India just tested a ballistic missile that can hit anywhere in China

By Greg Walters
India successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile Thursday capable of delivering a warhead to the northern regions of China.
The test follows worsening relations between the two nuclear-armed giants.
India fired off an Agni-5 three-stage missile from a mobile launcher on an island in the Bay of Bengal, the government said in a statement.
India’s Defense Ministry hailed the launch on Twitter as “a major boost to the defence capabilities of our country.”
The test was India’s first since a tense border standoff with China that started in June and lasted 10 weeks, during which soldiers from both sides stared each other down over a parcel of land claimed by both China and Indian ally Bhutan.
In December, Beijing said India “violated China’s territorial sovereignty” after an Indian drone crashed on the Chinese side of the border.
India said the drone had simply experienced technical problems.
Thursday’s test was India’s fifth launch of the Agni-5 over the past six years.
Before Thursday, the most recent was in December 2016.
The Agni-5 has a range of 5,000 kilometers, or about 3,100 miles, according to the ministry's tweets. The distance from India’s capital, New Delhi, to China’s capital, Beijing, is 2,348 miles.
India’s ballistic missile program is “fundamentally… a means to deliver nuclear weapons to deter both Pakistan and China,” according to an analysis by Washington’s Center for International and Strategic Studies.
India’s pursuit of mobile launch technology and missiles capable of delivering multiple warheads “can be thought of as responses to developments in the Chinese arsenal,” according to CSIS.

Axis of Evil

Trump: China appears to have 'no impact on Little Rocket Man'
By Makini Brice, Andrew Osborn

Little Rocket Man is seen as the newly developed intercontinental ballistic rocket Hwasong-15's test was successfully launched, in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang November 30, 2017.

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW -- U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed a Chinese diplomatic effort to rein in North Korea’s weapons program as a failure on Thursday, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Beijing was doing a lot, but could do more to limit oil supplies to Pyongyang.
In a tweet, Trump delivered another insulting barb against Kim Jong Un, who he called “Little Rocket Man” and a “sick puppy” after North Korea test-fired its most advanced missile to date on Wednesday.
Trump’s tweets further inflamed tensions reignited this week after North Korea said it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile in a “breakthrough” that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons whose warheads could withstand re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere.
“The Chinese envoy, who just returned from North Korea, seems to have had no impact on Little Rocket Man,” Trump said on Twitter, a day after speaking with Xi Jinping and reiterating his call for Beijing to use its leverage against North Korea.
Tillerson on Thursday welcomed Chinese efforts on North Korea, but said Beijing could do more to limit its oil exports to the country.
“The Chinese are doing a lot. We do think they could do more with the oil. We’re really asking them to please restrain more of the oil, not cut it off completely,” Tillerson said at the State Department. China is North Korea’s neighbor and its sole major trading partner.
Tillerson has stubbornly held out hopes for a return to dialogue if North Korea shows it is willing to give up its nuclear weapons program.However, Tillerson may not remain in his job long, with disagreements with Trump over North Korea being one factor.
On Thursday, senior Trump administration officials said the White House was considering a plan to replace Tillerson with Mike Pompeo, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he still had confidence in diplomatic efforts on North Korea and that the United States would be “unrelenting” in working through the United Nations.
In spite of Trump’s warnings that all options, including military ones, are on the table in dealing with North Korea, his administration has stressed it favors a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
Trump has pledged more sanctions in response to the latest test and, at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting late Wednesday, the United States warned North Korea’s leadership would be “utterly destroyed” if war were to break out.
“This administration is focused on one big thing when it comes to North Korea, and that’s denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a regular White House briefing.
“Anything beyond that is not the priority at this point,” she said, responding to a question on whether regime change was on the administration’s agenda after Trump’s recent tweets and a speech by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

LAVROV REJECTS U.S. CALL
Lavrov pointed to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises planned for December and accused the United States of trying to provoke Kim into “flying off the handle” over his missile program to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country.
He also flatly rejected a U.S. call for Russia to cut ties with Pyongyang over its nuclear and ballistic missile program, calling U.S. policy toward North Korea deeply flawed.
In a call with Trump on Thursday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the missile launched this week was North Korea’s most advanced so far, but it was unclear whether Pyongyang had the technology to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and it still needed to prove other things, such as its re-entry technology.
A White House statement said Trump and Moon reiterated their strong commitment to enhancing the deterrence and defense capabilities of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and added: “Both leaders reaffirmed their strong commitment to compelling North Korea to return to the path of denuclearization at any cost.”
North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles under Kim’s leadership and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September.
It has said its weapons programs are a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade.
The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention.
Previous U.S. administrations have failed to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and a sophisticated missile program.
Trump, who has previously said the United States would “totally destroy” North Korea if necessary to protect itself and its allies from the nuclear threat, has also struggled to contain Pyongyang since taking office in January.

