Fallout From North Korea’s Nuclear Test
There’s plenty we still don’t know about the underground explosion — presumed to have been a nuclear test — that shook North Korea on Tuesday, February 12. We don’t know if it was a plutonium-based nuclear test (like North Korea’s previous two tests in 2006 and 2009) or a uranium-based test (the apparent bomb fuel of choice for North Korea’s partner in proliferation, Iran, as well as a dual bomb track for North Korea).
Sticklers for certainty can even cavil over whether it was a nuclear test, since there have been no reports yet of any nuclear signature — though it was certainly a large explosion.
But here are some things we do know. We know that North Korea felt free to telegraph last month to the entire world that it was planning another nuclear test, and to issue an in-your-face notification to China and the U.S. when it was imminent. We know that immediately after the explosion, North Korea rushed to advertise it as a nuclear test, and held a televised rally to celebrate (though festive does not quite describe the tenor of the occasion). North Korea also felt free to to threaten that if there is any hostile response from the U.S.:
We will be forced to take stronger, second and third responses in consecutive steps.
How shall we count the dangers of this event?
North Korea is a totalitarian state, in which the regime, to ensure its own survival, not only clung to its brutal ways while an estimated one million or more people died of famine in the 1990s, but orchestrated the distribution of food to starve those deemed least politically loyal. This is a regime that does not hesitate to condemn its own people to be beaten, frozen, and worked to death in its Stalinist slave labor gulag. That’s the character of the Pyongyang government — and when North Korean officials arrive at negotiating tables to seek aid and concessions from the U.S. and its allies, as they periodically do, that is the basis of the power with which they presume to speak for their country.
North Korea has been a vendor of weapons for decades, especially to the Middle East (among the clients: Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Pakistan, Qaddafi’s Libya. Some details of this appear in my article on “North Korea’s Middle East Webs and Nuclear Wares“.) Nor does Pyongyang draw the line at nuclear proliferation. North Korea blew past that one years ago, signing up not only as a dealer within Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network, but also collaborating with Syria’s Assad regime on the construction of an entire clandestine nuclear reactor — apparently built to serve as a plutonium factory — on the Euphrates (destroyed in 2007 by the Israelis, who deserve the world’s thanks for that).
North Korea’s closest partnership in proliferation is with Iran, one of their most avid longtime missile customers. Iran has sent officials to North Korea’s previous two nuclear tests. There are serious questions about whether this latest test was chiefly for the benefit of North Korea, or Iran — whether a proxy test for Tehran, or a display of North Korea’s newest generation of nuclear wares.
What has the world done about all this? There has been a great effusion of words.
North Korea’s test has been condemned by the United Nations Security Council as a “grave violation” of resolutions that were issued in response to previous “grave violations.” The U.S. president has called it a “highly provocative act” and said America will “lead the world in taking firm action in response to these threats.” China has censured; Japan has said it cannot be tolerated. Dozens of countries have chimed in. In the newspapers and online, there has been a profusion of op-eds: credible warnings that North Korea will sell its nukes; observations that it cannot yet land one on the U.S. mainland; debates over whether to try more talks, more sanctions, or some of both; and suggestions that we just learn to live with a nuclear North Korea.
If that’s all there is, it’s all been done before — and here we are, with Iran spinning its centrifuges and North Korea celebrating its latest nuclear test.
North Korea and Iran have plenty of reasons to conclude that they may, with relative impunity, proceed to the goal of stocking their arsenals with nuclear weapons and the vehicles to deliver them. As North Korea has just demonstrated, it is possible these days for one of the world’s worst rogue regimes to broadcast in advance that it plans to conduct a nuclear test, and the basic response of the leaders of the Free World is … to watch, and to talk about it.
The direct dangers should be obvious, though perhaps, as with the rumbles that preceded September 11, 2001, there is a failure of imagination at work here — not because we can’t see this one coming, but perhaps because the effects could be so horrific that a lot of people choose not to imagine quite that far.
The further fallout of these continuing North Korean nuclear tests: a message to other regimes that it is open season for pursuing nuclear weapons.
Who’s next?
Related: Two Republicans are Only ‘No’ Votes Against Condemning North Korea
“The further fallout of these continuing North Korean nuclear tests: a message to other regimes that it is open season for pursuing nuclear weapons”.
