Quote:They're not bluffing. They just aren't threatening an actual nuclear attack. North Korea's real threat is complete and utter destabilization of the region. The country operates under a shoddy framework of illusion and propaganda and it's in our best interest to maintain that illusion. Pyongyang knows this, so everytime they want something they threaten to bring the whole thing toppling down. Were the fragile system in North Korea to fall you would have a humanitarian crisis unlike anything we've seen. The great majority of sustenance the countries population recieves comes from the government's blackmail. Take out the government and you'll have millions upon millions of refugees flooding into China and South Korea. You'll have the fragmented and essentially autonomous military forces chucking whatever they can find onto Seoul. And even if you get past that you'll have a mad land dash from China to take and control the strategic ports currently on North Korea land.I'm not sure I'm following the argument. The North Korean government is threatening to destroy themselves, thereby spitefully destabilizing the region at the low cost of the one thing they have in the entire world?
They threaten and bluster because they have nothing to lose, not because they're actually willing to do anything about it.
(Edit: They are, of course, willing to let tens of thousands of their own citizens die, so that's certainly a credible threat. What a wonderful country. But they have no credible threat outside their own borders, unless they think suicide is a viable strategy.)
-Jester