North Korea now making missile-ready nuclear weapons, U.S. analysts say

As reported by the Washington Post, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the North Korean regime has not only succeeded in crossing another threshold toward full nuclear weapons status. It is the miniaturization of nuclear warheads, to fit in the cone of an ICBM. The North Korean regime also recently conducted successful tests of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles with ranges capable of reaching much of the United States. The North Korean regime also has more nuclear weapons than previously thought, up to 60. This news comes two days after the 72nd commemoration of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, and one day before the 72nd commemoration of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki. The last hurdle remaining, the article reports, is an ICBM nose cone capable of withstanding the heat of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, which U.S. intelligence agencies estimate will be accomplished by late next year.

The article quotes Siegfried Hecker, "director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the last known U.S. official to personally inspect North Korea’s nuclear facilities...who visited North Korea seven times between 2004 and 2010 and met with key leaders of the country’s weapons programs."

“The real threat,” Hecker said, “is we’re going to stumble into a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.”

The article reports "The options said to be under discussion [within the Trump administration] ranged from new multilateral negotiations to reintroducing U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, officials familiar with internal discussions said." (emphasis added)

As recently reported by Mark Hertsgaard in The Nation, we need to get Trump's finger off the nuclear button! (Take action -- urge your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative to support the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017, introduced in January by Senator Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California.) And, we need to abolish nuclear weapons, before they abolish us!

Negotiations, Not War: Green Party's Jill Stein Warns About U.S. Escalating Tension with N. Korea

As reported by Democracy Now!:

Tensions are again rising in the Korean Peninsula between the U.S. and North Korea. On Friday, North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that experts say is capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States. North Korea says the test was a warning to the U.S. to stop imposing sanctions against North Korea. In response to the test, the U.S. flew two B-1 bombers over the Korean Peninsula and tested its Alaska-based THAAD missile defense system. The U.S. has deployed a similar THAAD missile defense system to South Korea, despite objections from local residents. We speak with former Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein, who just returned from a peace delegation to South Korea. Dr. Jill Stein was the Green Party’s presidential nominee in 2016 and 2012.

See the full interview.

And see all of Democracy Now!'s recent coverage of the North Korea-U.S. conflict, at this link.

Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming from Inside the White House

As reported by Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair.

The article begins:

Donald Trump’s secretary of energy, Rick Perry, once campaigned to abolish the $30 billion agency that he now runs, which oversees everything from our nuclear arsenal to the electrical grid. The department’s budget is now on the chopping block. But does anyone in the White House really understand what the Department of Energy actually does? And what a horrible risk it would be to ignore its extraordinary, life-or-death responsibilities?

It includes a lengthy discussion of one of the single gravest threats to the United States: nuclear weaponry.

This includes not only nuclear weapons accidents within the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal itself, but also the risks from North Korea's dramatic recent advances in nuclear weaponry -- including the risk that U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will stumble into a war, thanks to their bellicose rhetoric back and forth.

Another high risk discussed in the article involves issues swirling around Iran's nuclear power program. As the article makes clear, the biggest risk of all is that President Trump and his administration will rip up the successful Iran Nuclear Deal. This could result in Iran developing nuclear weapons. Or it could result in a war between the U.S. and Iran, in a supposed attempt to prevent nuclear proliferation (which the Iran Nuclear Deal is actually accomplishing currently).

Trump warns China U.S. could go it alone in pressuring North Korea after apparent ICBM test launch

As reported by the New York Times, Donald J. Trump warned Chinese President Xi that the U.S. could strike out alone in pressuring North Korea, after yesterday's missile launch that many analysts fear was a successful test of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), capable of reaching Alaska.

The U.S., China, and North Korea each have nuclear weapons arsenals (although the U.S.'s dwarfs the other two, especially North Korea's), and itself regularly has tested ICBMs for decades (as from Vandenberg Air Force Base in CA, to the Marshall Islands).

Let's not test the explosion of a 21st century nuclear arms race

Op-ed by Kathy Crandall Robinson, senior fellow at Women In International Security, published in The Hill.