NoKo Nukes Evoke Big Yawn

There is an old saying: If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is present to hear it, does it make a sound? That adage seems dismayingly applicable to the North Korean nuclear test of a week ago, with a difference or two. One is that "the international community" most definitely heard Kim jong-Il's "tree." The other is that it is pretending not to have heard the implications of what they did hear.

The first thing the reclusive Stalinist dictatorship did upon officially letting their nuclear genie out of its bottle is threaten nuclear blackmail against the United States if the Bush Administration didn't stop blocking their economic war against us:

A North Korean official threatened that communist nation could fire a nuclear-tipped missile unless the U.S. acts to resolve its standoff with Pyongyang, Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday.

"We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes," the unnamed official said on Monday, according to a Yonhap report from Beijing. "That depends on how the U.S. will act."

Yonhap didn't say how or where it contacted the official, why no name was given or why it delayed reporting until Tuesday. ...

"We have lost enough. Sanctions can never be a solution," the official said. "We still have a willingness to give up nuclear weapons and return to six-party talks as well. It's possible whenever the U.S. takes corresponding measures."

The official didn't elaborate on what the corresponding measures would be. But one of them is believed to be a long-standing North Korean demand that Washington lift financial restrictions imposed on the communist regime for its alleged counterfeiting and money laundering.

The Kim regime followed up that rant with another similarly atomic-linked warning against any imposition of sanctions for its nuclear test:

North Korea said Wednesday it would respond with "physical" measures to counter U.S. pressure against the communist regime after its claimed nuclear test.

"If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. The North didn't specify what the measures would be.

"We were compelled to prove that we have nuclear weapons to prevent the increasing threat of war by the U.S. and protect our sovereignty and survival," the North said, criticizing an alleged nuclear threat from Washington and sanctions. "We are ready for both dialogue and confrontation."

Doubtless these threats were targeted at least as much at the American DisLoyal Opposition and its hair-trigger appeasement reflex as the Bush White House. It's not much different from the usual bluster and spittle that issues forth from Pyongyang on a more or less daily basis, really, except that now they've demonstrated the means to actually back it up.

Is Kim bluffing? Some appear to think so. Being an orthodox Marxist would suggest that Kim is a staunch rationalist as opposed to being a gambler. He knows that he can say pretty much anything he wants to us and we won't take the bait, but that if he actually makes good on his rhetoric, his regime - which is to say he - would not last long thereafter. Although if the school of thought that holds North Korea as being a catspaw of Red China is correct - and I believe it is - Kim might believe he has nothing to fear even from an apparently suicidal attack on America.

One thing is certain - nothing short of an all-out NoKo onslaught will move the "international community" off the schnied and actually do something to stop Kim's nuclear program.

South Korea, the most imperiled of Pyongyang's intended victims, didn't so much as bat an eyelash at its archenemy's nuclear test:

The prospects for tough, swift action against North Korea were scuppered yesterday when it became clear that South Korea will not abandon its policy of engagement with its totalitarian neighbour, in spite of North Korea’s claimed nuclear test.

As the US and Japan called for tough punishment for Monday’s test and experts predicted that a second may be imminent, leaders in Seoul appeared to have accepted that they will have to live with a nuclear North Korea — at least until Washington can be persuaded to engage in direct talks with the isolated Stalinist state. ...

Which, as David Frum put it last week, "would be to reward an actual proliferator in order to preserve the illusion that the world still has a meaningful nonproliferation regime."

The catspaw theory was bolstered by the predictable reactions of the ChiComms and their Russkie junior partners:

Diplomats said last night that China opposed US plans for international inspections of all cargo going in an out of North Korea. Beijing also wants any sanctions focused only on North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, and does not want any reference to enforcement under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Russia broadly endorsed the Chinese position.

Even before this week, the US and Japan have favoured the most aggressive action against North Korea, but they have been frustrated by China, South Korea and Russia, which seek a stable continuation of Kim Jong Il’s regime rather than the chaos and refugee exodus that could result from his overthrow.

"Enforcement under Chapter VII of the UN Charter" means the use of military action against North Korea, in case there was any confusion.

The Bush Administration, in response, retreated some on the language of its proposed sanctions resolution - to, predictably, no avail:

The American push to win Security Council backing for tough, swift sanctions against North Korea appeared to be set back by China and Russia on Thursday, in an echo of the obstacles the United States faces in a similar push to punish Iran.

The United States circulated a softened draft resolution to the Security Council in response to North Korea’s assertion that it conducted a nuclear test on Monday. The United States pressed for a vote by Friday, but China and Russia immediately signaled their opposition to critical parts of the measure and said they needed more time. ...

