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Thursday, June 25, 2009

North Korean Nukes!!

Well, well, well like the world isn't an interesting enough place right now with the all of the chaos happening in Iran. In typical fashion up pops North Korea like the proverbial jack in the box to shout "Hey look at me!!"

It is amazing to me that China lets North Korea continue to act as if they have no control over them. I wonder if North Korea really does not care what the rest of the world thinks about them. They seem unconcerned about the latest round of UN sanctions. But, that is not really a surprise to me because if the US does not choose to enforce those sanctions then there are really no teeth to them.

That is where the dilemma because if the US decides to intercept the North Korean ship that may or may not be carrying weapons. North Korea has said that they will retaliate in a nuclear fashion. This blows my mind that the threat of nuclear activity is still being used. I grew up during the Cold War and that was always a distant threat and it seemed to loom over most everything in one form of another. I remember the whole concept of "Mutually Assured Destruction" being a matter of some stress to me as a youngster.

But with North Korea this is not mutually assured this would be them firing one missile or bomb and the US wiping the floor with them. I wonder do they not even grasp that concept. Maybe I am just being silly and to even worry about this happening is pointless. I agree that it is pointless to some degree since I am unable to control this one way or the other. But, that is not the point. I am just amazed that this is going on. I knew that someone would test the new president. I just did not anticipate it being this kind of a test.

I wonder what the end result of this is going to be. Does anyone out there have any thoughts?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

hey lance, I didn't realize you had more than one blog.

As far as North Korea, I've heard interviews in the past with diplomats and such familiar with the landscape there, and it seems to be a cultural thing for the N. Koreans, some kind of a mind-game thing they play. One anecdote I distinctly remember was the diplomats or dignitaries being seated in chairs with shortened legs, so they'd have to look up into the eyes of the people they were negotiating with. And apparently there's lots more of that kind of weird stuff that goes on. I don't believe we can interpret their threats in the same way we'd interpret, say, our State Department saying the same thing. (Not to say we should just ignore it, either, only to point out that there's a bunch of weird cultural stuff messing up the line of communication). That's about the vague remembrance I have on the subject; I'm sure if you googled around you'd find more. I'd imagine most of what I've heard has come from NPR.