Off target.

Another week, another war... or at least the threat of same. Any week that starts with a nuclear explosion tends to focus the mind a bit, even if it isn't a very sharp focus in the case of many of those reacting to the recent actions of North Korea. It's as though we are born anew every six months or so, our past wiped clean, our journey set to begin again. Here we have the grim dividends of a craven policy towards northeast Asia that has become particularly nasty over the past 10 to 15 years (and especially so in the last eight). As it happens, we inched very close to a disastrous war back in 1994, then concluded a framework agreement with Pyongyang that would have provided them with a uranium reactor and ended their international isolation. Due to the vagaries of the Clinton administration and the maniac Gingrich Congress, neither of those provisions was honored. It was then left to the Bush II administration to do its usual job of pouring gasoline on a smoldering problem, placing North Korea squarely within the "Axis of Evil" and setting UN Ambassador John Bolton and others to further antagonize them.

The result is quite apparent. The North Koreans did what numerous other nations have done through the decades when faced with what might reasonably be considered an existential threat: they built a deterrent. Having witnessed Washington's willingness to invade and destroy nations that clearly do not possess nuclear weapons, Pyongyang apparently opted for what seemed the less risky course. (One can imagine the same kind of thinking taking place in Iran.) It bears remembering, also, that North Korea knows something about the horrors of war. We bombed the place to smithereens during the Korean War, destroying virtually every standing structure in the North - campaigns that resulted in the death of perhaps 2.5 to 3 million people north of the 38th parallel. Regardless of who is to blame for igniting that conflict, it was certainly they who bore the brunt of the destruction. Their culture is largely built around that experience, and it is not surprising that they should engage in what appears to be some defensive saber-rattling.

Sure... that was then and this is now, right? Well, not everyone forgets the past as quickly and efficiently as we do. North Korea is a repressive place run very much like a prison, but its central obsession is national survival. With the change of leadership in the United States, I'm sure Pyongyang is testing Obama's rhetoric of reconciliation. Seems to me like they're skeptical that anything fundamental has changed, and frankly, so am I. Consider for a moment the world order we're living under. Washington and the great powers live under one set of rules with respect to weapons of mass destruction, while developing nations must abide by another. The fact is, the non-proliferation regime requires the U.S., Russia, and other nuclear powers to move decisively towards disarmament, just as it seeks to prevent smaller players from joining the nuclear club. We conveniently ignore the former while waxing righteous about the latter, and while our hypocrisy may not be featured on the Nightly News, it is pretty obvious to the relatively powerless nations of the world.

So, as you hear many voices - the execrable Newt Gingrich among them - calling for military action against North Korea, just remember: a massive war on the Korean peninsula causing hundreds of thousands of deaths is precisely what we want to avoid. So... starting one is hardly a solution.

luv u,

jp