Summary
To many who have studied how nuclear strategies actually work, it's conceivable North Korea could escalate to a nuclear war and still survive.
North Korea doesn't have an unlimited supply, and they aren't easy or cheap to build.
The trigger for North Korea could be unusual troop movements in South Korea, suspicious activity at U.S. bases in Japan or – as the North has recently warned – flights near its airspace by U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers out of their home base on the island of Guam.
If Kim deemed any of those an imminent attack, one North Korean strategy would be to immediately target U.S. bases in Japan.
If "no" actually is the answer, then North Korea has a chance – though slim and risky – of staving off a full-scale conventional attack by the United States to survive another day.USE 'EM OR LOSE 'EMKim isn't paranoid.
So North Korea has a very strong incentive to escalate fast, before all is lost.
North Korea is believed to have an arsenal of perhaps several dozen nuclear weapons, growing by maybe a dozen or so each year.
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