The last year was one of near-constant North Korea missile testing. Dozens of launches have put the region on edge and are driving an increasingly militarized response from South Korea and Japan. Meanwhile, China has done much to enable this state of affairs by its lackadaisical attitude toward North Korea.
Though North Korea’s nuclearization efforts have faded from the headlines, the country has continued to improve its capabilities and can now plausibly reach any location in the continental United States with a nuclear weapon. In the absence of a deal to curb its nuclear and missile programs, North Korea’s arsenal will only grow more lethal.
Russia unleashing the destructive power of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine would be catastrophic, but not solely because of the physical damage the weapon would cause. Instead, Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon would be catastrophic because it would cause us to enter a new world, one transformed in three permanent ways.
