FILE - In this file image made from video of an Aug. 14, 2017, broadcast in a news bulletin by North Korea's KRT, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un receives a military briefing in Pyongyang. Conventional... (Associated Press) 
 
 TOKYO (AP) — Conventional wisdom says that if North Korea were ever to use its nuclear weapons, it would be an act of suicide. But brace yourself for what deterrence experts call the "theory of victory." 
 
 To many who have studied how nuclear strategies actually work, it's conceivable North Korea could escalate to a nuclear war and still survive. Tuesday's missile test suggests once again it may be racing to prepare itself to do just that — but only if forced into a corner. 
 
 Every missile North Korean leader Kim Jong Un launches comes at a high cost. North Korea doesn't have an unlimited supply, and they aren't easy or cheap to build. 
 
 So when Kim orders his strategic forces to launch, it's safe to assume it's a move calculated to achieve maximum political, technical and training value. Tuesday's launch of a ballistic missile over Japan and into the open Pacific Ocean, once again blowing past warnings from the United States and its allies, is a prime example. 
 
 There is a solid strategy hidden in each launch. From Kim's perspective, here's what it looks like. 
 
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 HOW THE NORTH COULD SURVIVE 
 
 North Korea has never suggested it would use its nuclear weapons to attack the United States or its allies completely out of the blue. 
 
 But, like Washington, it has stated quite explicitly that if it is either attacked or has reason to believe an attack is imminent, it has the right to launch a retaliatory or even a pre-emptive first strike. 
 
 The trigger for North Korea could be unusual troop movements in South Korea, suspicious activity at U.S. bases in Japan or — as the North has recently warned — flights near its airspace by U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers out of their home base on the island of Guam. 
 
 If Kim deemed any of those an imminent attack, one North Korean strategy would be to immediately target U.S. bases in Japan. A more violent move would be to attack a Japanese city, such as Tokyo, though that would probably be unnecessary since at this point the objective would be to weaken the U.S. military's command and control. Going nuclear would send the strongest message, but chemical weapons would be an alternative. 
 
 North Korea's ability to next hit the U.S. mainland with nuclear-tipped missiles is the key to how it would survive in this scenario. And that's why Kim has been rushing to perfect and show them off to the world. 
 
 "The whole reason they developed the ICBM was to deter American nuclear retaliation because if you can hold an American city or cities at risk the American calculation always changes," said Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a nuclear strategy specialist. 
 
 "Are we really willing to risk Los Angeles or Chicago in retaliation for an attack on a U.S. military base in the region?" he asks. "Probably not." 
 
 That, right there, is Kim's big wager. 
 
 If "no" actually is the answer, then North Korea has a chance — though slim and risky — of staving off a full-scale conventional attack by the United States to survive another day. 
 
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 USE 'EM OR LOSE 'EM 
 
 Kim isn't paranoid. He has good reason to fear an attack by the United States. 
 
 It's highly unlikely Washington would unilaterally start a war. But if it did, North Korea would face a far stronger and better equipped enemy able to — literally — bring the fight right to Kim's front door. A successful U.S. first strike could within hours or days take out North Korea's leadership, or at least seriously disrupt its chain of command, and destroy a good portion of the country's fighting power. 
 
 So North Korea has a very strong incentive to escalate fast, before all is lost. 
 
 Under Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il — Kim's grandfather and father — North Korea relied on conventional artillery just north of the Demilitarized Zone to keep Washington at bay, figuring the U.S. wouldn't make any moves that might risk an attack on South Korea's capital, Seoul, and the tremendous casualties and destruction that would bring. 
 
 Kim, fearing "decapitation strikes," has brought missiles and nukes into the mix for an added layer of protection. 
 
 His strategy is to neutralize Washington's military option by holding both Seoul and an American city hostage while building up his own ability to withstand a first strike or a massive wave of retaliation. To do that, North Korea is developing an array of missiles that can be launched by land or from submarines and easily hidden and transported to remote, hard-to-detect sites. 
 
