Victory in North Korea

If I was a conspiracy nut, I would suggest that our failure to dissuade the North Koreans from testing a nuclear weapon was an intentional ploy to justify all the money we are spending on the “Star Wars” Missile Defense System.

Heaven knows that this incarnation of Star Wars is only marginally more of a waste of money than George Lucas’ recent prequel.

If I was a conspiracy nut, I would say they were calculating ways to let foreign policy problems boil over so that they could justify solving these problems with military force once and for all. (Iraq, North Korea and look out Iran)

But I am not a conspiracy nut. I think what is happening is not a cunning ploy but once again gross incompetence.

If our goal was to deny North Korea nuclear weapons, well then, mission accomplished. And let me be the first to applaud the president for sticking to his guns and refusing one-on-one talks with the North Koreans. The six-party talks have been such a glowing (radiation glow?) success that to abandon this line would be silly.

It is not hard, even as a casual reader, to know a few things about the North Korea situation.

First off, the North Koreans are run by a crazy despot. Provocative action on our part is likely to result in disproportionate responses on theirs. For example, if we alternately ignore and insult the North Koreans, they might do something rash like, say… oh, I don’t know, test a nuclear weapon.

Secondly, we have nothing in the world to lose by talking one-on-one with North Korea. While it is true that the broader region needs to be a party to making lasting peace and stability, one-on-one talks would not undermine that.

Thirdly, going to the U.N. for sanctions is silly now. They already have the bomb, what do we gain here besides making the people of North Korea suffer more? They are already starving. All new sanctions can do is make them do something rash (see point 1). This is all just another effort by our administration to undermine the credibility of the U.N. by setting it up to fail.

Fourthly, since our policy has failed to get us what we want, maybe just maybe we need to change our tactics. The definition of madness is doing the same thing time and time again and being surprised by getting the same result.

Finally, we are running out of sticks here. We can’t invade them. Maybe it’s time for genuine diplomacy. Talk and compromise are not a sign of weakness.