The resolution still cites Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which makes sanctions mandatory and suggests the possibility of military enforcement. China and Russia have consistently opposed Chapter VII enforcement for North Korea.

This is why I do not envy John Bolton his job (which he'll be out of in two months and change anyway, but that's another discussion). When the diplononsense is shoved aside, the bare-bones reality is that Beijing and Moscow will never allow any meaningful penalty to be imposed upon either of their rogue client states (Iran, of course, being the other) because they are prime chess pieces on the global playing field in the shadow war against the United States. By acting through Kim jong-Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the Sino-Russian axis can maintain plausible deniability of direct aggressive intent and keep the U.S. off-balance and its resources diverted to two divergent parts of the planet, as well as avoid focusing American attention and resolve as Osama bin Laden did five years ago.

Given that the Bush Administration has been, for all practical purposes, gelded from any further military action in the Middle East and is back under multilateralist restraints, the ChiComms and Russians can effortlessly and indefinitely checkmate us at Turtle Bay while the mullahgarchy and NoKos get stronger and bolder, and our own position erodes inexorably toward the endgame our enemies seek.

Which is not to say that we have lost all viable options quite yet, as the strikingly constrastual Japanese display of balls and spine harbinged:

The Japanese government decided on a package of additional economic sanctions against North Korea on Wednesday in response to the regime's claim of a nuclear test, including a ban on all imports from the country and the docking of North Korean ships in Japanese ports.

The sanctions are expected to go into effect after they are approved by Japan's Cabinet Friday.

"We will take strong countermeasures," Kyodo quoted Song Il Ho, North Korea's ambassador in charge of diplomatic normalization talks with Japan, as saying in an interview on Wednesday when asked about fresh sanctions by Japan.

"The specific contents will become clear if you keep watching. We never speak empty words," he added.

How's that for some refreshing unilateralism? Its effectiveness can be judged by the belligerent NoKo reaction, which shows they know what Tokyo's action means for their economy:

The sanctions that Japan has imposed have teeth. North Korea can no longer dock its ships in Japanese ports, stripping them of a vital lifeline to hard currency. They normally export clams and mushrooms to the Japanese, who will look elsewhere for their cuisine needs now. North Koreans are barred from entering Japan except for a narrow set of circumstances. Essentially, Japan has closed its doors entirely to North Korea, which leaves the Kim regime with a big gap in its exports - a problem for a country whose economy is already in free-fall.

These Japanese sanctions suggest the seeds of the only viable strategy against the possibility of a second Korean war. As set forth by the aforementioned David Frum, and summarized below, they amount to an east Asian version of the steps Ronald Reagan used to win the Cold War:

***Step up the development and deployment of existing missile defense systems.

***End humanitarian aid to North Korea and pressure South Korea to do the same.

***Invite Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to join NATO — and even invite Taiwan to send observers to NATO meetings.

***Encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and create its own nuclear deterrent.

The first and last steps are key. Even a rudimentary missile shield will negate the threat potential of North Korea's nukes against the U.S., and the nuclearization of Japan would be a serious message not just to Kim but to his ChiComm patron as well. The last thing Beijing wants to see is the local obstacles to its regional hegemonistic ambitions gaining an atomic deterrent. It would be a most effective tit-for-tat move on our part - one could almost describe it as inscrutable.

However, there is another possible angle to the Kim regime's nuclear ambitions - something more insidious and dangerous than the flight of its Taepodong-IIs:

Kim may have decided that the fastest way to get hard currency is to set up shop as a nuclear proliferator, especially since his counterfeiting operations have been shut down by American sanctions on the bank that acted as his fence. Therefore he's willing to risk everything on the notion that the world will do nothing effective to stop him from producing nuclear weapons - and once in production, that he can slip them by everyone to make his sales. [emphasis added]

And we know just the customers that would be first in line, don't we?

Thus do we come full circle back to the same basic dilemma. We can probably deter North Korea from using the nuclear weapons Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (indirectly) gave them, but we have no way of stopping their distribution to al Qaeda or Hezbollah, or Hugo Chavez, for that matter. And we won't be able to deter the Iranians from directly using them at all.

Pandora's Box has indeed been opened. And no matter what we do or don't do to contain its whirling, conflagrating contents, some very difficult and bloody times lie ahead of us - something for voters to bear in mind when they go to the polls three weeks and change from now.

UPDATE: Some South Koreans may have been scared smart after all....