DURING a televised New Year’s Day speech, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un warned that he has a “nuclear launch button in his desk” and claimed that “the entire United States is within range of our nuclear weapons”.

“This a reality, not a threat,” he said.

US President Donald Trump dismissed his comments, saying “We’ll see”.

But if war between the US and North Korea becomes a reality, “It’s going to be tragic on an unbelievable scale,” said US Defense secretary Jim Mattis in May.

The US says that while it doesn’t want to go to war, it is prepared to “use all necessary measures to defend itself against North Korean aggression,” according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

USA Today reports that the South Korean military estimates North Korea, the fourth largest military power in the world, has some 1.2 million soldiers, along with 4300 tanks, 2500 armoured personnel carriers, 11,000 pieces of anti-aircraft artillery, and 14,000 pieces of artillery and rocket launchers. It is also believed to have 2500 tonnes of chemical weapons.
As a result, Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in the US says the rogue nation should not be underestimated.

“We have to assess that at least for a brief period the North Korean army will fight like tigers with what in their battlefield will be very effective weapons,” he said.

A retired special operations colonel for the US Army, David Maxwell, said that North Korean soldiers are trained to fight to the death — and have been know to kill each other and themselves to avoid being caught.

“The resistance that will occur inside North Korea will make Iraq and Afghanistan pale in comparison,” Maxwell told USA Today.
The US, however, is in a strong position to defend itself if war does break out, reports Newsweek. Despite North Korea’s heavy artillery, America is ranked number one on the Global Firepower Index in terms of overall military capabilities.

With weapons such as the B83 nuclear bomb (which is 80 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima during World War II), B16-12 nuclear bomb (which is highly accurate), Trident II (D5) missile (the most reliable ballistic missile), and LGM-30 Minuteman missile (which can hit a target 9650km away), America holds some of the most powerful artillery in the world.

Undoubtedly, war between two such heavily armed nations would lead to millions of deaths.

And, according to Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster, time to avoid conflict “is running out”.