Sanctions will not work because Russia and China are helping North Korea’s nuclear missile program, accelerating capabilities to threaten the United States, a process that might be termed “hyper-proliferation”.

Russian generals told the Congressional EMP Commission in 2004 that the design for Russia’s Super-EMP weapon “accidentally” leaked to North Korea, that there had been “brain drain” of Russian scientists to North Korea, and that the North could probably test a Super-EMP warhead “in a few years,” a prediction that apparently came true in 2006. A single Super-EMP warhead could blackout North America for months or years and kill millions.

North Korea’s transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) for mobile Nodong medium-range missiles is the TEL from Russia’s SS-20 missile, banned by the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

North Korea’s KN-08 mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is from China. The only nations in the world with mobile ICBMs are Russia, China, and North Korea -not even the United States has mobile ICBMs.

If North Korea has more sophisticated bomb designs, using smaller amounts of plutonium for example, some analysts estimate North Korea could have over 100 nuclear weapons. This estimate is consistent with North Korea’s nuclear test program, which has conducted four overt nuclear tests with reportedly a fifth test planned. Is it really plausible, if North Korea has only 10-20 A-bombs, they would expend on testing up to half their scarce weapons?

Some of the implications of hyper-proliferation are that Russia and China are part of the problem, not part of the solution; that hyper-proliferation by these actors is a weapon in the New Cold War.