So North Korea may have tested a nuke, the world is in a tizzy, the US is vowing not to be intimidated, Harper is yammering again, talk of economic sanctions abounds, and every (Right)WingNut in the western hemisphere is talking about Jong Il threatening America with a nuclear missile if they don’t come to the table.
Point #1: The world needs to get used to the fact that as long as any country in the world has nukes, other countries that don’t will want them, pure and simple, there is no way around it - especially if a non-nuke country is a non-western country that feels threatened by a western nuke-enabled country.
Point #2: The US can (and no doubt will) vow this, that, and every other thing, just a little while ago didn’t The Decider vow that America would not tolerate a nuclear North Korea? It’s all pointless rhetoric and chest thumping.
Point #3: Harper needs to sit down and shut up, his constant ‘me to, me to, me to’, crap is starting to wear more than a bit thin
Point#4: Economic sanctions are only effective if the government in the country the sanctions are levied against actually gives a rats ass about the state the people they represent live in — somehow I don’t think that Jong Il falls into that category. He, like other dictators and corrupt governments before his, will do just fine regardless of the level of any sanctions imposed against North Korea; so when you are talking about sanctions make sure you keep that in mind, you are pushing a course of action that will only hurt an already repressed people.
Point #5: Regardless of what the (Right)WingNuts say I have not yet found a statement from Jong Il directly threatening to attack the US with a nuclear missile.
– and for the “oh yeah, well what do you propose to do about it then?” crowd that will no doubt put in an appearance after this post, look up a bit and reread the title; the world will just have to deal with a planet that includes a nuclear North Korea, just like it deals with a nuclear Pakistan, a nuclear Russia, a nuclear Israel, a nuclear America, etc, etc, etc.
The obvious WingNut response that comes to mind is to “Nuke them into the Stone Age” before they have the chance to develop a delivery technology for their nukes. In a black and white world, as long as you can ignore the unimaginable loss of lives, this works plenty fine. However, in the non-B&W world, China lives just a few miles away from DPRK and there’s no doubt that a Rising China would not look too kindly on a radioactive crater within walking distance of their side door.
Plus, what if “we” miss. Oops, sorry about that South Korea, I guess you don’t need to worry about those civilians that live next to the DMZ anymore.
Regime change was proposed, but the problem is, at the first hint of such action, Kim Jong-Il could go shooting his nukes willy-nilly. Similar deal for SL’s sanctions argument - if Jong-Il doesn’t care about his population, and he senses his imminent demise, he might be more likely, and have less checks preventing it, to launch a nuclear strike.
You’re damn right, SL, what the world needs to do now is deal with another parameter in our nuclear deterence game … and then there were 9.