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October 13, 2006
The Price Of The International Communities' ''Shillyshallying''
Topics: United Nations IncompetenceGerard Baker has an absolutely must-read piece at TimesOnline.co.uk in which he writes that unlike all previous nuclear nativities, North Korea's efforts this week have truly propelled the world into a new and much more dangerous age. He points to the fact that there's no good strategic reason for Pyongyang even to claim to have a nuclear weapon, as China, Israel, Pakistan and India had, and owing to the failure of world powers to rein in North Korea, we now face a bleak and terrifying future.
"... It will be the first nuclear power to be headed by a crazed monomaniac who boasts of his commercial interest in shipping nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. The sheer unpredictability of North Korea terrifies everyone in its neighbourhood in a way that none of those other countries ever did. Its actions this week will almost certainly escalate into a nuclear arms race.In the process this accelerated proliferation will prompt the most important change in US military posture since the advent of the Bomb. A senior administration official told me this week that with nuclear powers in North East Asia and, heaven forbid, in Iran, the nuclear threshold on which the US has operated for the past 50 years will be lowered. Confronted with the growing probability of nuclear attack, the US will reorient its own military nuclear capabilities towards a more tactical stance. The currently sky-high threshold for a US nuclear attack will be lowered sharply to take account of the new threats. That in itself will prompt a beggar-my-neighbour downward global shift in the conditions under which the bomb might be used and an upward shift in the probability of nuclear strikes.
How did we get into this scary state? Of course the world's pundits are sure it is all America's fault. The US has failed to be sufficiently engaged. The refusal to talk directly to Pyongyang and to focus all its efforts on Iraq have allowed North Korea to cruise unmolested to nuclear status.
This is, essentially, drivel. The problem with North Korea has not been an insufficiency of multilateralist diplomacy in the past ten years but an overabundance. Beginning in 1994, the Clinton Administration started the US down a course of an engagement with Pyongyang that was all carrots and no sticks. Every time the North Koreans thumbed their noses at the US and its allies, they were punished with -- what? Sharp intakes of breath and shakes of the head." Be sure to read all of "The price of shillyshallying."
In a piece that both echos and compliments Baker's TimesOnline.co.uk piece, Bryan at Hot Air writes:
Unfortunately, we don't seem to know how to play the game anymore. In his first term, President Bush developed a reputation as a poker player, constantly outmaneuvering the Democrats while staying a step or two ahead of international opponents, but in his second term he has let the Democrats and pretty much everyone else get the better of him (and then the Republicans actually banned internet poker). It's hard to see the administration now as anything other than a rump of its former self, and that may become even more true after November's elections. Right now, the Chinese and Russians seem to be gaining the upper hand against us again, using the UN once again to keep North Korea from experiencing much meaningful punishment for its reckless nuclear and missile tests. China and Russia consistently talk a good game when North Korea acts, but then do everything in their power to block serious UN action.In terms of what to do about our now "bleak" and possibly getting bleaker future, Charles Krauthammer suggests a tough approach:
Given the fact that there is no other nuclear power so recklessly in violation of its nuclear obligations, it shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any detonation of a nuclear explosive on the United States or its allies as an attack by North Korea on the United States requiring a full retaliatory response upon North Korea.Even with word tonight that N. Korea might come back to six party talks (we all know that the talks will end up going nowheresville in a NY minute), our "Shillyshallying'" that Gerard Baker refers to is going to cost us big time. The time has come to stop fooling around with PC multiculturalist bullshit and get back down to basics - something in the order of the position President Kennedy took during the Cuban missile crises (referred to by Krauthammer in his aforementioned piece, "Disarming North Korea"):This is how you keep Kim Jong Il from proliferating. Make him understand that his survival would be hostage to the actions of whatever terror group he sold his weapons to. Any terrorist detonation would be assumed to have his address on it. The United States would then return postage. Automaticity of this kind concentrates the mind
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It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union. -- President John F. Kennedy, Oct. 22, 1962As Krauthammer says, "Now that's deterrence"!
Let's not forget, North Korea isn't the only crazy regime out there - remember Iran and al-Qaeda?
Posted by Richard at October 13, 2006 10:10 PM
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