On: North Korea announces successful hydrogen bomb test

[maxlybbert]

I think the road to destabilization would be for the US to give nuclear weapons to South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and then tell China to deal with it.

[bzbarsky → maxlybbert]

Getting Japan to accept them might run into some internal political issues; there's historically been some opposition to nuclear weapons in Japan. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Non-Nuclear_Principles for example.

That said, if Japan decided it _wanted_ nuclear weapons, it can almost certainly produce them itself very quickly (order of 6-12 months according to most estimates I've seen). They have the raw fissile material due to their longstanding nuclear power plant program, and the general knowhow and infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapon_progra... has some more data.

[yongjik → maxlybbert]

"Hey friends, because I trust you guys, I prepared this special gift. I hope you guys like it."

"Oooo a present! What is it?"

"It's a T-shirt with a giant logo reading "FUCK YOU CHINA", with a red bullseye painted on the back. Like it?"

[evanb → maxlybbert]

South Korea and Japan are already under our nuclear umbrella. It would be a major change in our nonproliferation stance to give weapons out.

[dogma1138 → evanb]

Well accept them into NATO and you can give out nukes like candy under the strategic arms sharing clause.

[maxlybbert → evanb]

That's the point. I don't want destabilization. But if that's your goal, you can get it pretty quickly without any need for a sneak attack by conventional forces.

[GordonS → maxlybbert]

I rather doubt that further proliferation of nuclear weapons would do the world any good, either now or in the future