 Reasonably enough, countries with big arsenals are generally considered less likely to feel the need to use them or lose them. 
 
 North Korea is believed to have an arsenal of perhaps several dozen nuclear weapons, growing by maybe a dozen or so each year. That's a lot, but some analysts believe it may take a few hundred to cure Kim of the itchy trigger finger syndrome. 
 
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 THE 'MADMAN STRATEGY' 
 
 In deterrence circles, ambiguity is considered a must. But confusion can be deadly. 
 
 In any confrontation, it's best that an opponent knows better than to cross the line — but not to know exactly where that line is. That fosters caution. Confusion, on the other hand, creates the incentive to make a move either out of frightened self-defense or confident opportunism. 
 
 That's what North Korea appears to be doing now, though it's not clear whether the motive is fear or arrogance. 
 
 Over the past several weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has promised fire, fury and power like the world has never seen should North Korea issue even a vocal threat — which it did almost immediately, with no major consequences. Trump's Cabinet members walked that back, but in the process set or seemed to erase red lines of their own. 
 
 Some have suggested this is a deliberate "madman strategy." 
 
 Inspired by the writings of Machiavelli, President Richard Nixon gave this ploy a go against Vietnam in the late 1960s. His idea was to make the Vietnamese and their Communist allies think that Nixon would do anything, including use his nuclear weapons, to end the war. 
 
 But if Trump is doing the same, he isn't doing it very well, Narang said. 
 
 While Kim's government speaks with one voice and maintains consistency, which is what gives the madman approach its credibility, it's "really hard for Trump to make these crazy statements and not have them walked back by someone in his administration." 
 
 "At some point," Narang said, "the blurriness goes away and we just look incoherent." 
 
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 Eric Talmadge has been the AP's Pyongyang bureau chief since 2013. Follow him on Twitter at EricTalmadge and on Instagram @erictalmadge. ||||| A day after North Korea launched a missile over Japan, Tokyo Bureau Chief Anna Fifield answers one of the questions she gets most often about North Korea: "Are we going to war?" (Anna Fifield/The Washington Post) 
 
 A day after North Korea launched a missile over Japan, Tokyo Bureau Chief Anna Fifield answers one of the questions she gets most often about North Korea: "Are we going to war?" (Anna Fifield/The Washington Post) 
 
 North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile over Japan was unprecedented, but President Trump’s response Tuesday was not — a renewal of his warning that “all options are on the table.” His tough talk may only serve to remind that the possibility of military action has not yet deterred North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. 
 
 The missile launch seemed designed to wreak just the right amount of havoc: enough for Kim to show that he would not be cowed but not so much as to invite the “fire and fury” that Trump warned could follow continued North Korean threats. 
 
 The launch early Tuesday was the first test of such a sophisticated weapon over the landmass of a U.S. ally and an obvious warning to the United States that North Korea could easily target U.S. military facilities on Guam or elsewhere in the Pacific region. 
 
 It came during annual joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea that have infuriated the nuclear-armed communist regime. It also came despite recent offers of talks from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. 
 
 “The world has received North Korea’s latest message loud and clear: this regime has signaled its contempt for its neighbors, for all members of the United Nations, and for minimum standards of acceptable international behavior,” Trump said in an early morning statement. 
 
 North Korea launched a ballistic missile that passed over northern Japan’s Hokkaido island on Aug. 29, before dropping into the Pacific Ocean. (Shin Takizawa/Twitter) 
 
 “Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world,” he said. “All options are on the table.” 
 
 The United States requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, which this month unanimously approved the strictest economic sanctions to date on a nation that already is one of the most heavily sanctioned in the world. 
 
 “No country should have missiles flying over them like those 130 million people in Japan. It’s unacceptable,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said. 
 
