In late-2023, the South Korean National Intelligence Service warned that North Korea was likely “to engage in unexpected military and cyber provocations” in 2024. Then, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un told his people “to prepare for war with the U.S.” in 2024.

Is Kim planning to escalate his cold war on the United States and its allies to a hot war?

Only if doing so serves the “two consistent missions given to the military by the Kim family regime: preserve the North Korean state’s independent existence against any external power, and provide the means for North Korea to dominate the Korean Peninsula.”

But the United States has no intention of attacking North Korea: It has very little to gain and a lot to lose by engaging in war with North Korea. And it has made this attitude abundantly clear for decades by both saying so directly and avoiding potentially escalatory reactions to North Korean military attacks and provocations, fearing North Korean escalation.

So, what is Kim Jong-un trying to accomplish? Kim apparently has a longer-term plan that could explain his 2024 provocations, nuclear weapon production, and threats of war. Several years ago a leaked North Korean document for training senior military personnel described the North Korean plan’s objectives:

The dear supreme commander [Kim] will dominate the world with the nuclear weapons, will make the U.S. apologize and compensate us for decades of bullying our people, and will declare to the entire world that the world’s powerful order will be reshaped by the Juche-Korea, not the United States.

Yes, these objectives sound extreme. How might Kim try to achieve these long-term objectives?

North Korea would not need to become a U.S. nuclear weapon peer to leverage the United States. Consider a future in which North Korea has, say, 300 nuclear weapons and 100 ICBMs armed with nuclear weapons, something that may be possible within 10 years. With such a force, he could overwhelm currently planned U.S. homeland missile defenses and threaten one or more U.S. cities with nuclear attack if the United States does not repeal its sanctions against North Korea. If the United States refuses and Kim does attack U.S. cities, he could then threaten to destroy many more U.S. cities if the United........

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