Ooops, I Did It Again

Oh, Kim, did you really want congratulations? Wouldn’t some sympathy be in order? You want so much to play with the big kids and be respected and have them look up to you outside of your own neighborhood and all be happy to call you “Great Leader.” But, your toys don’t seem to be all that impressive. Should we look harder behind the curtain to see if the great wizard can reach all of the controls?

NYT Says Small Pop

When you tell the world you are about to misbehave, you can be sure they will be watching and ready to punish you when you do. When you want to put on a big show and thumb your nose at them you have to be sure you’ve got it all together. If the show relates to nuclear weapons, you could have read the books and learned that the technology is pretty darn good in terms of analyzing and determining if you really pulled it off. When no less a journal than the New York Times, which is probably as sympathetic a main-stream rag as you could find in the US, suggests that your boom was a bust there is a pretty strong probability that it was.

Big Bomb Bombs Big

The Times of NYC isn’t alone either. The Washington Times thinks you’ve muffed it as well. This failure, following the summer demonstration of your Taepodong-2 which didn’t make it much further downrange than a modern artillery shell, pretty much disrupts your bid for greatness. Worst of all, your chutzpah diplomacy has now resulted in unanimous condemnation from the UN. You got no sympathy at all and the fall-out (if you’ll excuse the nuclear pun) will probably mean more economic isolation and more hardship for your people.

Typically you might consider the UN to be a hollow organization with little power to really harm your efforts at rising to international infamy, but this is the week in which effete little Kofi Annan is being replaced by a new Secretary-General. By this time next week, Kofi will be packing up the office and Ban Ki-Moon will be taking the reins. You might recognize him as one of the leaders of your friends to the immediate south. He’s got little reason to be cooperative or feel any obligation toward lessening your chastisement for failing to play nice with the rest of the world. Yes, I think this little adventure is going to cost you dearly.

Let’s make no mistake here. N. Korea definitely has a nuclear program. It is definitely weapons oriented. This event was definitely a weapons test and it is serious business. If it failed to generate the expected yield that is good news, but it simply means that the technology which the NKs possess is very close to production. Next week, next month, at the latest, next year, Kim will have a workable, high-yield bomb. Next year he may also have a workable Taepodong-2 missile to carry it. It if all works as advertised, that will be scary for the world. If it works, but is erratic, that can be scarier still. If Kim fails to learn from this experience with world condemnation because the UN is reluctant to impose strong punitive sanctions then that will be the scariest part of all.