It's Chess

When last we left the North Koreans (my literary way of covering the return of overwork and the heat wave that once again overpowered my PC's cooling system all weekend long), they had gone through with the "test" of their Taepodong-II ICBM that we had warned them not to test, and it had either (a) exploded by accident, (b) exploded on purpose, or (c) been shot down by U.S. anti-missile batteries.

Whichever one it was (and if it was "c," I'm sure the New York Times will be reporting it just as lickety-darn-split as they can), the, um, fallout from this incident hasn't exactly allowed for de-escalation. Instead, the crisis is maintaining, and even increasing, its high-rolling boil.

Down at Turtle Bay, America's representative to the United Earth Council, John Bolton, had this to say:

This is precisely what the Security Council is designed to handle and we hope the council will rise to the occasion. We think we can proceed in a calm and deliberate fashion, but we hope we have a strong and unanimous signal from the council that this kind of behavior is - is unacceptable.

Ah, "this kind of behavior" is "unacceptable." Of course, the test itself was called "unacceptable" by President Bush himself just the week before, and that didn't stop Kim jong-il from launching anyway. And if the NoKo "hermit king" wasn't deterred by the ex-unilateralist cowboy, 'tis unlikely he'd give a fig what the Security Council would have to say about it, even if it were united in opposition to him. As it is inconceivable that John Bolton does not know.

The President, his weak bluff called, was still talking, in a suitably chastened tone:

"What these firings of the rockets has done is, they've isolated themselves further, and that's sad for the people of North Korea," Mr. Bush told reporters in the Oval Office after a meeting with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. "The five of us - Russia, South Korea, Japan, China, and the United States - spoke with one voice about the rocket launches, and we will work together to continue to remind the leader of North Korea that there is a better way forward for his people," he said. "I also strongly believe that it is much more effective to have more than one nation dealing with North Korea. It's more effective for them to hear from a group of nations rather than one nation."

Evidently not, since Bush's multilateral appeasement hasn't come close to stopping the bleeding that Bill Clinton's unilateral appeasement started. About the most they've accomplished is to goad Kim to abandon six-party negotiations and make his berserker intentions more obvious, as though that (1) wasn't already abundantly obvious and (2) made any difference in stiffening "international" resolve to "disarm" the NoKos. But it hasn't, and cannot, persuade Kim to give up his nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles, which are the only things keeping him both in power and a player on the global stage. A fact that, again, the President must know.

It is a dance of horrifying fascination, this repetition of past history. The Japanese were reportedly "livid" over Kim's "firecrackers" splashing down right off their coastline, but all they did was demand "sanctions" against the North Korean regime. Which, as you probably expected, the Russians and ChiComms blocked, even though at least one of the offending projectiles nearly struck Russian territory. Meanwhile the usual foreign policy accordians on the Left and the "realist" Right were fretfully poised to cave yet again:

The last thing the U.S. should do is reward North Korea's missile provocation with direct talks. Yet before [last Tues]day's missile tests, that is exactly what Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar advised. Former Clinton officials Ashton Carter and William Perry have accused President Bush of ignoring diplomatic options with Pyongyang, even as they also propose a pre-emptive military strike.

Quite nimble, those former Clinton officials, huh? Here was ex-National Security Advisor and classified national security document thief Sandy Burglar's contribution on Larry King Live:

Negotiation is not capitulation. Negotiation is face-to-face discussions to determine whether or not there is something that we can reach that is satisfactory to us and it's important not only because we may be able to reach an agreement but we will never have the support of China and South Korea for more coercive measures unless they are convinced that we have exhausted the negotiating option.

Twelve years of negotiation goes way, way beyond capitulation to the realms of prostration, humiliation, and self-parody. Twelve years isn't just exhaustion, it's masturbatory impotence. It's craven cowardice. It's singularity-magnitude denseness. It's insane futility.

Former SecState Aunt Madeleine, who once went dancing with Dear Leader, took the same tack:

The North Koreans have managed to get the world's attention and although the Taepodong failed, it certainly has given the North Koreans an opportunity to learn a lot more about what they have in terms of their missile technology and, frankly, Larry, I think the problem here is that we are watching the failure of five years' worth of American diplomacy. I'm very worried about it, and I hope very much that we do have a review of our North Korean policy.