 North Korea has “violated every single U.N. Security Council resolution that we’ve had, and so I think something serious has to happen,” she added. “Enough is enough.” 
 
 [ North Korean missile flies over Japan, prompting an angry response from Tokyo ] 
 
 There was no indication that Kim was intimidated by the White House reaction. The state Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday morning local time that the North Korean leader had been present for the missile launch and had called it “a meaningful prelude to containing Guam.” According to the agency, Kim said he had gone ahead with the missile launch because the United States proceeded with “the bellicose war exercises” with South Korea. 
 
 International outrage over the latest North Korean missile went well beyond Washington. Trump spoke by phone with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hours after the launch, and the two leaders “committed to increasing pressure on North Korea, and doing their utmost to convince the international community to do the same,” according to a White House statement. 
 
 People watch a television news screen showing file footage of a North Korean missile launch, at a railway station in Seoul on Aug. 29, 2017. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 That was a reference to stiff international sanctions that so far have failed to stop North Korea from developing working nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The United States claims North Korea could not evade those sanctions if other countries including China enforced them more stringently. 
 
 Asked about the effectiveness of sanctions and international denunciation, given that North Korea does not seem to care about the moves, deputy British U.N. envoy Jonathan Allen insisted such actions have merit. 
 
 “They send that really important message of the entire world being united, and they do have an impact on North Korea,” Allen told reporters at the United Nations. 
 
 The missile appeared to be a Hwasong-12, the intermediate-range ballistic missile that North Korea has been threatening to shoot into the waters near the U.S. territory of Guam. 
 
 But North Korea did not shoot it southeast toward Guam. Instead, it lobbed the missile in a northeasterly direction, over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 It was, as Stephan Haggard, a political scientist and Korea expert at the University of California at San Diego, described it, “perfectly calibrated to create political mischief.” 
 
 “The launch shows how Kim Jong Un is weirdly conservative, calibrating tests so that they are difficult to counter, flying just beneath the radar of a required kinetic response,” Haggard said. 
 
 Taro Kono, Japan’s foreign minister, acknowledged as much. “If North Korea had launched the missile to the south, the U.S. might have viewed it as a considerable provocation and responded accordingly,” Kono told reporters after the launch. 
 
 North Korea’s action also seemed designed to drive a wedge between its neighbors. 
 
 In Japan, Abe called it “an unprecedented, grave and serious threat.” Abe wants to beef up Japan’s military capabilities, and missile launches like this provide ammunition for his controversial cause. South Korea’s liberal president, Moon Jae-in, who has promoted engagement with Pyongyang, immediately denounced the launch and sent his fighter jets to drop bombs on a shooting range near the border with North Korea. 
 
 Both reactions appear to have rattled China, where officials called on all sides to take a step back. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying characterized the North Korea situation as “at a tipping point, approaching a crisis.” She repeated China’s call for talks between North Korea and the United States. 
 
 [ North Korea launches three missiles into sea, heightening tensions ] 
 
 Tillerson had stressed Sunday that the offer of talks remained open, and he encouraged Kim to choose “a different path.” For weeks, U.S. officials have sought to assure Kim that Washington does not want to topple him or invade his country, a message also meant to appeal to North Korea’s protector, China. 
 
 Trump said last week that North Korea was finally “starting to respect us,” although he added that his threat to answer the country’s provocations with “fire and fury” might not have been strong enough. 
 
 Tillerson also had publicly praised North Korea last week for showing “restraint” since the U.N. Security Council vote and in the face of the annual military drills. Although North Korea had not test-launched any missiles for nearly a month at that point, it has done so twice since Tillerson spoke. 
 
 North Korea fired rockets over the Japanese mainland in 1998 and 2009 — but it described them as satellite launch vehicles and gave Japan advance warning in the second case. Tuesday’s missile launch was purely military and “demonstrated a direct threat,” said Narushige Michishita, an expert on Korean Peninsula security issues at the Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. 
 
