Here is what we know about North Korea's nuclear capabilities and motivation.
Who is in range of its missiles?
The Hwasong-15, North Korea's furthest-reaching intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), could theoretically travel about 13,000km. This potentially puts the whole world within range, except for:
Latin America
Antartica
This theoretical range was estimated based on the Hwasong-15 performance in a test-launch on November 29, when it flew for about 53 minutes before landing in the sea.
Earlier in July, North Korea's test-launched the Hwasong-14, with a theoretical range of 10,400km. The missile flew for about 45 minutes before landing in the Sea of Japan.
On September 15, North Korea's also tested its mid-range Hwasong-12 missile which travelled about 3,700km over Japan, and has a range potential of 4,000km, which includes Guam, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean.
Can the missiles be shot down?
The US, South Korea and Japan are equipped with anti-missile systems that could potentially intercept and destroy ballistic missiles fired from North Korea, although missile intercept failures are common.
The US' anti-missile system was declared ready in 2004, but since then many intercept tests have failed.
South Korea has six Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) batteries deployedin Seongju, south of Seoul, and Japan is also equipped with the Patriot and the Aegis anti-ballistic missile systems.
North Korea claims that it can mount miniaturisednuclear warheads on its missiles, but these claims have not been independently verified.
To launch a nuclear attack, North Korea would need to produce nuclear devices small enough to fit on its missiles - this is not known to have yet been successfully developed and tested.
In March 2016, North Korea's KCNA news agency released a photo of Kim Jong-un in front of a small, ball-like object which it said was a miniaturised nuclear warhead.
In September 2017, KCNA released a photo of the North Korean leader inspecting what it said was a hydrogen bomb that can be loaded on an ICBM.
Undated photo of Kim Jong-un released on September 3, 2017. [KCNA/Reuters]
How many nukes does it have?
While North Koreaassertsit will keep building up its nuclear arsenal in "quality and quantity", US officials estimate it has 60 nuclear weapons, whereas independent experts estimate it has enough uranium to produce six new nuclear bombs a year.
In September 2016, Siegfried Hecker of Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC, estimated that North Korea produced enough highly enriched uranium to make six additional nuclear bombs a year. Hecker had toured North Korea's main Yongbyon nuclear facility in 2010.
Experts and governments estimate plutonium production levels from tell-tale signs of reactor operation in satellite imagery.
Does it have the H-bomb?
In September 2017, North Korea carried out its sixth nuclear test, this time detonating what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb (also known as an H-bomb).
The yield of the nuclear blast was estimated at about 100 kilotons, and was first detected as an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude with a depth of 23km.
The tremor was also felt in China, 400km from the test site.
An H-bomb can be 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.
In January 2016, North Korea claimed to have detonated its first hydrogen bomb, but nuclear scientists examining the impact of the test questioned if the test was really that of an H-bomb.
North Korea seems to be pursuing the development of nuclear weapons capability on its own.
Its nuclear programme started in the Soviet era with the construction of a nuclear reactor in Yongbyon in 1965, while it's first successful nuclear test was carried in 2006.
North Korea carried its sixth nuclear test in 2017 at the Punggye-ri site.
The experiment had been expected from April. Satellite imageshad shown workers pumping water out of a tunnel believed to have been being prepared for a forthcoming nuclear test, US monitors had said.
North Korea has a rich source of fissile material, both plutonium from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and highly enriched uranium from other sites, US-based researchersclaim.
Although the Yongbyon nuclear facility was built with help from Soviet engineers, the Soviet Union and China have denied supplying North Korea with nuclear weapons or helping it to build them.
China fought alongside the North Koreans in the 1953 Korean War, but in the interest of political stability in the region, claims to strongly oppose North Korea's nuclear weaponsprogramme.
Pakistan and India have both been linked to North Korea's nuclear programme.
In 2004, Pakistan's lead nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was put under house arrest for transferring nuclear technology, including centrifuges, to North Korea and other countries.
In a 2016 UN reportaccused an Indian technology institute of violating sanctions on North Korea by providing specialised training on "space instrumentation" to a North Korean student later involved in the Unha-3 rocket launchin 2012.
