North Korea must choose either to have a future or to have nuclear weapons "but it cannot have them both"

And The Daily Mirror: KIM WILD.

British tabloids - best in the world, blah blah blah.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/09/un.vote.reut/index.html

really? wonder what the japanese have to say about that.

Josh Marshall notes that the question of whether or not this was a nuclear blast is now in the NY Times, and is apparently getting more play in the non-U.S. media.

Like?

I gotta be honest, I see next to nothing that could act stop North Korea from getting nukes precisely because nobody knows what to do to do so. I'm treating it more as an inevitability.

Good point, but if Japan remilitarizes to counter a percieved threat from NK, all bets are off. The Chinese still hate Japan so much that they might be willing to risk a lot to humble their old enemies.

I'll be following this closely. We needn't have interfered with Korea in the first place, but if there's anything the U.S loves, it's reinforcing a mistake.

But on the other hand, who gives a fuck? We're not going to do anything about it. No one is. Wake me up when the Chinese and Rooskies get pissed.

or what super cub said:
I don't advocate anything. I don't think NK would use them, but that's not the point. The US and others will not tolerate a nuclear NK. That means either war or strangling the regime. Either course could have disastrous results.

Do you think that it's irrelevant whether the test was successful or not?

where does it differ?

Second, I don't think the Bush Administration's policy failure in re:Korea is all that debatable

what's your point?

Third, I don't think that one stupid sentence carries the weight that you're giving it.

it was the entire point of his post. and the post that he posted following the one we're discussing.

Do you think that it's irrelevant whether the test was successful or not?

barely.

"KFA eCommerce solutions"

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http://www.korea-dpr.com/catalog2/images/IMG_0013.jpg

This: Oh, so if it was just a small nuke detonation we can just disregard it? So if they tried to attempt to blow up a bomb and failed, we can rest easy? Only the likes of Josh Marshall would proffer something so inane

is not equal to this: Marshall is noting that maybe the test was a total failure, which allows him to crow that Jong-Ill is as incompetent as Bush. Which means that Marshall, as usual, is picking an inane partisan victory over reality,

in any way, at all. Two completely different points.

Second, yeah, you're right that Marhsall appears to be engaging in a little bit of Bush-bashing in that second post. But so what?
As I indicated, the failure of Bush admin NK policy is pretty much nondebatable, and although you claimed not to get my point on that, I'm not sure how you could possibly have missed it.

Anyway, I didn't link to Marshall because of his analysis; I linked to him because he demonstrated that the "Dud" theory had gone mainstream.
The real dispute between us is that you don't seem to think that the failure of the test matters; the more I think about it, the more I disagree, actually. Any sort of sound diplomacy has to be based upon a realistic understanding of your opponent's strengths and weaknesses. While I don't really expect the Bush admin to actually engage with NK (a point on which we apparently agree), if those two sides were to come to the table it makes a difference.

Finally, it appears that the Chinese may well allow the UN Security Council to impose sanctions for the test. Seems to me that the success/failure of the test should have some impact on what those sanctions look like.

I don't see the point of the Bush bashing by Marshall in this situation given that a) Marshall does it all the time; b) it adds nothing to the debate, in context or otherwise; c) Marshall trivializes the action of North Korea by conflating Bush policy with technical ineptitude; d) he appears much more happy to present this as insight rather than simply that the dud theory is going mainstream. His next post, which I referenced, reinforces this.

Any sort of sound diplomacy has to be based upon a realistic understanding of your opponent's strengths and weaknesses. While I don't really expect the Bush admin to actually engage with NK (a point on which we apparently agree), if those two sides were to come to the table it makes a difference.

I don't honestly think that the rest of the world is excited to hedge its bets for more time, to let North Korea continue blowing shit up underground until they get it right, before we hold hands and decide that the 4th largest army is now an honest threat to stability instead of a blowhard with a bad attitude. That's why I think it barely matters that the bomb may have been a dud. Either we are going to recognize a growing threat and use THIS action as our leverage or we are going to wait until they lob another missile over Japan or rattle the cages in China. We don't know how successful the test was, so I'm not really sure we can negotiate effectively.

Part of the reason that the Bush administration doesn't want to negotiate directly with North Korea is because a) that's what the North Koreans have demanded and b) the administration knows the complexity of the situation and would much rather build consensus from the original six nations that we were dealing with a couple of years ago.

Nobody wants a power vacuum in the NK. Even though technically there will be one as soon as South Korea and China simultaneously admit to it. KJI and the DPRK Military are like Schrodingers's cat.

The reason nobody wants a power vacuum is because nobody knows how to carve up the territory. the ROK wants 100%, I'm sure, but they don't want to pay for assimilating medieval East Germany. PRC probably doesn't want SK all up ins, they probably want some little chunk up north to put radar stations closer to the FSU or some shit, Japan doesn't want China any closer than they already are, and they all basically hate each other as much or more than they hate the old tubby drunkard with his No-Dong and his A-Dud.

We barely even have a dog in this fight anymore. Japan's rebuilt, ROK has their own well-equipped military, China's run by the Capitalist Party and will probably just buy Taiwan outright in a decade or two. Oh and we have no money and the military spends all their time in The Suck. We ought to tell the three of them to figure it the fuck out on their own time and admit we don't have the time to play Daddy.

That's all fine and good, except there is the issue of proliferation to think about.

Best thing I've read on the whole situation yet.

I agree with the first sentence, but not the second. I suspect that the U.S. Govt has much more information regarding the effectiveness of the test than the media, and will (hopefully) use that information to gain some sort of strategic advantage--but that advantage can, as a practical matter, come only through diplomacy.

Tom's post raises a really good point, although I think we have more of stake in NK's future than he does, particularly given the number of troops we have in SK. Also, I think whether or not NK is fully nuke-capable makes a major difference in whether that power vacuum becomes a spoken issue vs. an unspoken one.

Aren't you guys worried at all that KJI will actually deploy a nuke (if it actually has one) in the service of remaining in power? Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I don't think that the strategic constraints on the use of nuclear weapons that kept them in check during the cold war are operative any longer, and if MAD doesn't apply, seems to me that a limited/regional nuclear conflict becomes far more likely.

And if the ROK believed with any certainty that KJI was intent on and capable of detonating an atomic weapon anywhere near Seoul, the numbers would probably add up in favor of going ahead and assimilating medieval East Germany. I think they have a better sense of the real detente than we do, as do the Chinese. They can't afford not to.

http://www.cnsnews.com/Pentagon/Archive/1998-2000/DEF20000417a.html

"U.S. Aid Helps N. Korea Build Nukes, Congress Told"

And really, just how combat effective is that 4th largest army? Does NK *really* have the logistics to send that army anywhere or is KJI just going to holler "FREE LUNCH BUFFET IN THE SOUTH!" and hope for the best?

only if you think that 500+ tons of TNT going off in non-DPRK territory is really any more acceptable than a "non-dud" nuke.

I've always understood this less in terms of winning or losing in combat than in terms of wrecking the South Korean economy.

I admit I don't know shit about explosives, but I'm going to guess that a delivery system for 500+ ton conventional weapon is impractical. I may well be wrong.

MOAB has about a 15 ton yield, I think. Big BLU, if it ever gets built, will be about half as powerful again (although neither are as powerful as the T-12, at around 30 tons).

It's not in writing, I suppose, by which I mean some kind of formal treaty, but isn't this essentially what NK has been looking for?