Very eloquent . The only nuclear weapons programs BHO seems interested in reducing or eliminating belong to the US and Israel.
If we had any sense at all we’d start rumors that the North Koreans were being paid to spy on and/or sabotage by built-in design defects all the missiles and nuclear components they were selling to Iran.
It’s all well and good to complain that the world has done nothing, but nowhere do I see a better plan offered in this article.
You want more sanctions? North Korea is used to sanctions – why should additional ones cause them to change their behavior?
You want to “put pressure on China” to control North Korea? Why should the Chinese listen, and even if they did, why should North Korea listen to China? They know that China values them as a buffer state.
More six-party talks or direct negotiations between the US and North Korea? Does anyone still think those will work?
Cut off food aid? If North Korea was willing to let millions starve in the past, why wouldn’t they do so again?
Short of going to war, what exactly is going to make North Korea give up their nuclear weapons if they really want to keep them? I don’t think there is an answer, which is why the world can do nothing but talk.
‘Tomorrow might be different.’ – Mack Reynolds, prescient SF author
The is one of the greatly underappreciated insights of our time, a time
when what was impossible a few years ago is merely impractical today,
and will be so easy and affordable as to be a temptation to overuse
tomorrow.
The US is understandably not publicizing its efforts to gain the capability
to build and field an army of Battle Droids that would make Darth Vader
pale a little in fear, but the signs are there, their interest in and
quiet encouragement of the enabling technologies. The only question is
when, and against whom, they will choose to use them.
In the case of North Korea, the ‘impossible’ task is agreed on by all;
Take out the fortifications along the N/S Korea border which currently
hold the South hostage, before they can be employed to destroy the South,
and let the North implode, without even the need to carry out the simple
task of destroying their military.
Hitting one of our cities on the west coast would still be a challenge for the N. Koreans; if only that were the only thing to worry about. An EMP attack would be relatively easy and much more devastating.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/19/north-korea-emp-attack-could-destroy-us-now/?page=all
You think the Clinton’s had the Chinese connection, (donation) how much $ will Obama get for destroying our nuclear weapons, while all along allowing our enemies to strengthen their capabilities.
Oh, I know: Hagel and Kerry are going to be Obamas’s muscle and detour any further nuclear proliferation.
You get what you vote for.
I get this strange feeling that if there is a major naval war in the Pacific, it will be against North Korea. I have thought for years that China would not fight the United States in an open military conflict. There may be some die-hard communist fanatics in China, but they’re not stupid. They are not about to destroy their economy and risk a major social uprising in China by picking a needless fight with the United States. Even all the huffing and puffing over Taiwan seems to be more bluster than real threats. If China really wanted to risk it all by attacking Taiwan, they would have done it by now. I don’t think they will.
But North Korea is a whole different story. Most of the people running North Korea are quite literally insane and care very little about their own people, let alone the lives of the people in South Korea. The leaders in North Korea would not hesitate for a moment to incinerate South Korea if they thought it would enable them to stay in power. THAT is what makes them really dangerous, as well as their desperate need for cash. North Korea’s huge need for hard currency makes them sell all sorts of weapons to some of the worst people on this planet, which goes a long way in de-stabilizing the world.
There still very much is an “axis of evil,” and it runs from Iran to North Korea to Russia and to China. But if a war begins, it will be with North Korea because the North Koreans are probably banking on the fact that the United States would not risk seeing South Korea destroyed as part of the price for standing up to North Korea. And with Obama in office, they may be right.
But if we ARE forced to take an action, it would probably be with a full naval blockade of North Korea. We barely have enough ships to do it, but we probably could, along with much air support from Guam and Okinawa. If the North Korean leadership feels like they are losing their grip on power, espect them to attack South Korea. We would have no alternative but to hit North Korea with everything we had, if for anything else just to stop them from using nuclear weapons. China will then have to make a choice. Go “all in” for North Korea and go to war with the United States, or stand on the sidelines and watch North Korea be destroyed. I’m still thinking China will let North Korea twist in the wind because there is way too much at stake in regards to trade with the United States. And lets not forget what would happen if we did not repay all of our debts to China. That alone would wreck their economy if they were stuck with a lot of worthless paper from us.