Why does it test nuclear weapons?
Analysis of the North Korean government's statements suggest that the leadership in Pyongyang sees in nuclear weapons the following benefits:
1. Guaranteeing security of the state
2. Economic development and prosperity
3. Gaining respect and prestige in the international arena
In April, North Korea's vice foreign minister said: "We've got a powerful nuclear deterrent already in our hands, and we certainly will not keep our arms crossed in the face of a US pre-emptive strike."
Pyongyang suspects that the annual joint drills between the US and South Korea are a rehearsal for an invasion of North Korea.
North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Choe Myong-nam, referred to those drills to justify his country's nuclear pursuits: "It is because of these hostile activities on the part of the United States and South Korea that we strengthen our national defence capability, as well as pre-emptive strike capabilities with nuclear forces as a centrepiece."
North Korea also accusedthe CIA of plotting to assassinate its leader Kim Jong-un, while CIA Director Mike Pompeo announced a dedicated Mission Centre for the "serious threats ... emanating from North Korea".
North Korea has not gone to war with any country since 1950, but has threatenedto launch a "great war of justice for [Korean] national reunification" and to attackthe US mainland in "full-out war... under the situation where the US hurts the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] by force of arms."
Following UN sanctionswhich North Korea considered a "violent violation of our sovereignty", Pyongyang has also threatened to attack Guam.
The Korean Peninsula was divided after the World War II in 1945. Nearly five years later, North Korea invaded South Korea, starting the three-year Korean War. The war ended in 1953 with an armistice (not a peace treaty) which means that North Korea is still technically at war with South Korea.
The US has 28,500 troops stationedin South Korea, while the Korean Peninsula has been divided by a 4km-wide demilitarised zone stretching 250km along the border.
This year, several shows of force and provocative threats have been exchanged between the US and North Korea since the joint military drillswith South Korea began in March.
On August 29, four South Korean fighter jets bombed targets in North Korea after its latest ballistic missile test-launch while in September, it simulated an attack on North's latest nuclear test site.
North Korea has defiantly carried out missile test-launches despite regional and US condemnation and continues to develop its nuclear weapons capability.
"In this season of people offering money to behead others over depictions of history, Aisi Taisi Democracy drops the new song about the forever-in-conflict phenomenon. Share it with ten people and Lord Macaulay will appear in your dreams to deliver his fake-speech."
Aisi Taisi Democracy - a comedy-political-satire group that features National award winner Varun Grover alongside Indian Ocean's Rahul Ram, and stand-up comic Sanjay Rajoura - have yet again hit all the right notes with their latest song, titled,
"The History Song".
The song emphasizes on how the history is being re-told and distorted at convenience in our country. With its catchy tune and cheeky lyrics, the song sums up the political discourse right now.
From Rajasthan government’s rewriting the outcome of the Battle of Haldighati to the on-going debate over Padmavati, to RSS and BJP, Aisi Taisi Democracy covers it all.
Performed by Rahul Ram and written by Sanjay Rajoura and Varun Grover, the song is currently being shared by many on social media.
At sea: Costs involved to sustain ‘heightened’ maritime activity are immense.
MARITIME : Playing the Great Game
BY Sandeep Dikshit
THE three years of the Narendra Modi government have seen a shifting of the goal posts of the Great Game in South Asia. The British navy’s muscle at one time brooked no contest; hence the maritime domain posed no challenges. The British instead played the Great Game on terra firma, for it was here that it suspected a challenge, especially from Russia and, for a brief time, when Napolean planned march to India till he ran aground in Egypt.
For most of the time, Independent India conducted the Great Game on land: keen interest in Afghanistan and Nepal, the Bangladesh war, the annexation of Sikkim and even its military intervention in Sri Lanka was a short sea-hop away. But for the intervention in the Maldives in 1987, India kept away from dipping its toes in the maritime domain though 90 per cent of its trade, including all oil supplies, came from the sea.