 “From a military point of view, they have demonstrated an ability to use a very mobile, agile missile against targets anywhere in Japan,” he said. 
 
 [ In a dangerous time, the Pentagon prepares for a war game on the Korean Peninsula ] 
 
 Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said that the United States would shoot down any missile North Korea fired at Guam or a U.S. ally. 
 
 Fifield reported from Tokyo. 
 
 Read more 
 
 North Korea mocks Trump’s ‘ego-driven’ Twitter posts as military exercises continue 
 
 North Korea could cross ICBM threshold next year, U.S. officials warn in new assessment 
 
 Kim Jong Un’s rockets are getting an important boost — from China 
 
 Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world 
 
 Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news ||||| In this undated photo distributed on Saturday, Sept. 16, 2017, by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, celebrates what was said to be the test launch of an intermediate... (Associated Press) 
 
 SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea leader Kim Jong Un said his country is nearing its goal of "equilibrium" in military force with the United States, as the United Nations Security Council strongly condemned the North's "highly provocative" ballistic missile launch over Japan on Friday. 
 
 The North's official Korean Central News Agency carried Kim's comments on Saturday — a day after U.S. and South Korean militaries detected the missile launch from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. 
 
 It traveled 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) as it passed over the Japanese island of Hokkaido before landing in the northern Pacific Ocean. It was the country's longest-ever test flight of a ballistic missile. 
 
 The North has confirmed the missile as an intermediate range Hwasong-12, the same model launched over Japan on Aug. 29. 
 
 Under Kim's watch, North Korea has maintained a torrid pace in weapons tests, including its most powerful nuclear test to date on Sept. 3 and two July flight tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected. 
 
 The increasingly frequent and aggressive tests have added to outside fears that the North is closer than ever to building a military arsenal that could viably target the U.S. and its allies in Asia. The tests, which could potentially make launches over Japan an accepted norm, are also seen as North Korea's attempt to win greater military freedom in the region and raise doubts in Seoul and Tokyo that Washington would risk the annihilation of a U.S. city to protect them. 
 
 The KCNA said Kim expressed great satisfaction over the launch, which he said verified the "combat efficiency and reliability" of the missile and the success of efforts to increase its power. 
 
 While the English version of the report was less straightforward, the Korean version quoted Kim as declaring the missile as operationally ready. He vowed to complete his nuclear weapons program in the face of strengthening international sanctions, the agency said. 
 
 Photos published by North Korea's state media showed the missile being launched from a truck-mounted launcher and a smiling Kim clapping and raising his fist while celebrating from an observation point. 
 
 The U.N. Security Council accused North Korea of undermining regional peace and security by launching its latest missile over Japan and said its nuclear and missile tests "have caused grave security concerns around the world" and threaten all 193 U.N. member states. 
 
 Kim also said the country, despite "limitless" international sanctions, has nearly completed the building of its nuclear weapons force and called for "all-state efforts" to reach the goal and obtain a "capacity for nuclear counterattack the U.S. cannot cope with." 
 
 "As recognized by the whole world, we have made all these achievements despite the U.N. sanctions that have lasted for decades," the agency quoted Kim as saying. 
 
 Kim said the country's final goal "is to establish the equilibrium of real force with the U.S. and make the U.S. rulers dare not talk about military option for the DPRK," referring to North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 
 
 He indicated that more missile tests would be forthcoming, saying that all future drills should be "meaningful and practical ones for increasing the combat power of the nuclear force" to establish an order in the deployment of nuclear warheads for "actual war." 
 
 Prior to the launches over Japan, North Korean had threatened to fire a salvo of Hwasong-12s toward Guam, the U.S. Pacific island territory and military hub the North has called an "advanced base of invasion." 
 
 The Security Council stressed in a statement after a closed-door emergency meeting that all countries must "fully, comprehensively and immediately" implement all U.N. sanctions. 
 
