North Korea, of course, is still stuck in the middle of the 20th Century, thinking that this sort of thing will do something positive for their sad little state. A lot of people in saner (or less insane) countries are worried.
Maybe, just maybe, these guys are crazy enough to start the shooting war.
They certainly sound bellicose enough! In fact, they sound a lot like the (fortunately now former) President George W. Bush, with his casual talk of evildoers; axis of evil; and, of course, the personal favorite of Kim Jong-Il, "pygmy".
Well, insults aren't exactly the stuff of a peaceful approach to international diplomacy, but then N. Korea is also noted for ringing denunciations, loud warnngs, and direct threats.
The thing is, there's a lot of history to indicate that there's at least one person in N. Korea who's sufficently aware of the real world to understand that an attack by N. Korea on, well, on Anybody, would mean the End Of The World (of North Korea, anyway). The continued existence of that country requires them to stay strictly inside their own boundaries with the rare exception when they can sally forth and diddle the United States, for instance, with some action like the siezing of the USNS Pueblo. That was, of course, forty-one years ago. At a time when we were deeply involved in a losing war in Vietnam. Where we had no business to be. But someone in N. Korea took note, and estimated (correctly, it turned out) that the US wouldn't go to war for a historic Casus Belli, like the siezure of a ship on the high seas, when already involved in a war for economic reasons.
Let's hope that the clever clever N. Korean bureaucrat who figured that one is still around to let 'em know that a real attack would start a real war.
Signalling the End Of The Kingdom
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