There was a good reason for the aversion. India had no axe to grind beyond the Malacca Straits. Neither did it need to foray much into the western Indian Ocean: there never has been any disruption of oil supplies from Arabia to warrant a preemptive naval presence. It, however, kept its ethnicity-based diaspora links alive with Mauritius and the Maldives by occasionally handing over used military hardware and kept ships deployed in the Gulf of Aden to tackle piracy.
The Modi government promises to revolutionise this somnolescent state of affairs. It has made much of a berthing arrangement for its ships with Singapore. On his visit to Seychelles, Mr Modi had come away with a solemn assurance of being given an island on lease for “developmental purposes”. There is little doubt it would evolve into a military foothold for India.
More than his other third world Asian colleagues, Mr Modi has taken to heart frequent US exhortations for India to pull its weight in the region. There was enough on India’s plate anyway: its humanitarian mission in Afghanistan, the constant prodding by Pakistan and China, its foray into Africa and, of course, the usual bread and butter of international relations that a middle power like India was fully stretched to cope with due to its abysmally small diplomatic corps and an asset-starved Navy.
The Manmohan Singh government wisely kept most of US homilies on a slow flame: it backed out from a quasi-naval alliance with Japan, Australia and the US; maintained a calibrated intensity of ties with Vietnam; and the file on the three military pacts with the US kept shuffling between the ministries and the PMO.
Now, as the Navy Chief put it, warships and aircraft are deployed from the Gulf of Aden to the Western Pacific on an almost 24x7 basis. He justified this philosophy because it ensures a high degree of presence, visibility and situational awareness in important maritime regions across the globe.
But what are the costs involved to sustain this heightened maritime activity? Apart from the usual expenditure on personnel and fuel, besides the increased wear and tear of assets, massive capital expenditure upwards of Rs 1 lakh crore may be required to match words with deeds.
However, the Modi government is missing a trick by not interweaving naval muscle with exploitation of economic opportunities. It may be treading the same path as the British when they made financially ruinous military forays into the badlands of Afghanistan as part of the Great Game in the 19th century with no commensurate financial returns.
Since Mr Modi is benchmarking the Indian Navy’s forays with those of the Chinese navy, it would be worthwhile to examine how both compare in extracting money from the military investment. On its Pacific coast, China stepped up deployment when India was investing all its vigour in facing off with its army on the Doklam plateau. Beijing’s testing of its military prowess on the Pacific coast was not meant only as a signal to Japan, but also to avert the possibility of a possible US-Japan interdiction of its supply routes of oil from a massive, newly-minted terminal at Vladivostok in case Sino-West ties nose-dived.
While India imports or has substantial foreign inputs in its high-end naval assets, China’s complete mastery over submarines has allowed it to innovate in underwater robotics that is useful for the offshore petroleum industry and the mining of undersea metals. China is well on its way to extracting much sought-after minerals from a UN-allotted 75,000 sq km of seabed for poly-metallic nodules. It is not the only player. Canada will mine sulphide resources while Korea, Japan and the US have also invested in deep-sea prospecting.
In sum, like the Europeans who used the navy as a battering ram to open unwilling economic doors, the Chinese are also marrying security deployment with economic returns: the oil-rich South China Sea is a prime example. Its more ambitious Maritime Silk Road too has an economic approach.
India, in contrast, may soon find itself in an overstretched defensive position, struggling to retain its earlier salience.The Maldives — where the Indian Navy once fended off a mercenary take-over attempt — has signed a Free Trade Agreement with China while keeping India in the dark. And this island-nation receives subsidised ration and water from India! New Delhi’s repeated requests to Sri Lanka for taking over the Trincomalee oil tanks and the airport at Hambantota is getting a feeble response. The latest news is that China may even have turned around Seychelles.
No Great Game can be played only by military tools and with no economic returns to boot. India has no economic doors to knock down. Its Navy is good enough to thwart all challenges and has traditionally evacuated Indians in distress on foreign shores or assisted neighbours suffering from a natural calamity. Even in the 16-country ASEAN Plus it is considered the most reluctant on a free trade agreement. Had India been a big power, Mr Modi’s military vision in the high seas would have been called imperial overstretch. Currently, he seems to be locking the country into permanent antagonisms with no commensurate returns.