Grand bargain with China over North Korea would make U.S. a paper tiger

As frustrating as it may seem, our long-standing strategy of containment and deterrence toward North Korea remains our best hope.
By Michael Auslin

With North Korea’s latest test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, one apparently capable of reaching the U.S. West Coast, the American foreign policy community is struggling to find a way — short of war — to end the threat from Pyongyang. 

In the media and behind closed doors, some are suggesting that the U.S. should approach China for a grand bargain.
The idea is deceptively simple: China would intervene in North Korea, most likely by removing Kim Jong Un from power and installing a puppet in his place. 

In return, the U.S. would withdraw or significantly reduce our forces in South Korea and potentially forces farther afield in Asia.
This may sound like an effective, realpolitik means of breaking a decades-long stalemate. 

After all, American presidents have been saying for years that China is the key to solving the North Korea puzzle. 

Such a pact would force Beijing into taking action rather than offering platitudes. 

It would also end the charade of American sanctions, which are regularly watered down or undercut by China and Russia. 

Most of all, it would rid the world of Kim — a brutal, dangerous despot — and end his family’s absolute rule.
But in reality, a grand bargain with China is likely to destroy America’s global influence, making it impossible for Washington to maintain stability in strategic areas, particularly in Asia and Europe. Indeed, merely proposing an agreement of this sort would make the U.S. into a paper tiger and compromise American credibility in Asia and around the world.
A grand bargain would effectively transfer America’s dominance to China. 

No matter how the White House spun such a deal, world leaders would infer that the U.S. had gone hat in hand to China. 

Recognizing China as the true foreign power on the peninsula, South Korea and other Asian nations would tilt inevitably toward Beijing. 

It’s also possible that South Korea and Japan, among other countries, would decide that they had no choice but to develop nuclear weapons for their own national defense.
Moreover, having seen the U.S. kowtow, Beijing would likely take a more assertive posture in the South China Sea and push Washington further, demanding a more comprehensive drawdown of American military forces from East Asia. 

Even if Washington refused to buckle, Sino-U.S. relations would enter a period of heightened tension and antagonism, undoubtedly encouraging both Moscow and Tehran to double down on their destabilizing behavior.
In short, a bargain would spell serial diplomatic failure for the U.S. 

As frustrating as it may seem, our long-standing strategy of containment and deterrence toward North Korea remains our best hope.

This strategy will test our patience, but there are a few policies the White House can adopt to make its position more credible.
First, Washington ought to acknowledge openly that North Korea is a country with weapons of mass destruction that can strike not just other Asian countries, but also the continental United States. Washington also needs to end the fantasy of North Korean denuclearization, which, short of all-out war, will never happen. 

That will at least free up American diplomats from endless, meaningless negotiations. 

It is better to be feared by Pyongyang than held in contempt for our willingness to believe that it might one day give up its nuclear program.
Second, the U.S. should announce an assured destruction policy in response to any use of nuclear weapons by the North. 

If Pyongyang has no intention of using its weapons, then we have little to worry about. 

But if Kim is tempted to do so, our threat may give him pause, or create rifts within the elite that could result in Kim being neutered. 

This move would also outflank any attempts at nuclear blackmail by Kim, since Washington would make clear that the use of nuclear weapons would result in the complete destruction of his regime.
Finally, the Trump administration would be wise to commit to a comprehensive missile-defense program in order to defend against North Korea’s relatively limited, though lethal, ICBM capability. 

The cost of exploring all possible means of missile defense, including air-based and space-based directed-energy weapons, is a small investment next to the potential of a catastrophic war.
Acknowledging our diplomatic failures and taking these steps would increase our chances of containing North Korea. 

The alternative — a misguided and rushed grand bargain with China — would do little to end Pyongyang’s threat, and almost certainly would spell the end of American global primacy, leaving the world a far more uncertain and unstable place.