Ever since the beginning of this year, it has been the recurrent mantra of Donald Trump that “the launch of a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile will not happen!” Well, he was proven wrong on the 4th of July: With its 17th missile launch this year, Kim Jong Un, president of the DPRK, surprised Trump and the rest of the world with the Hwasong – 14, a monster two-stage, liquid fuelled intercontinental missile, 17 meters long, and with a diameter of 2 meters. It was fired from a mobile launcher 2 800 kilometers straight up into space and impacted the Sea of Japan 40 minutes later. Had it been fired into a conventional ballistic trajectory, it could have easily reached Alaska or the Hawaiian Islands. This missile, however, has propellant tanks with a capacity sufficient to give it a maximum range of 10 000 kilometers and jettison a heat-shielded nuclear warhead over its intended target anywhere in the U.S. west of the Mississippi River!
Commented Kim Jong Un on the 4th of July: “This is a gift for the American Bastards on the occasion of their independence day – and there will be many more big and small gifts to come in the near future!” Now the world has to add one more country with intercontinental nuclear capability to add to the U.S.A., Russia, the United Kingdom, France, India and China. For the past 25 years, during the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, diplomatic efforts, threats and severe economic sanctions have been totally ineffective in stopping the development of North Korea’s nuclear- and ballistic missile programs – leaving Donald Trump now with essentially two remaining options: accepting the DPRK as a dangerously aggressive and unstable nuclear power or exercising the second option: a preemptive military attack to eliminate the danger posed by Kim Jong Un once and for all. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations manifested the Trump administration’s preference for the military option in an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday evening. With that, the question arises: Can the U.S. defend itself against a Korean missile attack? Sadly, in tests conducted over the past two years, it has been successful in shooting down an incoming missile over the Pacific in only 6 out of 10 tries – meaning: with a launch of 10 ICBMs, four will reach their targets in the United States – or, heaven forbid – in Northwest Mexico. North Korean missiles have been notorious for their inaccurate navigation systems, so if the trajectory of an ICBM aimed at Los Angeles is only a few degrees off course, it could potentially devastate Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa or Nayarit! Perhaps the most dangerously unpredictable element in all of this is the mental instability of both Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. We had better prepare ourselves for the worst…
