Complete nuclear disarmament is impossible in the world's current state. It's not like we as humans will be able to sweep it under the rug and pretend it's all going to go away. The West and the East both have nuclear weapons - if one goes then the other goes with them. Kim Jong-il probably wants America gone but of coarse he will have to answer to the Western block if he wants his way. I see nuclear weapons as his bargaining chip for outsider resources which while wrong, is the only way for him to maintain power along with economic and people's stability without losing what pride his nation has left.
If there were no nuclear weapons in existence then this would come as a shock to me but alas this world is already full of them. To be brutally honest, I am more afraid of America than North Korea for a multitude of reasons. I live in Europe and America holds a massive idealist swing not just in this region but around the whole world. The US says "jump" and we say we'll do it twice over. What i'm really afraid of is that other countries will be swayed by America's power and ideals which could result in catastrophe. If NK and the more extremist Arab nations strike, I am fearful that they won't just strike into the heart of America but its allies as well like South Korea, Britain, Japan and Israel. I couldn't care less if North Korea has WMDs. What I care more about is if the US is stupid enough to intervene and others swiftly follow.
Iran is much more of a threat in my eyes. The president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is an extremist Muslim who, as previous posters have pointed out has claimed the Holocaust never happened and wants to wipe Israel and the USA of the world map. My fear is that he can easily sway what his peoples think and build warheads with Washington and Jerusalem's name on them. I doubt this predicament with Iran would be around today if Reagan hadn't intervened with the Iran-Iraq war (the CIA secretly sold weapons to Iraq to help win the war which eventually ended in a stalemate). Maybe we [the West and America] would of been in a better position if we just stayed out of it but alas America's lust for financial gain has a stranglehold on their decisions (as quoted from Wikipedia below)....
"Reagan decided that the United States "could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran", and that the United States "would do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran"
While it doesn't exclusively mean money would be gained (Iran's political state was extremist and anti-US in the first place because of their leader at the time), it was still stupid to intervene as no threat was immediate to the US apart from a few words from their crazed cleric leader. It is similar to todays leadership but now it is different - Iran are well on their way to having nukes and are willing to use them no matter how insane the reasons.
Another example is the Vietnam War. While I do think the war was pointless since the US technically lost, it was for a good cause which was defending the invaded country from the North - much like the Korean War too. Unfortunately the way the US handled this war was idiotic. To gain passage and troop placement in Cambodia, the CIA helped supply rebels with weapons who had a wish to overthrow the peaceful government and in place install a new leader. The result? The slaughter of over a million Cambodian peoples at the hands of one of the most ruthless dictatorships the world has ever seen. The US' own lust for a won war resulted in a neutral country torn to shreds. And they lost Vietnam....
These are the effects of the US on the world. They can sway the tide of ideals and wars at the press of a button or the utter of a few words which to me is scarier than having 100 nuclear warheads in my back yard. I hate to bring games into the equation but I agree entirely with Metal Gear Solid 4's trailer....."the US has exported too much power and now she's paying the ultimate price." The game is an accurate portrayal of what the predicament is today and what hopefully (pray to God) will not come around in the future Middle-East.
In my opinion, as harsh as it may sound towards Americans on this board (i'm sorry if I seem offensive to you but I don't mean to be. I like the American peoples but dislike the ideals of the US government), North Korea's weapons will not destroy this world; the US has a higher chance of doing so. Not through weapons but through actions and words.Â
The pen is mightier than the sword -- in America's case at least.
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