 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to discuss about the recent ICBM missile test by North Korea. I have Prabir Purkaista who is the founding editor of NewsClick with me. Welcome Prabir. Prabir, yesterday night's launch of ICBM missile by North Korea. How do you analyze the launch? Well, it is very clear that now the entire United States, entire North America is within North Korea's missile range. Now, questions may still remain whether they, how much payload it was carrying, whether it could be used to carry a missile, this missile could be used to carry a nuclear payload. All these questions would still be there. Have the master re-entry, that means when the missile enters from the height, it enters back into atmosphere, then will it burn up or will it be able to withstand the re-entry? Creates a lot of heat. Therefore, what is the quality of its heat shield? These are questions that still remain. Though it does appear that with the hydrogen bomb test, the fact that North Korea can miniaturize its nuclear weapons is very much on evidence. So I would say, yes, I think we have to admit that the only question mark still is on the heat shield because both times they had a high trajectory. So the heat shield did not withstand the temperatures. But again, we must understand the standard trajectory has less heat than a re-entry taking place after it has been fired at a large height. As you know, these are tests. Therefore, they are not fired on the standard trajectory. They are fired on a high trajectory to see what the range would be if they were fired on a standard trajectory. But it also means therefore, the heat shield has to withstand a much higher duty, much higher temperatures and so on. So that is now the only question mark regarding whether North Korean missiles can reach the United States with nuclear payload. The question that we have is who is going to test this? Do you really want to risk an exchange in order to test whether they have mastered this heat shield or not? I would say that what we have said even when the North Korean missiles showed the capability of reaching Miami that this is really in some sense game over that you cannot not accept that North Korea now has capability of reaching the United States with missiles. And if you believe in deterrence theory, which I do not, if you believe in deterrence theory, which the United States seems to believe in, then North Korea has reached deterrence with the United States. The United States therefore, is now in a quandary. Do they risk a nuclear exchange in order to take out North Korea's missile capability and really making shall we say the entire Korean Peninsula and Japan and parts of China and parts of Russia into ones which would suffer from the consequence of such an exchange? Or do they negotiate? I think this is clear that technologically the question is not when. That question is now over and as we have argued even in the July test as well as the following test, we have to accept North Korea has reached the ability to hit new United States. And if that was what they did, what the deterrence they were looking for, I think that we have to now accept they have reached that stage where they have the ability to even hit the east coast of the United States. The situation in the Korean Peninsula has reached now reached at a dangerous stage and we see that the whole situation has turned up in two a crisis after Donald Trump became the President of United States. Do you think that Trump regime in United States will now try to handle situation differently? Well, let us put it very honestly that this is not a crisis of only Donald Trump's making. This is a continuity of the US policies which has not reached even till today. A settlement of agreeing there is a formal ceasefire in Korea. Instead of that, there is a temporary arabist which is supposed to continue till today. There is no attempt to reach an engagement with North Korea which accepts its independence, accept that it is right to its sovereign state. And it has always been at the risk of future invasions. Various military, shall we say maneuvers which are carried out at this borders either twice a year or once a year, which are extremely provocative with over flights on Korean airspace which are with strategic bombers. So, you are always saying that we can bomb you to oblivion. So, given that kind of policies which has been a bipartisan policy, it has been followed under Obama, it has been followed under earlier Bush and it has been followed now under Trump as well. So, this policy has not changed. What has changed is Trump's rhetoric that he believes in foreign policy through Twitter and not through a serious engagement. While one can question, should the United States president who has the ability to destroy the world should be really engaging in Twitter dialogues with all the people in the world, is that a viable foreign policy option for president of the United States? Well, we may question that. The reality is that the set of options that Trump has are very limited and this has been the options that have been there for the last two, three years in the making. It has happened on his watch, but this is in the making. So, now the question is that does United States return to the negotiating table or it continues on further sanctions which they imposed very recently. Do they decide to do more provocations, more military maneuvers? Do they really do that? I think the problem that we have is not so much the intention of the United States which may itself be questionable, but assuming that that's really not the intent, they don't really intend to go to war, but the fact that they provoke regularly means even a small mistake by either side can turn into a shooting war and shooting war with nuclear weapons would be not only destructive for the region, but destructive for the world. All we know seems to indicate that any nuclear exchange anywhere in the world would have consequences for the entire world. So, this is precipitating a situation where we need cool heads on both sides and we certainly need the United States to tone down its aggressive stance. As we have seen, North Korea did have a two-month pause of its missile program. The United States responded by first imposing more sanctions. It responded by more military maneuvers with South Korea with others. It also had air maneuvers again with strategic bombers. So, the message the United States seems to be still sending to North Korea is surrender or else. Now, if North Korea has invested this much in nuclear technology in ICBMs, it does not mean, it does show that they are not going to surrender. So, therefore, this whole trajectory of surrender or else, which is the only trajectory the United States has followed and which Trump is sort of ratcheting up, I think is very dangerous for the world. And both China and Russia have cautioned both sides time and again that they should not really make the things worse by either tests or by maneuvers. And both sides need to pause. As we saw, North Korea did pause without saying so, they had a two-month pause. And we saw in this period, the United States did not. So, I think that's the, ultimately, that's the issue. How much more you can take Brinkmanship and both sides are taking Brinkmanship to a level that a small misstep could lead to a global disaster. I think that's the situation we are in. Thank you, Praveen. Thank you for watching NewsClick. Please log onto our website, www.newsclick.com.