U.S. officials fear North Korea will greet Trump with missile test
Source: Politico
A launch or nuclear explosion would fit Kim Jong Un’s pattern of provoking carefully timed crises, experts say.
By MICHAEL CROWLEY 11/04/2017 07:14 AM EDT
White House officials and Asian leaders are worried that North Korea may provoke a crisis in an effort to throw President Donald Trump’s trip to the region off script.
Their concern is that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, might conduct a ballistic missile test — or even a far more shocking atmospheric nuclear test — during Trump’s visit to Japan or South Korea, and that Trump would respond by escalating rather than defusing tensions.
Trump has met Kim’s recent provocations with growing anger, including his August threat to unleash “fire and fury” against the North.
“The biggest challenge may be crisis management,” said Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “We have to be ready for how we deal with the unexpected.”
Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/04/trump-asia-trip-north-korea-244541
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Test cavern collapse, killing 200 or so.
One could suppose that after the first few fizzles, the sixth test went off like gangbusters which kind of destroyed their test site.
The question is: Did they finally get the initiator right? Or was the last big blast a result of a fortuitous cosmic ray neutron? (It only takes one.) The DPRK won't being saying what happened any time soon. And Kim is a blowhard liar, just like Drumpf. My hypothesis is that their really low yield first tests were a result of faulty initiators. So they increase the size while they are simultaneously working on the initiator. This last test, which was rather huge (>100Kton), they might have gotten right. However, I suspect that it rather destroyed their test site.
Apparently China has warned them about testing in that region. (So I read here on DU -- sorry, no link.) And > 100 Kton is a really big detonation!
