Bloodless Coup

Tantrums by North Korea

While I've been away, things do not seem to have changed a great deal (Bad: Iraq, US Soccer, Afghanistan, inflation, heat waves; Good: Bush's approval rating inching up, no actual all-out civil war in Iraq, not much else).

However, that may change. North Korea is supposed to be about to launch a big rocket. Big enough to possibly reach the continental US. Everyone is in a tizzy about this. I'll grant that it's interesting, but no more. First, the technological leap from having a rocket that can reach the US to having a rocket that can reach the US and deliver a nuclear weapon is a fairly major step (and a step that involves testing, which they haven't done, so we know they don't have one now). Second, we're not really sure they have nukes (they haven't tested one). Third, the payload for one of these things is fairly small - a couple of tons at most. Failing to have a nuke as payload (see point one, above), North Korea can't really hope to do anything resembling damage to the US. Sure, they could pack a couple of tons of anthrax or Sarin into the thing, but that would just burn up on re-entry and fail to harm anyone (as I noted above, the technological leap from having a vehicle that will go intercontinental distances to having one that will drop a warhead accurately and carefully enough so the warhead will go off where you want it to is a huge step, one the North Koreans have shown no ability to bridge). Fourth, if they did toss one at us, we could see it coming (the NKs use a liquid fueled rocket, meaning they have to pour the liquid fuel into the thing, which takes a few days to do carefully, which is what we're observing now - thus, there is no element of surprise here), and would respond by blowing up most of the country (legitimately). Kim isn't crazy, and wouldn't deliberately do harm to himself.

This launch/fake launch/launch prep (or whatever it is) is most likely a form of protest by Kim. He wants things from the rest of the world (agreements, money, trade), and the world is generally ignoring him these days. He's throwing a tantrum in order to get the attention back where he thinks it should be: on him.

This isn't a call to ignore this, but only a cautionary post to argue that we shouldn't overreact to this. It's only a single rocket (if it goes up, and there is some debate about whether it will or not), not a fleet of ICBMs. The problem is, the US has few to no options to punish North Korea for doing any of this. We have no trade with them, or any other economic or political leverage to cut off. We can encourage other states (China, South Korea) to curtail their activities with North Korea, but we've been doing that for years with little success. Thus, US policy is the same place it's been for years: backed into a corner. Either we negotiate with them (which would involve giving them something they want), or not (which will get us nothing). This missle-scare changes nothing with respect to the very limited options the US possesses to try to get North Korea to change.