Anguish as North Korea Marches Into 1955 110

By nearly having an intercontinental ballistic missile and not quite nearly having a nuclear warhead and detonator small enough to fit on it, North Korea has brought its military technology almost to the point of being just sixty years out of date.

The panic this has caused is not unjustified, as nuclear weapons are a terrible thing. Hundreds of thousands of column inches have been deployed by mainstream media all round the world. This from the Economist is a fine example of the top intellectual thinking upon which the elite consensus prides itself.

It is also a perfect exemplar as it illustrates a defining characteristic of all this week’s analysis following the North Korean missile test. Nowhere at all does it mention Trident missiles. Nobody does, because they are obviously a total irrelevance and in no sense enter the calculations of Kim Jong Un.

When the establishment writes serious stuff about North Korea, they never ever mention Trident, because they would look stupid.

Yet strangely, when they write about Trident, they always mention North Korea. We need Trident, they say, to deter rogue nuclear states like North Korea.

Extraordinary, isn’t it. Apparently we have no need at all to worry about nuclear attack from North Korea, because we have the perfect deterrent by spending an astonishing amount of our national income on Trident missiles.

Except when people actually think about North Korea, when they realise that Trident is as much use as a chocolate teapot.

It is exactly the same with ISIS/Daesh. Nobody writing any of the millions of articles about ISIS/Daesh has ever written “but you don’t have to worry about them because we have Trident missiles.” Because they would look very, very, stupid.

But when Trident is under discussion, we hear it defends us against, err, North Korea and ISIS.

Now they throw in Russia. In all the reams of analysis of Putin’s Russia, nobody has ever been crazy enough to argue that nuclear attack on the UK (or even conventional invasion of the UK) is something Putin would wish to do. Because to claim that would look absolutely stupid. Plainly the desire of Russia to attack with nuclear weapons is at absolute zero. Anybody writing otherwise would rightly be written off as crazed.

Yet the Trident argument takes place in an entirely isolated political bubble, in perfect quarantine, in isolation from reality, where the elite are allowed to stand there and say it protects us from North Korea, ISIS and Russia and the mainstream media pretends this is not absurd.

110 thoughts on “Anguish as North Korea Marches Into 1955

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  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)


    “Stay focussed for a second and tell us whether you are right (Iran was “pushing to develop nuclear weapons”) or whether the Iranian govt line was correct (its nuclear programme was for “entirely peaceful purposes”).

    Both explanations can be seen as correct, Habb, government do change their policies.”

    I quite agree; they can indeed.

    Would you agree that the Iranian govt has been persuaded to abandon its “push to develop nuclear weapons” (your words) as a result of the determined action undertaken by the world community


    will you confirm that you believe the Iranian govt’s change of policy is to be welcomed?

  • Andrew Prince of Little Saint James

    Look, if the British government is afraid of North Korea – which they should be, since Britain is just about at strategic parity with DPRK, two clapped-out little despotic pismires – then Cameron should go crawling to his boss John Brennan and humbly entreat him to please pretty please sign that nonaggression pact with DPRK, since DPRK’s saber-rattling is prompted solely by the US threat. Trident? Who are you kidding, Trident? You know you can’t shoot one off without US permission. The real reason Britain wants Trident is that Britain’s P-5 status would be even more ridiculous without some kind of nuclear popgun. It’s strategic irrelevance management.

  • nevermind, Lord Feldmannn? RESIGN!

    Well strategists, what is more important to the neocons, making money with war, or destroying your markets, your customers, their neighbouring customers, indeed a quarter of those arms buyers you once had on your book with a nuclear war. Conventional war is much much better for business.

    And economists, how much does the arms industry contribute to the economy at present, when consumers have everything in duplicate? Nuclear war is not good for business, and it hits you as much as the foe in mind, as the first strike aggressor, if that is the scenario.

    A nuclear war will mask the horrific accidents that is Fukushima and I don’t really know whether the spike in cancers at present has any connections with this the most dangerous civil nuclear explosion ever.

    Still, Japan is not making any moves to ‘share’ the Olympics with South Korea, make a healthier, cooperative and friendship provoking event of the Olympics, set an example to the rest of the world that there is nothing wrong with sharing. It would be an exercise in restraint, with both nation required to keep the nationalist posing to a minimum. One could open, the other close the event, but it would not endanger any of the athletes, not with Tokyo’s smog or the impact of Fukushima’s legacy.

  • Republicofscotland





    Re your first point Habb, possibly, as long as the sanctions do not return. But you still need to be vigilant.

    As for your second point, yes, it is very welcome, Iran often plagued by insidious Western interference, is now a religiously fanatical country, not the ideal place to forment nuclear weapons.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)


    Are you completely incapable of conceding a point graciously, RoS?

    And that after I stepped in to defend you very recently! 🙂

  • Aidworker1

    Habb and Republic of Scotland?

    Are you either the same or both based in a Tel Aviv call centre?

  • Doug Scorgie


    9 Feb, 2016 – 3:41 pm

    Chris Rogers.

