When A Test Isn't Enough

Jane's Defense Weekly reported over the weekend that North Korea still has its Taepodong-2 ICBM on the launch pad, fully fueled, and they're still fully intent on launching it.

Seriously, they're really, really going to. Honest. No-foolin':

For the past six weeks, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) has been preparing to launch what appears to be a prototype TaepoDong 2 ballistic missile. ...

As of the last week in June, it appeared that the Taepo Dong 2 was fuelled and prepared for launch on the command of leader Kim Jong-il, but three questions remain: Is it a ballistic missile or an SLV carrying a second North Korean satellite? Why has it not been launched? Will it ultimately be launched? Whether it is a ballistic missile or an SLV, the issues to be tested during a launch (such as clustering, stage separation, etc) are equally applicable to either system from a scientific and technical perspective.

A successful launch of either will dramatically increase the international prestige – or threat, depending on one’s view – of North Korea. Reflecting differing political views on how to deal with North Korea, the US and Japan have repeatedly identified it as a ballistic missile, while South Korea has suggested it is an SLV.

Of course the SoKos suggest that; they went delusional about the in-reality undiminished threat from the North a number of years ago. Besides, Pyongyang doesn't need nuclear missiles to threaten Seoul when their conventional artillery is more than sufficent to obliterate the ROK from the demilitarized zone. The nukes are for Japan and the US, which have much greater reasons to take the TaepoDong-II seriously.

That said, the latest blusteringly belligerent threat from "Dear Leader" puts the ICBM test in a more familiar context:

North Korea stepped up its anti-U.S. rhetoric on Monday, accusing Washington of mounting military pressure on the regime and vowing to respond to any pre-emptive U.S. attack with an "annihilating" nuclear strike.

The threat of a nuclear retaliation to a U.S. strike was an intensification of the North's customary anti-U.S. vitriol, in which it often accuses Washington of plotting an attack on the country.

Now that's really funny, because there hasn't been so much as a peep out of the Bush White House about coercive measures of any sort being brought to bear on the "reclusive Stalinist regime" over its own threatened ICBM launch. And more than one GOP senator has gone out of his way to push the Administration toward appeasing the NoKos with the bilateral talks the latter has been insisting upon for years.

While the White House still wasn't taking Kim's bait, NORAD did bump up its alert status one level from "Alpha" (low) to "Bravo" (medium), though U.S. Space Command wouldn't offer any details as to why. But it doesn't take much skullsweat to connect these two dots.

It sounds to me like Pyongyang's ICBM "test" wasn't attracting the attention (and fresh aid concessions) they thought it would (and to which they've grown accustomed to extorting out of the West), and feel compelled to up the ante with more fantasized paranoia and the apocalypticism to match. Which, in turn, raises the next logical question: What will Kim do if we continue to ignore him?

Cap'n Ed suggests a logical answer:

JDW expects to see the missile launched. Bermudez points out that Kim has not yet won a political victory, and until he gets one, that missile will likely fly this summer.

Leaving one final point to ponder: Will this bird launch a second NoKo satellite, be tested in international waters without incident, overfly Japanese airspace (again), or be an act of nuclear pre-emption against either the U.S. (less likely) or Japan (more likely) designed to beat us to the imagined punch?

Whichever option it proves to be, we can rely upon one immutable fact: it'll be decided in Beijing, not Pyongyang.