios, logical guesses almost. But while there are many areas of uncertainty, there are some things we do know:
--Any extended conflict would bring in Japan, Australia, and the ANZUS treaty members, and possibly even NATO.
--A U.S. preemptive attack cannot eliminate North Korea’s arsenal, nuclear nor conventional.
In 2015 The U.S. and South Korea developed OPLAN 5015 for decapitating North Korea’s leadership. There are also extensive preemptive strike plans, using stealth aircraft and missiles, aimed at nuclear and missile assets. But there is little chance decapitating or preemptive strikes will work. North Korea has been preparing for such an attack for 60 years. Mark Bowden (2017) goes over this, and the likelihood that a 2nd Korean War would kill millions, in his comprehensive Atlantic article whose subtitle sums up the situation nicely: “How to deal With North Korea: There are no good options. But some are worse than others”.
North Korea is a very difficult espionage target. It is very unlikely that the U.S. can ever gather the information necessary for an accurate first strike attack (Klimas 2017).
--U.S. missile interceptors are unlikely to be 100% effective.
What about U.S. anti-ballistic missile defense? There is no reason to be optimistic. Intercepting ballistic missiles with ballistic missiles is hitting a bullet with a bullet. It can be done, but even in tests, the U.S. systems perform below 50%, and the tests are often fixed. Countermeasures are cheap and effective.
U.S. anti-missile options are limited. There are Aegis equipped ships that could try and take out missiles in the launch stage, there is a crude star wars system in Vandenberg, California and Alaska. And THAAD systems were sent to South Korea in March of 2017 (Johnson, Kube and Kim 2017). But even if all the systems are deployed, it seems very unlikely they will be that successful. 100% success is nearly impossible. For a discussion of the problems with U.S. anti-ballistic missile defenses see: Ken Dilanian (2017); Union of Concerned Scientists (2016); and most pessimistic (and probably accurate) Joshua Pollack (2017).
The unreliability of U.S. anti-missile technology encourages a preemptive U.S. strike. It seems very likely North Korea can now hit targets in South Korea, the Eastern Pacific, Japan, and Guam, killing several hundred thousand Americans. However, a successful North Korean ICBM strike on any of the 50 states is not likely at this point.
--North Korea could wage cyberwar.
North Korea clearly has some cyberwar capability, 6,000 personnel at least (Douez 2017), but it doesn’t seem capable of seriously harming the U.S. interweb, However, if Russia (an ally of convenience in the past) lends a clandestine hand, and/or if such a cyber attack is linked to an EMP event, then there could be significant damage.
There are two major advantages North Korea has over the U.S. when considering cyberwar attacks aimed at economic damage: 1) North Korea has a minimal electronic infrastructure and, 2) Their economy is horrible already. In both cases they are very cut-off from the world wide networks. A successful attack on the world interweb could hurt many countries, but the U.S. and its allies would be hurt most of all. China, Russia, and the underdeveloped world with North Korea leading the way, would suffer least.
--North Korea could try to use an EMP weapon
For these reasons, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack is a real threat, difficult but not impossible for North Korea to carry out. North Korea has satellite capability (two in orbit) and has miniaturized its nukes sufficiently to stage a very high altitude explosion above the U.S. producing an EMP. It would not take out all electrical systems and lead to a potentially 90% death rate within one year, as one former CIA chief recently theorized, but it could cause significant damage to electronics throughout the continent, leading to massive power outages and other failures, perhaps even crashing the whole interweb for some period of time (but not military systems, hardened against such an attack). The economic effects would be very bad and with transportation and health system failures, thousands of people could die (Nikolewski 2017).
--Commando operations could be important.
South Korea has a special elite military unit called Spartan 3000 with a focus on killing North Korea’s leadership (Ward 2017). North Korea has an even more extensive special operations capability.
--North Korea could deploy chemical or biological weapons.
North Korea has significant biological and chemical weapons capabilities. They have the world’s third largest stockpile of biological nerve agents and anthrax (Bender 2016). They have between 2,500 and 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, including nerve, blister, blood and choking agents such as sulfur mustard, chlorine, phosgene, sarin, and VX nerve agents (Albert 2017). These are options that don’t cross the nuclear threshold and, perhaps more importantly, could have some deniability depending on how the weapons are deployed.
--North Korea could deliver a warhead or dirty bomb through smuggling
Every year around 17 million large metal shipping containers move through 3,000 free trade zones (tax free, repackaging points, often very corrupt). North Korea uses this network to get around sanctions, transshipping through China or through black and gray market links accessed through fishing boats, submarines, or air flights. Fitting a nuke into a container is less of a problem than making a nuclear warhead (Douglas 2017). As far back as 2003, the U.S. was worried about this, according to a Brookings Institute Report (Levi 2003).
--The chances of the conflict spiraling into war between China and the U.S. is not zero.
China is the first enemy of the U.S. in U.S. military doctrine. War between China and the U.S. is gamed and planned continually. While such a conflict is unlikely, it is not impossible. Currently, communication between China’s leadership and the Trump administration is as bad as U.S.-U.S.S.R relations in the Cold War (Freeman 2017).
--North Korean military power is impressive.
The North Korean conventional military is the 4th largest in the world, but opinions on its effectiveness vary (Albert 2017). The Iraq military, not dissimilar, did not inflict much damage in 1991 or 2003. However, because of the close proximity of civilians to all possible battlefields it is hard to see how a full exchange of conventional munitions would not kill several hundred thousand Koreans at a minimum.
