Majority Of U.S. Citizens Would Approve Preventive Nuclear Strike On North Korea
25
June, 2019
Today
is the 69th anniversary of the Korea War. The war has not
ended.
It is the U.S. that rejects to sign a peace treaty. The continued
state of war is
the reason why North Korea acquired nuclear weapons and
the means to deliver them.
To
turn North Korea back into a non-nuclear state necessitates an end of
the war, a peace treaty, and security guarantees.
But
could the U.S. be relied on even when a peace treaty is signed? Or is
it inherently too bellicose to ever be trusted?
When
North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un will read this
report,
he will likely conclude that the later question must be answered in
the affirmative:
More than a third of Americans would support a preemptive nuclear strike on North Korea if that country tested a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States, new research has found, even if that preemptive strike killed a million civilians.
The survey of 3,000 Americans was conducted by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and British research firm YouGov, and asked people to consider a scenario in which North Korea had tested a long-range missile and the U.S. government was considering how to respond.
The
survey question is a bit weird as North Korea already
tested a
"long-range missile capable of reaching the United States".
Most did not want their government to launch a preemptive strike, but a large minority supported such a strike, whether by conventional or nuclear weapons.
“For many of these hawks, support for an attack, even in a preventive war, does not significantly decrease when the story says that the United States would use nuclear weapons that are expected to kill 1 million North Korean civilians,” the report found.
“As we have previously found, the U.S. public exhibits only limited aversion to nuclear weapons use and a shocking willingness to support the killing of enemy civilians.”
The
use of a nuclear weapon against North Korea would have even higher
support after it happened:
They were also asked whether they would “approve” of such a strike if the president ordered it.
People would “rally around the flag,” the survey found: while 33 percent of the public would prefer a nuclear strike that would kill 15,000 North Korean civilians, 50 percent said they would approve if one took place.
It
is not astonishing that many of these people are so called
'conservatives':
Republicans expressed greater support for military strikes than Democrats, and Trump supporters voiced even stronger approval: a majority of them preferred a military strike in five of the six scenarios described in the survey.
Among supporters of the death penalty, support for a nuclear strike actually rose from 38 percent to 49 percent when the number of expected North Korean fatalities increased from 15,000 to 1.1 million; one such respondent explained that “it’s our best chance of eliminating the North Koreans.”
It
would require a nuclear bomb with a 1 megaton TNT equvilent to create
a million dead in Pyongyan. The city would be totally destroyed.
More
than twenty five million people live in North Korea. Those U.S.
citizens who were surveyed and support to strike them, seem to
believe that the North Korean survivors of a preventive strike could
not or would not retaliate.
They
of course can and would do that. The U.S. ballistic missile
defense does
not work.
It would not stop a North Korean missile targeting Seattle,
Washington DC or anything between those cities.
With
a deeply
disturbed Donald
Trump in the White House, who's supporters would support him using
nukes, Kim Jong Un will of course conclude that North Korea will have
to keep ts deterrent. Other countries will think of building their
own.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.