Nukes have nothing to do with the independence of nuke-free countries. It's not like either any of the nuclear club countries can threaten, say, Chile, with nuclear attack if they don't do whatever it is they want. Limited-scale nuclear war would still be a disaster in many ways (political, ecological, economic, cultural, risk of becoming a wider nuclear war, ...), so it can't happen.
Small countries lose independence mainly by having to participate in the larger trade and global economy: others, especially bigger countries, have enormous leverage.
Pick a small country, any small country outside the nuclear club. It will be a lot easier to force that country to do something it'd rather not using economic threats, or at most the threat of conventional warfare, than threatening nuclear attack.
>Nukes have nothing to do with the independence of nuke-free countries. It's not like either any of the nuclear club countries can threaten, say, Chile, with nuclear attack if they don't do whatever it is they want.
No, but it's the opposite. The countries not having nukes can be easily pushed aside and be invaded (like Iraq, Libya, and so on) in ways countries with nukes cannot.
Maybe. You need a big nuclear arsenal and credible delivery vehicles. A few nukes is not enough, as NK is finding out -- a few nukes just makes you a bigger target. A few ICBMs with a few nukes is not enough because we have missile defense.
For nukes to buy you independence you need lots of them, lots of ICBMs/SLBMs, and if you don't have quite enough then you need some allies who have many more. NK doesn't really have allies. Russia won't be defending them. China likes to use NK as a bargaining chip, but they won't again go to war over it.
They are enough. With showing to the world "we can blow shit up if we want, especially the very near South Korea", they have the leverage to do whatever the f..k they want. If the US (or other Western countries) attempt to repeat Iraq/Libya, they'll blow up Seoul. Basically, they liberated themselves from any kind of pressure from the USA.
That, in turn, allowed NK to actually think about meaningful peace talks with South Korea. Of course, the US will still participate in the talks, but with a lot less leverage over NK - so NK will not feel coerced by the US. (Of course, SK will feel coerced a bit more, but at least in terms of nuclear weapons they're still on the upper edge given the US-SK alliance)
At least, that's what I hope: that both countries find a way back together (or at the very least, a durable peaceful coexistence), and that the NK civilian population will no longer be suffering for their leadership.
The US has a ton of leverage, mainly over China. NK can destroy Seoul with conventional bombardment (they have something like 7,000 artillery pieces that will take longer to find and destroy than they will to go through most of their shells). They don't have enough nukes to get past American missile defense. If we don't emplace missile defense around Tokyo, then I suppose they could nuke Tokyo, and that would suck, but then what? then KJU dies. And the thing KJU most wants: to live and rule, but mostly to live.
>If we don't emplace missile defense around Tokyo, then I suppose they could nuke Tokyo, and that would suck, but then what? then KJU dies. And the thing KJU most wants: to live and rule, but mostly to live.
You'd be surprised what a leader want or doesn't want, especially in a time of national crisis. To "live" is more of a preoccupation for mere mortals.
If you were right that nuke count doesn't matter then the U.S. and the USSR would never have built thousands of nukes.
QED
But still, you'll persist, so let's think it through.
Let's say that NK has 3 nukes. Let's say the U.S. has 1,000. Let's say all 1,003 nukes have the same yield, let's say 400K tons of TNT. And let's say both countries have ICBMs and can deliver all their nukes anywhere in the world in ~30 minutes.
Now let's say that NK strikes first and its warheads somehow get past U.S. missile defenses (maybe three nukes is what they have after missile defense). That's about 1% of the U.S. population dead. (Aside: the U.S. thenceforth will never again allow a tinpot dictator to get nukes -- from that point forwards the U.S. will undoubtedly first-strike any country trying it, and Russia and China will just have to deal with it.) Now the U.S. responds and uses only a few nukes to wipe out Pyongyang, Yongbyong, and related sites -- no missile defense there.
You might say this is an ecological disaster, but it's a blip in comparison to all the past atmospheric testing, so we'll survive.
Total tally: similar numbers of dead on both sides, about 1% of Americans, and about 12% of North Koreans.
Also affected: China's trade. You know what happens to that: total blockade by the U.S. Navy, as well as a prohibition on all Allies (big and small) trading with China, as well as canceling all American debt to China. You think a POTUS wouldn't do this if he/she had 3 million dead Americans to think about? No. Any POTUS who didn't do this would get deposed soon and the successor would impose this.
Do NK's nukes work as a deterrent? Maybe, but I think not. The U.S. has a larger nuclear deterrent vs. NK, and larger economic deterrent vs. China. KJU can die and not make that big a dent in the U.S., while the U.S. can wipe out KJU's ruling party and then some, and then too cause the deepest Depression in China, along with all the civil strife you might expect, and probably regime change in time.
It is absolutely in the interests of any POTUS to a) convey all of this to China (though that's not entirely necessary; Xi can count chips too), b) appear mad enough to ignore NK's deterrent. DJT can appear MADder than KJU. You don't have to buy it -- only Xi and KJU do, and I think recent events say they got the message.
In order to have a viable nuclear deterrent NK really needs enough return-strike nukes to get tens of them past U.S. missile defense. That's a lot of nukes, and there's not a lot of room in NK to put them without the U.S. being able to obliterate them in a first strike. So what NK really needs is that many nukes deliverable via SLBMs, and that's decidedly beyond their reach.
Yes, it's entirely possible (likely even) that KJU is aiming to pull a bait-n-switch at the coming summit with DJT. It's even entirely possible (but unlikely) that DJT will take a lesser deal out of desperation to save face. But I don't buy the latter, and I think in the end KJU will cave and give us what we want: unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Small countries lose independence mainly by having to participate in the larger trade and global economy: others, especially bigger countries, have enormous leverage.
Pick a small country, any small country outside the nuclear club. It will be a lot easier to force that country to do something it'd rather not using economic threats, or at most the threat of conventional warfare, than threatening nuclear attack.