North Korea’s biological, chemical, and cyber capabilities are discussed above. Its nuclear capabilities are real, and growing. In 2014 US Forces Korea General Curtis Scaparrotti thought they already had miniaturized warheads. By 2017, this had become the official position of at least one intelligence agency (Sciutto, Starr and Cohen 2017). And how many? Estimates were around 20 (“13-30”) until that jumped to “up to 60” (Sherman 2017).
It bears repeating, the nuclear warhead tested by North Korea on September 3, 2017 yielded 160 kilotons, according to the Japanese Defense Ministry (Westcott 2017). Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, Nagasake 21.
So North Korea clearly has dirty bomb material. A Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD) dirty weapon could be delivered directly by drone to South Korea and at other targets by sea-launched drones (Mizokami 2016).
David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists suspects that North Korean ICBM accuracy now is such that “North Korea would be lucky to land a bomb within 10 miles of a target” but they are rapidly improving accuracy as they improve range (Vartabedian and Hennigan 2017). In any event, if a city is the target, 10 miles is acceptable.
Casualties and Other Bad Outcomes
What happens if North Korea gets a nuke to the U.S., however unlikely? You can do some of the predicting yourself! The wonderful and deeply disturbing “Nukemap” site allows you to chose targets, weapons, and how they are deployed.
And as for the slightly more likely scenario of a smuggled nuke, a 2006 Rand study (a game, actually) of a 10 kiloton bomb, surface blast (delivered by shipping container) on Long Beach: 60,000 dead within”coming weeks and months,” 150,000 wounded, 2 to 3 million evacuated, 4 million “self” evaculate, 1 $ trillion minimum in financial costs (Meade and Molander 2006, p. 26).
Modeling this detonation on the exact same Long Beach pier, Nukemap gives a very conservative estimate (using a 10 Kiloton weapon profile North Korea tested in 2013) of only 1,980 dead, 15,710 injured, over 24 hours, not at maximum attack). RAND includes radiation deaths, not really in nukesite model) So is it any surprise Long Beach has one of the few active citizen’s groups working on civil defense? (Gumbal 2017)
This is the potential butcher’s bill of one attack on one city. Unless the U.S. backs down after this attack, more deaths are inevitable. What might be the casualties of different escalating levels of conflict?
Casualty Estimates, Deaths Within One Year
(Multiply by five to get injured)
- Limited conventional exchanges (U.S., S. Korea, N. Korea): 1 to 20,000.
- Full conventional war (U.S., S. Korea, Allies vs. N. Korea): 20,000 to 10 million
- Limited nuclear war (U.S., S. Korea, Allies, N. Korea): 10 million to 20 million
- Nuclear War (U.S., S. Korea, Allies, N. Korea): 20 million to 200 million
- Total Nuclear War (China joins North Korea vs. Allies): 200 million to 7 billion
While total nuclear war is an extinction event, at the time of this writing it seems very unlikely China would join North Korea in such a war. They currently seem more of a possible target of Kim Jung-un. But with misjudgments by the Chinese leadership this nightmare could certainly happen. If that happened, it could easily involve NATO.
Possible Unintended Consequences:
1) A limited nuclear war between the U.S. and Korea could produce a “nuclear winter” effect that might slow global warming slightly. Such a nuclear winter could also lead to a “lost” summer or two, major famines, and other unknowable but potentially horrific climatic impacts (Loria 2017).
2) A limited nuclear war could greatly benefit China in the long run. While China would suffer many casualties and have to play a leading role in rescue operations in the Korean peninsula, it would also be well placed to make sure a unified Korea is neutral and not a U.S. ally. Meanwhile, the U.S. would have suffered significant military losses in the Eastern Pacific, a massive loss of credibility world wide, and a great strain on the U.S. economy. China could end up dominating the Pacific and much stronger worldwide.
3) Even a limited war could crash the world economy and have profound environmental effects.
4) In a worst case scenario, China could insist the U.S. stop hostilities at some point, and if the U.S. (Trump) demurs, China could intervene militarily and this could spiral into general thermonuclear war.
Why are we here?
Today’s international system of ongoing fear and tension is the second Cold War. It grew directly out of the first cold War between state communism and neoliberal capitalism, but it most certainly has its own particularities. It is part of the same postmodern war system that has been in effect since 1945 (Gray 1997). Since then it has become obvious that today war (and the threat of war) is terror and terror is war. There is no real difference between the two. TerrorWar must end; it cannot be used to produce real peace.
— Chris Hables Gray (2005 xii)
Crises, such as the current U.S.-North Korea standoff, are inevitable as long as the world political system is the current mess of nation-states (neoliberal and authoritarian) and corporations. This is a system of permanent war, militarization, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, U.S. imperial hegemony (starting to obviously decline), corporate globalization, wealth concentration and profound ecological destruction, is unstable. Eventually, because of deteriorating conditions, or sooner as proliferating weapons of mass destruction are used in confrontations, a serious rupture will happen. Whether it will be dominated by productive and tolerant sectors of human culture or a nightmare between crazies, as Stephen Colbert put it, “with nuclear weapons and distant unpleasable fathers…” (2017, August 9) remains to be seen.
We are here now because we haven’t been able to change this system.
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