…For showing your nuclear arsenal is as powerful as America’s was in 1945… That’ll show them.
But seriously, is it too much to ask that for once, the news coverage of these events does not follow the well worn, wrong paths in which everything is looked at through the point of view of “the west”, anything North Korea does is dangerous and irrational, a threat to world peace and only lip service is paid to the context in which North Korea has decided on building a nuclear arsenal, that this is in fact a rational strategy on their part? And would it kill journalists to every now and then mention the greatest “rogue” nuclear power in the world, Israel, which still does not admit to owning nuclear weapons but is thought to have an arsenal of in the hundreds? I won’t mind if nobody mentions the inconsiderate fact that the sole nuclear power to have ever used the weapon in anger is that bastion of liberty and justice, America itself and that it used the atom bomb largely as a warning against the USSR?
North Korea, even though it is an opressive dictatorship, has valid reasons to arm itself with the sole weapons to command the respect of the world’s sole superpower. It can’t really trust its supposed superiority in conventional weapons (and in any case, they still think the Mig-21 is a frontline fighter and upgunned T-55s a match for modern tanks) to deter South Korea and the US from attacking it, but the prospect of a nuclear battlefield still scares America enough to deter it from doing anything drastic. Again and again in the last two decades the US has shown North Korea it will only take it seriously if it rattles the nuclear sabre. Can we blame it then for doing so?
Edmund Schluessel
May 25, 2009 at 8:06 pmI disagree with the notion that North Korea can’t deter South Korea conventionally; Seoul is close enough to the DMZ that in the event of a war it would almost certainly be leveled no matter what else happened.
And to be honest I think the analysis of what is a “rational” strategy for North Korea is half-done. We can’t, after all, ignore that the North Koreans repeatedly make promises and then back out of them without warning. The only strategy the North Korean government — as opposed to the North Korean people — has is to act crazy, and there’s no way that can be a good thing from any perspective.
Omri
May 26, 2009 at 10:02 pm“North Korea, even though it is an opressive dictatorship, has valid reasons to arm itself with the sole weapons to command the respect of the world’s sole superpower.”
There is a term for the notion that the sovereign is morally entitled for “respect” from others. The notion is derived from treating political authority as just another form of property, and the term for that is feudalism. Very progressive of you to let that kind of thinking insinuate into your writing.
Steve Kaczynski
May 27, 2009 at 10:17 amI saw a TV documentary a few years back where North Koreans were mentioned as filming using newsreel cameras that were state-of-the-art – or would have been, if it was still the Korean War. They don’t seem to have anything in their conventional military arsenal more advanced than the Vietnam War period (MiG-21s, T-55s, as noted above).
Not an original thought of mine, but the last country that let weapons inspectors in and had no WMDs did get invaded by the Americans. There is indeed a rationality to North Korean behaviour.
As to the Israeli nuclear arsenal – indeed. This, and the USA being the only country to use nuclear weapons in anger, are facts that most bourgeois commentators edge carefully around, saying little or nothing.
Martin Wisse
May 28, 2009 at 1:42 amOmri: re feudalism: that word does not mean what you think it means.
chris y
May 30, 2009 at 5:00 amMartin, your main point is well taken. But this: “For showing your nuclear arsenal is as powerful as America’s was in 1945… That’ll show them.” might still worry me quite a lot if I were Japanese.
Martin Wisse
May 31, 2009 at 6:57 amAll too true.