A Wall Street Journal editorial summarizes the path taken by North Korea in response to President Bush's stepped-up efforts at diplomatic engagement after the North detonated its first nuke in October 2006, and its contemptuous responses to President Obama's no-doubt equally sincere diplomatic overtures. Instead of "Kumbaya Obama-Not-Bush!" Pyongyang chose "$#%^ &*#!" Claudia Rosett fears that the North's test was for the Iranian program.
There is a sliver lining in all this: President 44 is getting a fast reality education data dump--although 44's May 25 statement after North Korea announced its test suggests that the lesson has yet to sink in. Ralph Peters thinks 'Bam is not educable. I disagree. What Solzhenitsyn called "the pitiless crowbar of events"--his 1978 reference to what would wake up, eventually, the Carter administration (turned out to be Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan)--will eventually wake up "Bam. The scary part is just what events will accomplish the trick.
44 is being "tested" as VP Joe Biden predicted last October would happen within his first 6 months. Arnaud de Borchgrave sees further nuclear threat tests in 44's future. Two top experts recommend several steps 44 can take versus the North. 44 will have to reverse field to follow them. Ex-CIA agent Robert Baer suggests we accept a nuclear Iran and use the threat of total economic sanctions to deter use of weapons; such an embargo makes sense before a nuclearizing event, or to bring down a regime, less so after, as how a nuclearized state contemplating its imminent demise will act is not knowable in advance, with nuclear war scenarios possible by definition.
Nuclear policy maven Graham Allison sees Iran's acquisition of the full knowledge of how to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons as a milestone beyond possibility of reversal. He proposes that we get Russia & China aboard and warn Iran that severe consequences would follow an Iranian nuclear threat. Iran, of course, would likely ignore any mere warning. And why would Russia or China fear a nuclear Iran whose status would weaken America's standing in the Mideast? Alas, the logic is that with Iran possessing the knowledge to build weapons, regime change is the only security guarantee. This, barring a miracle, will not happen.
Bottom Line. North Korea has begun the process of ending Barack Obama's illusions about how one deals with the world's most dangerous regimes. What we do not know is just what kind of shock it will take to drive home the lesson that illusions are desperately dangerous in matters of nuclearizing states.
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