 Japan's U.N. Ambassador Koro Bessho called the missile launch an "outrageous act" that is not only a threat to Japan's security but a threat to the whole world. 
 
 Bessho and the British, French and Swedish ambassadors demanded that all sanctions be implemented. 
 
 Calling the latest launch a "terrible, egregious, illegal, provocative reckless act," Britain's U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said North Korea's largest trading partners and closest links — a clear reference to China — must "demonstrate that they are doing everything in their power to implement the sanctions of the Security Council and to encourage the North Korean regime to change course." 
 
 France's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country is ready to work on tougher U.N. and EU measures to convince Pyongyang that there is no interest in an escalation, and to bring it to the negotiating table. 
 
 Friday's launch followed North Korea's sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3 in what it described as a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its developmental ICBMs. 
 
 The Hwasong-12 and the Hwasong-14 were initially fired at highly lofted angles to reduce their range and avoid neighboring countries. The two Hwasong-12 launches over Japan indicate North Korea is moving toward using angles close to operational to evaluate whether its warheads can survive the harsh conditions of atmospheric re-entry and detonate properly. 
 
 While some experts believe North Korea would need to conduct more tests to confirm Hwasong-12's accuracy and reliability, Kim Jong Un's latest comments indicate the country would soon move toward mass producing the missiles for operational deployment, said Kim Dong-yub, an analyst at Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies. He also said that the North is likely planning similar test launches of its Hwasong-14 ICBM. 
 
 South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a liberal who initially pushed for talks with North Korea, said its tests currently make dialogue "impossible." 
 
 "If North Korea provokes us or our allies, we have the strength to smash the attempt at an early stage and inflict a level of damage it would be impossible to recover from," said Moon, who ordered his military to conduct a live-fire ballistic missile drill in response to the North Korean launch. 
 
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 Lederer reported from the United Nations.
– "Are we really willing to risk Los Angeles or Chicago in retaliation for an attack on a US military base in the region? Probably not," nuclear strategy specialist Vipin Narang tells the AP. And that's exactly the calculation that gives North Korea a small shot at "winning" in a nuclear conflict, challenging the assumption that launching a nuclear weapon would be automatic suicide for the country. If North Korea feels threatened to the point of using a nuclear weapon, a first target would likely be a US military base in Japan; North Korea would then use its long-range nukes to threaten the US mainland and avoid a retaliatory strike. Experts say this is Kim Jong Un's "theory of victory"—one that President Trump may be attempting to combat with an unsuccessful version of the "madman strategy." Here's what else you need to know about North Korea's most-recent missile launch: Tuesday's missile launch over Japan seems likely to result in even more sanctions against North Korea. But after UN sanctions Aug. 5 targeted millions of dollars in seafood, coal, iron ore, and more, is there anything left to sanction? CNN reports two options are oil and Chinese banks. After Tuesday's missile launch, Trump said "all options are on the table." This was, all things considered, a "measured" response from the president, according to the Atlantic. It was an official statement instead of a tweet, didn't threaten "fire and fury," and avoided calling Kim Jong Un a "wack job." The Guardian reports on the scary morning had by residents of Japan, who were awoken around 6am Tuesday by a government missile warning on their phones. They were given less than 10 minutes to get to a shelter or sturdy building as sirens and special broadcasts blared. The missile test impacted US markets, with the Dow dropping more than 100 points Tuesday morning, Reuters reports. The stock market would recover by the afternoon as the threat passed. Korea expert Stephan Haggard tells the Washington Post that Tuesday was another example of how "weirdly conservative" Kim Jong Un is—carrying out provocative actions with just enough restraint to avoid an actual response. For example, pointing the missile toward Japan, not Guam. Finally, Russia's deputy foreign minister blamed the US and South Korea for Tuesday's nuclear test and came out against further sanctions against North Korea, saying they haven't prevented missile tests in the past and won't in the future, Newsweek reports.