The tension between North Korea and other nations is escalating, with the rogue nation's dictator, Kim Jong-un, recently ordering his military to prepare its nuclear weapons for launch.

For a former Pentagon official, this may just be an empty threat made by a country which will potentially be wiped off the face of the Earth if it decides to launch a nuclear attack against any other nation.

Former Deputy Undersecretary for Defense Jed Babbin, who served under the administration of President George H.W. Bush, said other countries will not hesitate to pulverise North Korea if it decides to use its supposed nuclear weapons.

"Their country would be vaporised immediately... One decent nuke over there, and the country is just gone," Babbin said in an interview with WND and Radio America.

He added that it is easy to launch an offensive that will destroy North Korea completely since its resources are concentrated in its capital, Pyongyang.

"Quite frankly, there ain't much to vaporise. That place is in the Stone Age. The only place that's even lit at night is the capital city of Pyongyang," he said.

Babbin also doubts North Korea's claim that it is ready to launch nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).

"It's a big deal to develop a nuclear weapon," he said. "It's a big deal to develop an ICBM. However, to get an ICBM mated with a small enough nuclear weapon that will survive the G-forces in the takeoff of a missile and actually be able to re-enter the atmosphere and successfully detonate a nuclear weapon, that's probably several years beyond what these guys can do."

The former Pentagon official further said that Kim Jong-un's empty threat is just clearly his way of responding to the sanctions imposed by the United Nations on North Korea for its supposed rocket launch.

"They've got some bigger restrictions now," he said. "Ships going into and out of North Korea are going to be stopped and inspected. At least that's the theory. They've lost the opposition of the Chinese to those sorts of sanctions. The Chinese went along with it, and the U.N. Security Council was unanimous in putting these sanctions in."