Experts: Look for a new North Korean nuclear crisis in early 2020

3 Comments on Experts: Look for a new North Korean nuclear crisis in early 2020
Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

After we spent part of the summer of 2017 on the brink of a nuclear war with North Korea (no, really, there’s a book about that moment called On the Brink), I put together a solid Twitter collection of DPRK watchers and analysts that I could follow for up-to-the-minute, non-fear-mongering analysis and news of the crisis. Following a relatively quiet — and at times even cautiously optimistic — two years since, that group is now shouting a single warning to anyone who’ll listen: buckle up, because we are headed for a major nuclear crisis with North Korea when the calendar flips over to 2020.

Our editor spent some time inside North Korea. Read about his first-hand experience.

Background: In April of this year, when the second Trump-Kim summit collapsed and everyone went home early, Kim publicly gave the US an end-of-the-year deadline for easing up its economic sanctions-based “maximum pressure” campaign against DPRK… or else.

DPRK’s state-run news agency followed up on this point in May: “Although the U.S. is making desperate and foolish efforts to bring us down by clinging to…the ‘maximum pressure’ aimed at destroying our system, it should bear in mind that such an attempt will…push us dynamically to a direction where the U.S. does not want to see.”

Last month, there were some working level talks that broke down, and North Korea has since refused to engage with the US any further.

On the US side, Trump has made a number of dramatic moves that seem aimed at drawing DPRK back to the table, including offering to cancel some joint military exercises with South Korea and, more dramatically, insisting that South Korea pony up another $5 billion USD to pay for the US military presence in their country.

None of this has worked, and this week North Korea’s Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement, “We are no longer interested in such talks that bring nothing to us. As we have got nothing in return, we will no longer gift the U.S. president with something he can boast of, but get compensation for the successes that President Trump is proud of as his administrative achievements.”

The Washington Post sums it up:

SEOUL — North Korea has a message for President Trump and the United States: The clock is ticking, and a bomb is about to explode.

There are seven weeks until North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is scheduled to deliver a keynote New Year’s Day speech. That will come a day after his self-imposed year-end deadline expires for the United States to come up with new proposals to restart nuclear talks.

What’s next: DPRK has paused its ICBM and nuclear testing for 2019 while waiting for either sanctions relief or its deadline to pass, so it seems likely that when 2020 arrives they’ll return to one or both of these activities.

There has recently been a series of short-range missile tests aimed at ramping up pressure on the US, and MIT’s Vipin Narang suggests that 2020 may even see a nuclear-tipped ICBM detonated over the Pacific (i.e. “Juche Bird,” as it’s jokingly called by DPRK watchers)

An early 2020 above-ground test of a nuclear missle capable of reaching the US would be public confirmation of what most analysts already presume to be the case, i.e. that North Korea can threaten the entire continental US with its nuclear arsenal. This may well bring us to the brink of war with North Korea.

The National Interest’s Harry Kazianis surveys the larger political landscape of early 2020 and puts it this way: “A North Korea Nuclear Showdown Plus Trump’s Impeachment Could Fuse into the Crisis of Our Time“.

Even if the US doesn’t actually intend to go to war with DPRK, we could stumble into it via a series of mixed signals. This exact scenario is described, in detail, in Jeffrey Lewis’s speculative novel, “The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States“.

Lewis’s book, which I’ve read and can highly recommend, lays out a plausible scenario where the US and DPRK bluster their way into a full-blown nuclear exchange that kills millions both in the US and abroad via an escalating cascade of threats, tweets, and misinterpreted military exercises.

Lewis and Kazianis and others have been warning on Twitter about a return to a crisis (or worse) next year.

As Lewis said in response to that last tweet: buckle up. Keep an eye on the news, have a plan, and keep your preps ready, because you don’t want to be one of those people scrambling to buy sold-out iodine tablets.

Jon Stokes | jonst0kes

Jon Stokes is a co-founder of Ars Technica, founding editor of AllOutdoor, and contributing editor to The Firearm Blog. Jon's a lifelong knife collector, outdoorsman, and prepper.

  • 3 Comments
    • Chris B November 20, 2019

      Do you guys have a recommendation for potassium iodide tablets? Seems like something you wouldn’t want to skimp on and end up with something counterfeit.

       

      Great article!

      8 |
      • Jon StokesStaff Chris B November 20, 2019

        Chris, these guys are legit, so scroll down to “Thyrosafe” and buy those: http://www.ki4u.com/products1.php

        I have some IOSAT pills from Amazon, but I’m not sure I trust them and will be stocking up on the Thyrosafe ones from that site. (I know the site looks jank, but they’ve been around for ages and I’ve bought stuff from them before.)

        12 |
      • John Grayman Jon Stokes January 28, 2022

        Can vouch for these guys @ki4u, have ordered multiple times and they are on top of their game and legit. A human will even answer the phone when you call! 

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