    “The UK’s nuclear warheads are built by AWRE at Aldermaston based on US designs. The missile bodies are leased from the US and have to be returned every five years or so for servicing. The missile guidance system is an entirely self contained inertial system and does not use GPS. It would be a bit silly to rely on anything that could be jammed or might be knocked out by the time the war has gone nuclear.”


    Kempe, can you provide links or references to the less technically minded amongst us so we can make our own assessment without having to take your word for it?

  • Andrew

    (As Chris Rogers said) The Trident missiles aren’t actually owned by Britain – we rent them from the Americans, according to this (rather dated) account:


    By the way, Kim Jong-Un may be a murderous tyrant but the North Koreans have good reason to fear Washington (as Fedup said earlier). Here’s a mainstream American’s description of the US air war in Korea in the 1950s:

    “(I)n response to the North Korean invasion that started the Korean War, (the US Air Force) bombed and napalmed cities, towns and villages across the North. It was mostly easy pickings for the Air Force, whose B-29s faced little or no opposition on many missions.


    Although the ferocity of the bombing was criticized as racist and unjustified elsewhere in the world, it was never a big story – back home.”

  • Doug Scorgie

    Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    9 Feb, 2016 – 4:07 pm

    “Surely the Iranian govt [sic] has always denied it was pushing to develop nuclear weapons and that its nuclear programme was entirely pacific?”


    Ditto Israel.

  • Jemand

    North Korea has no nukes.

    They produce massive amounts of conventional explosives, send them deep down a shaft on a geological fault line and detonate it in such a way that produces a nuke-like signature.

    Then the Americans pretend to believe a nuke test has been conducted because that’s better than goading them into producing the real thing.

  • Doug Scorgie


    9 Feb, 2016 – 5:01 pm

    “I read recently that underwater drone subs are on the verge of becoming so cheap and ubiquitous that they will render Trident redundant, since it will soon be nigh on impossible to hide in the sea. Anyone know about this?”


    You are right KOWN but the establishment are in denial:

  • Jemand

    Furthermore, no one here even knows if Trident really is a functional nuclear weapons system.

    If using a nuke means the end of us all, much better to have a fake nuke capability and recycle Trident funding for some other purpose — NHS?

  • Andrew Prince of Little Saint James

    Thanks for that article on Britain’s “sub-strategic deterrence.” That is so sad. Brennan’s British butlers now have just enough throw-weight to precipitate general war and get their teeny little country burnt to a crisp, while the US sits back and laughs. British intelligentsia are vetted to make sure they have no self-respect and no identity aside from sucking US ass. So after Turkey gets ground up picking fights with Russia, it will be Britain’s turn. Our next president will egg Cameron on to nuke Russia a little.

  • RobG

    You are all completely insane.

    You put the fate of the Earth (nuclear armageddon) in the hands of a bunch of complete lunatics, who you acknowledge to be complete lunatics, and then are surprised by the outcome.

    God help us all.

  • KingofWelshNoir

    Doug Scorgie, thanks for the link. I love the irony of this, the establishment just don’t have an answer for it. So they pretend there isn’t an issue and urge the renewal of Trident come what may. But it must be obvious that cheap solar powered drones equipped with sonar detection could drift around in their thousands, or tens of thousands. After all, you can buy an aerial drone for a couple of hundred quid, there’s no reason to suppose drone subs won’t go the same way very soon. We could all buy one and form our own defence shield.

  • Habbabkuk (Are you a person of interest?)

    From Mr Scorgie to Kempe:


    From Fedup, shortly before:

    “You are entitled to your opinion, it is free blog, but kindly stop being so didactic and start reading a bit more (there are enough material there) and even god forbid perhaps use any of the various search engines to find the answers! spoon feeding is an outmoded method of transaction these days.”


    Trouble at t’mill? 🙂

  • jkick





    Jemund, it’s possible you on right lines with this train of thought, however, I’d veer along on a slightly different route.

    For example, spend the money on disease prevention stratergies, i.e. the likes of cancer / CHD, as opposed, in the main, on useless costly treatment stratergies.

    The money saved alone from present NHS Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) expenditures on radiotherapy, cancer diagnoses, cancer surgery, and other NHS services for other patient groups) which have projected costs of £420 million next year, would would be huge.

    This in turn could be used to pay of the national debt, a debt created indirectly by those who manufacture wars / arms and who in turn benifit from interest payments received on this debt

    Without the these burdens of interest payments and costly health treatment on government expenditure there would be no need for high taxation.

    Energy / food prices fall and folk can afford to live decent healthy lives without the need to work god awful hours just to make ends meet whilst paying for a non-functional nuclear weapons system.

    “He who pays the piper, calls the tune”

  • Pete

    Summing the answers to my earlier question, it seems that Trident could probably hit a large city without the help of American GPS network, but not a small military target. Thus, insofar as its theoretically “independent,” it could only be used to massacre vast numbers of civilians while military forces remained safely dispersed or in bunkers.

    However this presupposed that the Americans did not build in an override system before they let anyone else have possession of it- which seems totally implausible to me. The last time the UK went to war in direct opposition to the wishes of the USA was in 1956, the Suez war, all the histories say the Americans compelled immediate British withdrawal by means of economic pressure. So whatever the technicalities I don’t beleive for a moment they would let the UK use Trident independently.

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