Yeah, it's failed, but not because we didn't toady the pot-bellied, unrequited film director enough. As the Wall Street Journal op-ed makes clear, it was only a lack of time that prevented the pudgy little troll diplomat from putting Bush in an even more dire situation than the one he inherited:

[C]onsider what happened the last time Kim launched a missile, sending the Taepodong-1 over Japan in 1998. The Clinton administration went back to the negotiating table and came close to concluding a missile version of the 1994 nuclear agreement. As part of that deal - negotiated by then-State Department Counsellor Wendy Sherman - the U.S. would launch North Korean satellites in return for the North's pledge to stop developing long-range missiles.

Given Pyongyang's abysmal record at keeping its promises, the more likely outcome would have been the theft of U.S. technology and the strengthening of the North's missile program. As late as mid-December 2000 White House sources were even suggesting that President Clinton might visit Pyongyang to conclude the deal. Negotiations stopped only when the Clinton administration's time expired.

Give the Clintonoids a few more months, and perhaps that Taepodong-II incinerates Honolulu instead of malfunctioning - assuming it did.

As it was, when George W. Bush rolled into D.C., pre-empting Kim jong-Il as he eventually did Saddam Hussein was not a practical option. Faced with the choice of stalling for time or fighting a limited nuclear war in the Far East, and especially with 9/11 focusing our attention elsewhere in the world on a different enemy, Dubya went to the diplomatic four - or, in this case, six - corners.

However, as the WSJ observes, that, too, has produced inoptimal consequences:

The real story may be, as Nicholas Eberstadt argues in the Wall Street Journal.... that Kim Jong Il has concluded from recent U.S. actions toward Iran and North Korea that Mr. Bush is now as diplomatically pliable as Mr. Clinton. [emphases added]

The consequences of appeasement flow far and wide beyond the immediate situation at hand. I have never understood why the Bush Administration went the John Kerry route regarding Iran's drive for nuclear weapons, especially with the North Korean experience as such a stark lesson. Now we have a situation in which the mullahgarchy did draw the correct lesson from Kim's actions and is reaping the same rewards, and Bush's repetition of Clinton's mistakes with the Iranians is encouraging the NoKos to bully us even more.

Case in point:

North Korea has three or four more missiles on launch pads, and the defense minister of South Korea warned that further tests were possible, South Korean media reported Thursday.

"There is a possibility that North Korea will fire additional missiles," Yonhap news agency quoted South Korean Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung as telling lawmakers.

The missiles are either short- or medium-range, reported Chosun Ilbo, one of South Korea's largest newspapers. It cited an unidentified senior South Korean official. Another major newspaper, JoongAng Ilbo, carried a similar report.

The North has also barred people from sailing into some areas off the coast until July 11 in a possible sign of preparations for additional launches, Chosun Ilbo said.

Another provocation is the virtually unreported monetary war the NoKos are waging against us:

North Korea wants direct talks with Washington to resolve all of the peninsular issues, but that can't happen while Kim continues to operate his huge counterfeiting operation that produces American currency fakes by the millions.

You know, that term "provocation" I used above sounds familiar somehow. I can't quite place it...wait! Yes, I do remember now - Iran is following the same strategy, always probing, always jabbing, advancing to see where they will finally meet American resistance and still finding such resistance elusive. And I cannot help but observe that North Korea moved front and center to confront the United States shortly after Iran's loony frontman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went to ground a few weeks back to "consider" the West's latest crapload of pointless concessions to bribe them to give up their nuclear ambitions. Almost as though the two "rogue" powers were coordinating their actions. And what else do they have in common? Russia and Red China are running interference for them against the U.S. down at Turtle Bay.

Calling it a conspiracy would be too melodramatic, but there does seem to be an anti-American alliance at work here, with Iran and North Korea as the pawns by which the Sino-Russian axis aspires to "turn a knight and topple a king." In the mean time, while we probably are "stuck" with the Kim regime for the time being, it is imperative that we topple the mullahgarchy while there's still time (assuming it isn't already too late) and start paying more attention to the burgeoning Castroite axis in Latin America. The fewer customers North Korea has for the only export they have (nuclear and missile technology), the less trouble they can make for us elsewhere, and the fewer resources they can trade for in return.

The alternative is to be surrounded from afar in a rapidly shrinking world by lilliputians with Gulliver-sized rope, and a long and bloody road back from "checkmate."