hello north korea
There’s nothing like waking up Monday morning to the prospect of an Asian arms race. North Korea clearly learned a valuable lesson from Iraq: if the U.S. calls you “evil” and cuts off all but the thinnest pretense of diplomacy, best to get busy working up a nuclear ace-in-the-hole. Anyone want to place a bet on how long it takes Japan to re-arm itself?
And it’s all Clinton’s fault, right? (Umm, no, probably not.)
This global security crisis brought to you by George II, master of the Reverse Midas Touch.
There are a million conflicting articles and blogs right now speculating on whether the test was a fake. Here’s two opposites: Fake , Not Fake
From a policy standpoint this shouldn’t change anything anyway. I mean i guess if the test turns out to be real it’d up the ante a little, but if we thought there was even a chance before that they allready had the nuke, then we should have been operating on the assumption that they did, and proving it wouldn’t change anything. Same goes for the militarization of Japan. If the rate of proliferation in the east is affected by NK’s armiment, then the Kim’s announcement in 2002 that he was capable of making a nuke would have had the same effect that a successful nuclear test would have today.
I’m not sure. A common assumption has been that NK’s interest in nukes has been largely about swinging their weight at the negotiating table; it’s always been possible that they were blowing smoke (and technically it still is; scientists haven’t come to a conclusion about whether the test was truly nuclear).
However seriously NK’s nuclear ambitions were taken by the Japanese government, there’s a limit to how openly they’ve been able to advance their militarization. An actual nuke test by NK may have changed the politics significantly by swinging public support around toward a renewal of Nipponese military might, which (AFAIK) has been mostly advocated by the far right for decades now. It also grants Japan international traction for the idea, which isn’t a popular one obviously.
China certainly doesn’t want Japan to re-arm. But how can China argue against Japan having an air force when they now need to watch for an intercept a possible mushroom-cloud present from that wacky Jong-Il? That’s just an example out of the air, by the way; I don’t know any details about the current state of Japan’s military.
Plus, from what I’ve read, China definitely has a different opinion of NK now that they claim a successful test.
Well, China appears to have a different opinion of NK now, but that opinion is suspect, I think. I’ll grant, though, that China’s historical need for a “buffer” in the form of NK becomes less and less important with every upward tick of China’s GDP. Surely someone’s clued -il into that trend by now? Not that he’d really care.