NK doesn’t have anything to lose by war. South Korea, China, Japan, the US will do almost anything to avoid war.

Now the guy with nothing to lose has nukes.

Everyone is afraid of him. Everyone is tiptoeing around trying to avoid provocation. He has everyone by the short hairs.

Remember, he has nothing to lose, much to gain no matter what happens. Everyone else has much to lose no matter what.

If they shot at an american or japanese or south korean ship, would there be a response? Probably not. If they fired some artilery rounds in Seoul, what would happen? Nothing. If the launched a missile into Japan, what would happen? Nothing.

Oh, the international community would be very very upset. But restraint would be counselled. And heeded.

What exactly does North Korea, Iran and anyone else watching have to lose?

Obama has shown two tendancies. First is to try to outwait his opponent. Second is to focus on his image first.

Interesting times. Extraordinarily dangerous.

Derek

I had forgotten I had this link.

Varelse (from Swedish: “creature”) – pronouced ‘var-ELSS-uh,’ this term refers to strangers from another species who are simply not capable of communication with Homo sapiens sapiens. In the truest sense, they are aliens, “completely incapable of common ground with humanity.” In Card’s view, a meeting with true varelse must eventually, over time, lead to war.

These are the total aliens. The ChiComs don’t quite arrive to this definition. Close, but…

Interesting scenario but what would be the use? Why would the Chinese care to destroy much of their foreign reserves as well as current and future market + there are a lot of Chinese living here.

Self interest is impetus enough for any of the tin-pot actors. The question still in my mind is why would China allow this to take place? Normally, I’d just say incompetence, but the Test and especially the follow up to the Test (repeated missile firings) suggest that there are some other motivations.

“South Korea has said that it will stop only suspicious ships in its own territorial waters, a sovereign right it already has. In addition, the chance that the North Koreans would send ships carrying such materials into South Korean waters is low.”

Has a diplomatic retreat begun? I would have thought that South Korea would have been more ambiguous about this kind of thing. To me this is close to capitulation.

Now back to reality. The recent announcement by NK is more than the threats to gains food, attention and oil. They were emboldened by their successful test. I speculated was a perfect demonstration for the black market to sell nukes. Consider that SK then signed on to the interdict program that was a real threat to catching these shipments to the black markets of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia to name a few. So NK did a predictable move renouncing the 1953 cease-fire and stated that any interdiction would be an act of war and responded in kind. Remember that NK had voided all the SK business contracts and told them to remove personnel. That was clearing the decks. Now watch if SK renounces inclusion in interdiction efforts or not. I would expect the pacifist nature of SK would indicate a failure to catch NK ships. They have the perfect ability since the have the coastal access. But they will just allow those ships to slip through. Even other countries may be hesitant to board a NK ship since that really is an act of war or piracy and don’t want NK threatening them. Now our Navy will do it because our navy is not a bunch of pansies but Barack is so what are his orders? I doubt if we get to know because the media will not ask those questions.

I suggest that we watch the blog Information Dissemination because Galran is very good at catching navy movements and making good guess. If navy units had been ordered to the area. Then we have an implied threat and can also take interdiction steps.
Now if I wanted to distract the US I would get Iran to step up its navy work and threaten Iraqi coastline and Dubai. Of course the news that naval units of Iran and Russia had moved into the Persian Gulf is a good confirmation of that guess.

However the next move is to cover the Gulf from Diego Garcia. Regrettably that has long transit by air to the Gulf but we can cover it from long distance. We have the best long distance capability in the world and we use it all the time despite the cost.

So speculation on what happens next is that Iran acts up in the Gulf with a manufactured incident with the US. Also it pokes Obama in the eye, which is satisfying for the Persians. Iran will be backed up by Russia. Russia may make moves on Georgia and if too many crisis Obama is paralyzed. It was a tactic that worked with Bush. He could only focus on a few items. Obama doesn’t focus at all; He flits from subject to subject.

Really overkill as Obama has already frozen and unlikely to react. I have not seen any domestic pressure for him to act on NK so he will ignore it as much as he can. He has all the help by the media.

Seems reasonable to me now that we are at war again.

By the way, you notice how the United Nations is not part of the package this time?