Comments on: North Korea shipped chemical reagents to Syria, possibly via China

By: Bob Violence

Bob Violence — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:01:35 +0000

Re: Taiwan and nukes — um, I assume everyone here is aware who just won re-election there, right? No harm discussing it as a long-term option, but we’re looking at another four years before the possibility of a government that might even consider such an idea, presuming Taiwan and China haven’t already “reunified” by then.

By: Adam Cathcart

Adam Cathcart — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:15:34 +0000

The Shen Dingli piece at Nautilus has been moved; I believe this is the October 3, 2006, piece you were referencing: http://www.nautilus.org/publications/essays/napsnet/forum/security/0681Shen.html/

Nice work as usual.

By: Greg Andrews

Greg Andrews — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:54:34 +0000

GI Korea’s comment above makes sense, but it, and Mr. Stanton’s writing in this thread assume that at this time, Taiwan does not ALREADY have nuclear weapons. All informed observers would strongly doubt that Taiwan has made any moves toward this goal, of course, and yet . . . Taiwan has the means, motive, and opportunity to make it happen. Taiwan does know something

http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf115_taiwan.html

about nuclear power and engineering. If they did not feel like dealing with the engineering and production hassles, they would need to find a vendor with the merchandise for sale. An almost impossible task, because they would need a vendor in their similar situation – tiny, highly prosperous, whip smart, razor sharp survival instinct motivated by history and psycho-bully neighbors, etc. I simply can’t think of a vendor which fits the description . . .

By: GI Korea

GI Korea — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:36:41 +0000

Considering that the North Koreans were able to secretly build a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 before the Israelis bombed it this latest news comes as no surprise. I doubt the UN’s investigation is going to lead to anything other then maybe a stern letter.

As far as allowing Taiwan to build nuclear weapons there is validity to the argument but my concern would be that the Chinese would use this as an excuse to attack the island before they were able to build them. This is especially true if the US and the west attack Iran to stop them from building nukes. The Chinese could use the same rationale to attack Taiwan to stop them from building nukes.