At the risk of once again “underplaying” events as I’m apparently want to do, it appears the NKs aren’t such good bomb builders. From CNN (no specific link yet, just on main page):
The U.S. believes North Korea tried to detonate a nuclear device and "something went wrong," a government official told CNN Tuesday. The official confirmed North Korea told China before the test that it would be a 4 kiloton device. The official added the unexpectedly small blast, of a half kiloton or less, indicates the test was not very successful.Or it was a complete fake. Either way, North Korea isn’t your daddy’s Red Menace.
1 comment:
Dave,
Let's not discount what just happened here.
NK is claiming that it set off a nuclear device.
I for one take them seriously.
I know we agree on the importance of non-proliferation.
You are more pessimistic than I am on that topic.
I don't want a world in which every nation incapable of even feeding their own people buy, or build nuclear weapons.
I know you don't want that too.
Since the end of the Cold War I have believed it is possible to convince the developing nations of the world that developing nuclear weapons is the wrong path to choose.
I don't know what we could have done differently with NK, but I have some strong concerns about the way the Bush Administration has dealt with NK.
Still I can't blame the US for what NK has chosen to do.
It takes years, and huge amounts of money to develop a nuclear weapon, and Bush can't be blamed for this.
One thing we can not assume is that NK won't continue to develop its nuclear arsenal.
And it will continue to develop missile technology.
Obviously it wants to threaten the US, and Japan (and probably even China) with a doomsday attack - if it were ever attacked.
I don't see such an attack coming, but after Iraq it looked more, and more likely.
But this isn't self defense, it's an attempt to blackmail the world.
We are dealing with a dictator who wants to stay in power no matter what the cost.
JP
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