july 27, 2005
Playing Nuclear
Chicken with North Korea
At the six-nation nuclear disarmament talks in Beijing
today the U.S. told North Korea to dream on after
Pyongyang demanded that we end our nuclear defense of
South Korea as a precondition for negotiations over the
North’s rogue nuclear program. Watch now for the
predictable North Korean propaganda folderol about drowning
us in a “sea of fire” or something.
(Yawn.)
North Korea has threatened us with destruction so many
times now that the Boy Who cried Wolf is starting to look
credible again.
But this administration has been playing the destitute
North Korean regime exactly right, and it’s been
a pleasure to observe. The grown-ups are definitely
in charge on our side of the negotiations, and that’s
a relatively new development. Thanks to successive U.S.
administrations, especially Bill Clinton’s, North
Korea has been living testimony to evil prospering while
good men were doing worse than nothing; they were aiding
and abetting.
North Korea is the spoiled adolescent of Asia, too big
to spank, enabled by a codependent parent in the form
of the international community, its trusty broken moral
compass firmly in hand. The regime, with its concentration
camps, genocide, and ghastly human experiments, might
have collapsed by now, had the world and the Clinton Administration
not propped it up with billions in all sorts of aid.
But I guess it was either hand over the goods or drown
in a sea of fire or something. Gimme a break.
North Korea could probably destroy the South Korean
capital of Seoul, which is within range of North Korean
artillery and rocket batteries. And that’s no small
thing. But Pyongyang knows that if it were to attempt
to take out Seoul, it too would be obliterated in a succession
of brightly colored mushroom clouds.
And something we learned in talking to the Russians after
the Cold War is that communists have a special problem
with being obliterated. The Soviets were arguably
more afraid of a nuclear confrontation than we were. Maybe
because when you’re a dialectical-materialist,
there’s not supposed to be an afterlife.
Keep calling North Korea’s bluff, and watch ‘em
squirm.
