The North Korean regime, which has no interests other than its own survival, clearly views its ability to strike the United States with nuclear weapons as being some sort of a guarantee that it won’t go the way of the Libyan government. I’ve noted before that this analysis is faulty, and that nuclear weapons didn’t exactly win the Cold War for the Soviet Union. There is another historical piece to this puzzle, however.
There is little doubt that George W. Bush genuinely (if incorrectly) believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. It would have been impossible for him to sell the Iraq War to the American public without that belief. And so, the US went to war with Iraq even though its government fully believed that it would be confronting an enemy with weapons of mass destruction. In effect, the illusion of those weapons caused the war and the downfall of Saddam Hussein. He would probably still be alive today if he had come clean and made it clear the weapons did not exist.
In light of this, does it really make sense for Kim Jong-Un to put such faith in his nuclear program? I think not.