Stoopid Stuff

Kim Jong Illin'

Once again, the entire world has it's collective panties in a bunch over the actions of North Korea and their Amazing Steampunk Nuclear program. Perhaps it's time to have a grown-up conversation about this.

First, let's understand the reasons behind this nuclear test. Certainly , having a few nuclear weapons will always serve as an effective deterrent to foreign attack or invasion. Once the international community is convinced that you have the bomb, any saber rattling they do in your direction can be safely ignored as hollow and perfunctory. But the international community was convinced by the first North Korean test, back in 2006, so what is the justification for this one?

It's never a real good idea to try to determine the thought processes of the legendarily unpredictable, some might say unstable Kim Jong Il, but one obvious trend that runs through all of his provocations is a cry for respect. As the leader of an isolated, insular nation with no economy to speak of, unable to feed it's population or influence international events, Kim has found the only way he can demand attention is to act in a warlike, threatening matter. To create the perception that North Korea is a threat, a force to be dealt with as a peer. And right down the line, the leadership of the US, Japan, South Korea and Europe all react as frightened mice, calling him a "threat to international peace and security" and offering to immediately begin talks to find a way to make the big bad Kim Jong Il stop threatening them.

This is nonsensical. Exactly who is North Korea threatening, and how are they doing it? Their atomic weapons have a short history of not being very robust, they have no real method for delivering them outside their own borders and other than it's symbolic nature, they don't really need an atomic bomb at all. For many years now, North Korea has protected itself from foreign attack by effectively holding the 25 million people of greater metropolitan Seoul hostage. Seoul sits right on the DMZ between the two countries, and North Korea has it surrounded by thousands of artillery pieces, rocket launchers, missile batteries and armored assault units. It is accepted as doctrine that before they could be rolled back, the North Koreans will have destroyed the third largest city in the world and killed hundreds of thousands, if not a million civilians. With or without nuclear weapons, this threat is enough to shield them from outside military intervention, and they know it well.

The two nuclear tests they have undertaken have not been particularly awe inspiring for their effectiveness or competence. The first test is generally acknowledged to have been what weapons experts like to call a "fizzle", where the weapon either does not reach criticality or it "pre initiates" and very little fissile matter is converted to energy. The second test, while almost certainly a fission explosion, is being rated in the neighborhood of 4 kilotons, about a fifth of the Nagasaki bomb of the same general design. A pretty large explosion as explosions go, but not even on the scale for typical atomic blasts.

It's time for the rest of the international community to stop panicking every time Kim demands attention. North Korea is a nuclear power, and unless they can be persuaded to give up their weapons, there is nothing in the world that's going to change that. They are a genuine threat to South Korea, and to a much lesser extent Japan, and not at all to America. Considering their geopolitical location, they cannot even be accurately recognized as a regional power. If they want talks, fine, have talks. If they want aid, well, that can be part of the talks. But the US should make it clear that from where we sit, WAY over here on the other side of the Pacific, they are welcome to their nuclear weapons and we aren't going to either attack them for having them or offer them any kind of substantive reward for giving them up. We just don't care. Let China carry that ball for a while...

posted by mikey @ 3:29 PM