Nope, the day of reckoning with North Korea may soon be upon us and I don’t think we’re mentally prepared for it, not after coming out of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a dangerous time now in Asia, but if we don’t stand up to the North Koreans soon, then they will certainly sell more nuclear technology and weapons to the Iranians. Do we reall want to let that happen?
I had to shake my head, when Obama called for the world to take action. Neither the world NOR Obama is going to take any action except rhetoric, for which the world will pay dearly at some date in the future.
China will do nothing. They already have the capability to shut N. Korea down, and refrain from doing so. What we are seeing is a game of China/N. Korea, good cop/bad cop. A con game on the world, which leads me to assume that China is fully on board with its belligerent neighbor.
North Korea is completely misunderstood. North Korea’s number one problem is South Korea. South Korea wants North Korea to remain isolated and cut off from the flow of world commerce. North Korea’s second problem is China. China sticks close by North Korea for a reason, it fears the competition.
This is pure speculation, but North Korea would like most to reach some kind of modus vivendi with the United States that would relax sanctions and give North Korea the same economic opportunities with the US that China has. It is nice to sell missile parts to Iran. If you are North Korea it would be better still to sell consumer goods in Wal-Mart. There is no country on Earth today that could beat the North Korean competition.
If the US and North Korea opened up trade, North Korea would be the Private Equity paradise. A command economy where there is a single point of authority. No pollution rules. Slave labor camps and very cheap wages for the rest of the underemployed economy. What better place to ship US manufacturing plants. I am very surprised this has not already happened. China and South Korea do not want the US and North Korea to talk in private. China and South Korea really do not want the US and North Korea to make nice or reach any agreement that does away with sanction. So North Korea is left to keep blowing up bombs and trying to attract attention.
The obvious signal here is that North Korea wants talks with the United States. North Korea knows where the Private Equity money is. North Korea knows where the Wal-Mart store are.
“There is no country on Earth today that could beat the North Korean competition.
If the US and North Korea opened up trade, North Korea would be the Private Equity paradise. A command economy where there is a single point of authority. No pollution rules. Slave labor camps and very cheap wages for the rest of the underemployed economy. What better place to ship US manufacturing plants.”
Interesting. What you need is a big bogyeman to make this work . Demonize Jewish religion of Moses and the Christian and Islam and you can turn 3/4s of the world into The greater “North Korea” to serve the rd of the Angels in the world figure of speech. Faith in God must be banned
Events in the future can make this sound the rational thing to do. Everyone know Iran will decrease as a threat because who wants to be thought of as dark age inferior man. Man atheist religion with the “bad’ serving the good atheist can be very successful as long as it looks brainy to the leaders
“What has the world done about all this? There has been a great effusion of words.”
Or to put it another way “When all is said and done, more will be said than done.”
I wish I could take credit for that but I read it somewhere years ago. I don’t recall the source.
Korean Christ
“In her numbing account of North Korea, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Barbara Demick observes that what set Kim Il-sung apart among twentieth-century tyrants was his sensitivity to the uses of faith: “His maternal uncle was a Protestant minister back in the pre-Communist days when Pyongyang had such a vibrant Christian community that it was called the ‘Jerusalem of the East.’ Once in power, Kim Il-sung closed the churches, banned the Bible, deported believers to the hinterlands, and appropriated Christian imagery and dogma for the purpose of self-promotion.”
On the radio, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are spoken of in the breathless manner of “Pentecostal preachers.” Miracles follow the leaders around. Seas calmed, fogs that descend to keep them from detection, trees bloom and snow melts: “If Kim Il-sung was God, then Kim Jon-il was the son of God,” his birth marked by the appearance of a star and a double rainbow and a swallow who swooped down to sing about the “general who will rule the world” (45).
When Kim Il-sung died, it was prophesied that he wouldn’t stay dead: “A propaganda film released shortly after his death claimed that Kim Il-sung might come back to life if people grieved hard enough for him” (100)
Peter Leithart blog at first things
Between the old containment strategy and the various conditional engagement policies implemented, North Korea has been decades rejecting them at times and exploiting them for self benefit at other times. Thus, the policies of the U.S., South Korea and et al, have been the longest running failures in Northeast Asia, in our history and continue on today. Its creeping back into a re-boil senario today and short of some new classified strategey, the clouds will continue to darken over the region.