Letters from NYC

Q: How Do You Respond To A Bully?

This post was birthed in response to blog sis Teresa's post North Korea - Trying to Be Big Man On Campus. Her commentary made me laugh, though I wasn't laughing when I heared the news of the launching. Nope, it pissed me off that this idiot will probably manage to kill lots of his people and his neighbors just to try to show he's got (cough, cough) viable rockets.

To answer Teresa on the distance and capability of these long range missiles: they are second hand, 20 to 30 yr old Russian medium to long range missiles that were sold to the North Korean's (NK's) close to 20 years ago. These missiles were always unreliable, only 1 in 4 ever managed to hit their long range target when they were in the Russian arsenal. Needing to get rid of the old before buying new ones (as stipulated by treaties Kissinger & others brokered in the 70 & 80's), the Russians wound up selling them to the NK's in the late 80's with the UN's blessing. The UN sanctioned the sale because back then China was still a military and political threat to everyone in Asia, including their own allies.

Multi-lateralism was not something the UN or the U.S. supported in response to that threat for 2 reasons: a) we were the biggest producers of weaponry and wanted to have lots of clients. b) Our enemies in that region were communist countries that were financially hurting: Russia, China, North Korea & Vietnam.

The political climate changed in NK with the death of Kim Jun's father. Strange things (per eastern standards) were immediately begining to take place. Among them was Kim Jong Jr. wanting to declare himself first King, then Emperor. There were many other things that indicated things were not right in NK, but with an extremely closed society, where even a contemplation of a mixed marriage meant incarceration, little information was getting out.

What people in the US Gov't perhaps didn't realize (or maybe overlooked) was that Kim Jr. was as crazy as a loon and needed to go the way of Idi Amin, Noriega, Sadam and others. But I'm deviating from missiles at hand.... it has the capability of reaching San Francisco (which Norad believes based on intellegence and statements from Kim Jong himself). Experts believe that it could reach SF only on a very good day, when weather, people and machinery are all working at peak conditions to produce NK's desired results. Given these missiles track record and history, I doubt they will successfully reach us.

As for NORAD, they have the capability to know whenever a missile is deployed anywhere in the world. They can also tell within a 50 mile radius where it originated from, where it's conceivably going (within a 100 mile radius) and where it ultimately lands. NORAD also has the capability to orchestrate any missile's destruction by shooting it down in the sky before or as it enters our air space. The danger comes in if it's a nuclear warhead. If you destroy a missile containing a nuclear warhead in our air space (or somebody else's) you essentially have a disaster worse than Chernobyl on your hands. I say this based on the amount of weapons grade uranium they have allegedly produced.

More political background:
Under the Bush administration, the US has refused to negotiate exclusively with the NK's regarding nuclear proliferation and containment because they have historically violated every agreement they ever signed with the Clinton administration, the UN and their neighbors. When the Bush team refused to continue making the financial payments tied to these agreements (as originally arranged by Clinton), as punishment for non-compliance, the NK's demanded we go back to the table to re-negotiate. When their demanding attitude didn't work they began to threaten to enrich plutonium and uranium on their own, when that didn't work they threatened to bomb us. That was 5 years ago. What they are doing/saying now is nothing new.

In my estimation, if there's one thing that this Gov't has gotten dog gone right is in insisting in muli-lateral negotiations that includes all of Kim's neighbors, with the stipulation that no financial incentives be offered for their participation (they have notoriously called meetings and then never showed up) or ours. Of course you can imagine how that went over in the UN. Other countries now participating in these talks have buckled, out of fear of being nuked by this madman, and have offered NK financial incentives tied to compliance benchmarks. But the NK Government continues to go back on negotiations or violate every single agreement they have made to date. The most famous violation, which occurred approx 16 months ago, was an agreement that was only observed for 24 hrs. To try to force through their demands, the NK's have gone on record threatening to blow up their neighbors and the U.S.

Teresa, when the diplomats say they have no idea what the military is doing they mean it. Kim Jong rules with an iron fist and micro manages with secrecy. He makes Lenin look like a pussycat. Just to give you an idea of what Kim's made of... the famine in his country has killed millions in the last decade, and yet he refuses to have humanitarian aid come in because he fears being overthrown by outside influence, ideas and propaganda. The man is nuts, and the UN knows it. If they actually do something it will be to schedule endless meetings (what they've done to date) or put the ball in our court by asking us to agree to Kim's black mail demands. 'That's what they are when you name a monetary figure and say if we don't pay that they'll blow us up. He's been threatening to blow us up ever since Bush cut off the Clinton money.

So there you have it Teresa, the last decade in a nutshell. BTW, pun was intended. So to answer the more important question: How Do You Respond To A Bully? Talk softly, don't pay bribery money, and carry really big missiles that can blow your palace to kindom come.

Posted by Michele at July 5, 2006 11:35 PM | TrackBack