Friday, September 9, 2016

Because for decades the world did nothing

Think of Madeleine Albright clinking champagne glasses with Kim Jong-il as you take this development in:

North Korea defiantly celebrated its fifth nuclear test Friday, claiming that it can now make warheads small enough to fit onto a missile and warning its "enemies" — specifically, the United States — that it has the ability to counter any attack.
The test appeared to be much bigger than North Korea's previous detonations. And although the North's claim that it mastered the technology to miniaturize nuclear weapons could not be verified — and Pyongyang has a track record of exaggeration — Friday's test underscored the fact that Kim Jong Un's regime was continuing to make progress on its nuclear and missile programs despite waves of international sanctions and condemnation.
"This is our response to hostile powers, including the United States. We are sending out a message that if the enemies attack us, we can counterattack," Ri Chun Hee, the veteran North Korean newsreader, said on state television. "We will continue taking measures to protect our dignity and our right to exist from the American threat."
The U.S. Geological Survey detected an artificial 5.3-magnitude earthquakenear North Korea's nuclear test site at exactly 9 a.m. local time on Friday, the 68th anniversary of the formation of the communist regime by Kim Il Sung, the current leader’s grandfather, and a national holiday.
“This is clearly a nuclear test,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. He estimated the size at between 10 and 20 kilotons. If confirmed, that would make this the biggest of North Korea’s five tests. January’s test was about six kilotons.
This occurred as the Most Equal Comrade was in Japan, his jet refueling on the way home from Laos, where he trashed the country over which he is tyrant and signaled the world once again that it cannot depend on post-America to guarantee its basic safety from nuclear annihilation.

UPDATE: Gordon Chang at the Daily Beast says that relations between China and post-America have everything to do with the timing of this test:

At the moment, Beijing is far more upset with Seoul than Pyongyang.
In July, South Korea and the United States announced they would deploy the American-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system on South Korean soil. Beijing is worried that THAAD’s high-powered radars will reach into China and could help the U.S. shoot down Chinese missiles. Washington denies that is the case and has been willing to share technical information, but Beijing has not been mollified.
Since the announcement, Beijing has taken a number of steps to snub the South diplomatically and undermine its economy.
With Beijing upset at Seoul, the North Koreans evidently think they can do what they want. On Monday, the North launched three medium-range, nuclear-capable Nodong missiles. The tests, on the second day of the China-hosted G20 summit, were conducted right after Chinese ruler Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the event with South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye. Clearly, Kim Jong Un was not worried that China would react unfavorably to the launches.
It’s clear the North Koreans know that as a general matter they have Chinese support. Trade across the Sino-Korea border is booming at the moment, an indication that Beijing is not enforcing Security Council Resolution 2270, the fifth set of U.N. sanctions on the North’s weapons programs.
Moreover, some of the traded items are clearly destined for Kim’s military. China, according to David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, did not interrupt the flow of materials and components for Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, such as cylinders of uranium hexafluoride. Also allowed in, worryingly, were vacuum pumps, valves, and computers.
The North Koreans know that Xi sees the U.S. as China’s main adversary, blocking Beijing’s ambitions in almost every direction.  That’s probably why President Obama and National Security Adviser Susan Rice got a rough reception on Saturday in Hanghzou as they arrived for the G20. Kim, seeing how Xi treated Obama, thought he could get away with delivering his own radioactive-laced snub.
Kim knows that Xi is not about to further goals, like the denuclearization of North Korea, that Washington promotes, and so Pyongyang thinks it has a big green light in its quest to possess the world’s most destructive weapons. 
Pyongyang will make fast progress in developing nukes—until the U.S. and the rest of the international community realize they have a China problem as much as a North Korean one. 
Everybody smells weakness.



23 comments:

  1. What does strength smell like? And what do countries do when they smell it?

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  3. They put together alliances much like that led by the US and the U.K. In the first half of the 1940s.

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  4. And the bad regimes refrain from testing missiles and nuclear weapons, harassing good countries' ships and planes, building artificial islands to put landing strips on, and invading their neighbors.

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  5. And we don't have any current alliances? And what about the rest of the world condemning NORKORs "test?"

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  6. We've even got China with us on this one. Good thing, no?

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  7. They never should have gotten this far. We're reduced to "condemning" because " preventing" is pretty much out of the question. And see Gordon Chang re: China. Also consider how China treated the MEC like crap at G-20. And I was referencing China in my last comment when I spoke of artificial islands.

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  8. That bothers you now that Obama gets treated like crap? Not his fault but the ass wipes like Nettie and all those here stateside who have been on his ass like a diaper on shit since he was inaugurated.

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  9. Prevention is fine in theory but it has never worked with any country. Things were so much simpler then when we dropped our 2 big ones? I know, I know, we had to.

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  10. You see, Benjamin Netanyahu loves Western civilization and the MEC hates it. But bringing up BN and the"stateside asswipes" is a smokescreen to try to distract from how the G20 reception demonstrated post-America's decline in stature on the MEC's watch.

    And the time to have prevented this was 1994, when Billy Jeff the Zipper went in for the Agreed Framework.

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  11. There's no doubt that it is important to tirelessly and relentlessly point out what a poisonous, tyrannical, West-hating, arrogant, narcissistic figure Barack Obama is.

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  12. Of course. Then if folks don't buy it, write them off as low info.

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  13. Either that, or they share his love of tyranny and decline

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  14. We'll see how Hillie or Donnie do. Maybe we'll get Donnie because the true low info voters are rabid about him. And they bought the whole lie about Hillie being a crook who should be jailed. Didja see the WAPO editorial bemoaning the possibility that we might get Trumped over a minor email scandal. Yes, I know what you think about WaPo but, sorry, I don't share your views nor have you ever been able to convince me otherwise about them and many others comprising what we used to call the 4th Estate.

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  15. Either way, we're in for a nightmare.

    I have always understood that I probably wasn't going get you to deeply consider the nature of freedom or the supreme importance of Western civilization, but when I've encountered truly silly assertions, I will always challenge you to defend them.

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  16. I'm damaged goods, been lied to from a young age about fighting for freedom. I too shall pass and so will the memory of all the bull crap we heard about war.

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  17. But if they smell weakness, what do we do, put some fire behind military expenditures that exceed those of the next 6 countries combined that it takes to equal them? Talk about silly assertions.

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  18. But go ahead, vote for the dick: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-i-would-shoot-confrontational-iranian-ships/ar-AAiItNd?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=SL5JDHP

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  19. "This is our response to hostile powers, including the United States. We are sending out a message that if the enemies attack us, we can counterattack," Ri Chun Hee, the veteran North Korean newsreader, said on state television. "We will continue taking measures to protect our dignity and our right to exist from the American threat."

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  20. So what do you call DEEP consideration of the nature of freedom? And why do you think I do not and have not? That's the same thing as calling me low info, mo fo.

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  21. A look into what John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer had to say about it. Frank S. Meyer. How it played out in Athens during the Pericles era. What St.Paul says we ought to use our power of choice for.

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  22. I'll have a relook, OK? I will also again delve into their oppugnants.

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