Foot Dragging Into A Bleak Future
Gerard Baker, writing in the Times of London, foretells a bleak future because of the West's foot dragging and China's double dealing. Allowing North Korea to get a nuclear weapon means the future looks ever less bright.
Stripped of the grandiose claims by Kim’s minions, the objective scientific evidence for a nuclear explosion is sketchy. The explosive yield, according to military analysts, was something less than a kiloton. A plutonium device such as that first used by the US in 1945 produces a yield in the range of 20 kilotons. Some warheads in the US nuclear arsenal now can deliver an impact about 1,000 times that of Hiroshima. Remember too that in July, the Koreans launched an “ intercontinental” ballistic missile that fell into the sea about a minute into its flight and you have a sense of the truly exiguous scale of the country’s capabilities. If the Soviet Union was memorably nicknamed Upper Volta with Rockets, it’s probably fair to think of North Korea as Togo with a Chemistry Set. So why worry? Here’s why. Unlike all previous nuclear nativities, North Korea’s efforts this week have truly propelled the world into a new and much more dangerous age. There’s no good strategic reason for Pyongyang even to claim to have a nuclear weapon, as China, Israel, Pakistan and India had.
It will be the first nuclear power to be headed by a crazed monomaniac who boasts of his commercial interest in shipping nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. The sheer unpredictability of North Korea terrifies everyone in its neighbourhood in a way that none of those other countries ever did. Its actions this week will almost certainly escalate into a nuclear arms race.
In the process this accelerated proliferation will prompt the most important change in US military posture since the advent of the Bomb. A senior administration official told me this week that with nuclear powers in North East Asia and, heaven forbid, in Iran, the nuclear threshold on which the US has operated for the past 50 years will be lowered. Confronted with the growing probability of nuclear attack, the US will reorient its own military nuclear capabilities towards a more tactical stance. The currently sky-high threshold for a US nuclear attack will be lowered sharply to take account of the new threats. That in itself will prompt a beggar-my-neighbour downward global shift in the conditions under which the bomb might be used and an upward shift in the probability of nuclear strikes.
That is, of course, the real danger. The threshold will have to be lowered. An arms race will be initiated as more and more countries fear their neighbors more than they fear international pressures. The UN and the international community have proven toothless and ineffective, anyway. They certainly have not inspired other would-be bomb chasers to even think twice about proceeding. As for who is to blame for this state of affairs, Baker puts paid to the finger-pointing that has already begun. It wasn't George Bush:
How did we get into this scary state? Of course the world’s pundits are sure it is all America’s fault. The US has failed to be sufficiently engaged. The refusal to talk directly to Pyongyang and to focus all its efforts on Iraq have allowed North Korea to cruise unmolested to nuclear status.
This is, essentially, drivel. The problem with North Korea has not been an insufficiency of multilateralist diplomacy in the past ten years but an overabundance. Beginning in 1994, the Clinton Administration started the US down a course of an engagement with Pyongyang that was all carrots and no sticks. Every time the North Koreans thumbed their noses at the US and its allies, they were punished with — what? Sharp intakes of breath and shakes of the head.
Not only was the US unwilling to make good on its threats, but effective multilateral action also required serious efforts by other countries with real leverage over North Korea to do something. But for the past six years China has been playing a dangerous double game. It never wanted North Korea to become a nuclear power but it was quite happy that its ally kept the US, Japan and South Korea off balance with its burgeoning ambitions.
The same story of hand-wringing futility has been played out with Iran. Russia and China have both placed short-term diplomatic and commercial gain over long-term stability. The Europeans were, well, European.
So we are where we are. The future looking less bright. More and more of world resources will have to be directed away from social programs and will instead be spent on weapons and defenses. All the well-meaning or misguided people who insisted we travel this path have helped us arrive at a place where their agendas will no longer be important. It will be ever harder to get governments to spend money on the poor because that money will be used for bombs and missiles instead. It will be useless to scream about the environment when the choice is the survival of some tree versus the survival of the governments. There will be money for guns, but precious little for butter. Well, all those people helped pave this road. Now they'll have to walk it, the same as the rest of the world.
North Korea, World news | Gaius Saturday, 14 October , 2006
By Bill Franklin, Saturday, 14 October , 2006 @ 8:01 am
Personally, I disagree that China didn’t want NK to get nukes. I think it’s part of a larger plan that goes something like this-
NK gets nukes. Japan reacts by going (militarily) nuclear itself, and formally develops its own defense infrastructure (all under the valid pretext of self defense). The need for US military defense of Japan becomes marginalized and all but disappears. China meanwhile resolves its infrastructure issue and is growing by leaps and bounds. China surpasses the US as Japan’s #1 trading partner. Japan, under pressure from China, shifts policy support from US (which it no longer needs militarily or as much economically) to China. China, with the support of Japan, India, and Russia, becomes the new world superpower. The US, choking under its own debts, sees its power waning. Welcome to the Asian century.
By syn, Saturday, 14 October , 2006 @ 9:17 am
China still remains under Communist rule which means its banking system is under Communist control. If the demise of the former Soviet Union is any indication, unless China removes Communist control of the money machine, it will eventually implode upon itself; it takes an enormous amount of capital to maintain a defense system while maintaining infrastructure and growth. The former USSR had an abundance of nukes yet was unable to sustain super-power status because it went bankrupt. By the year 2030, demographics indicate Russia will no longer exist unfortunately due to its suicidal abortion program and will most likely become another Islamic State-controlled country.
When I lived in Moscow Russia in 1991 it was as if the country had stopped in time around 1963 and the only thing which has kept it alive was the infusion of free market captialism ie food stores from Ireland, America, Britian. Russia was ground down to the ground from having spent so much on military defense that it eventually needed capitalist societies to save it from complete inner implosion. Russia could no longer provide for itself and had no means to sustain it’s controlled system and I believe that same will happen to China.
I just saying that Communist countries will always fail no matter how many nukes it has and that Capitalism is a powerful defense weapon against any totalitarian ideology. If America wants to bring China down all we need to do is discontinue trade, of course this means Americans will be required to sacrifice short-term comforts. I would rather give up cheap Chinese produced products today than spend trillions in another arms race.
By Black Jack, Saturday, 14 October , 2006 @ 1:29 pm
China can’t maintain its communist oligarchy and continue to experience the rapid economic growth free markets produce. The two are incompatible. As individuals gain economic freedom they soon begin to seek political representation.
Look for an emerging middle class to begin complaining about the basics: No taxation without representation.
By Bill Franklin, Sunday, 15 October , 2006 @ 2:41 am
I agree with your analysis of Communism gents, but don’t you think comparing the USSR’s economic implementation of Communism to China’s or Vietnam hybrid system (economically capitalist, politically “Communist”) is not a fair comparison?
I’ve been to Shen Zhen (near Hong Kong) and toured the so-called “sweatshop” factories run by US companies. I saw capitalism at work, albiet in a politically restricted way.
Plus, (and it pains me to say this) there are some advantages to having a government run by engineers. Flush your civil rights down the toilet of course, but if “the country” needs more power, they build a power station. No “not in my backyard” protests; it just gets done. If congestion is bad and a highway is needed, they tear down a few villages and put one in.
> Look for an emerging middle class to begin complaining about the
> basics: No taxation without representation.
Absolutely…but as long as people see their wealth increasing, I don’t think this call will be a strong as you’d see in Western countries. Maybe it’s a cultural thing…but the Chinese I’ve spoken to are more interested in making money than free speech. It will be an interesting 20 years.
By Black Jack, Sunday, 15 October , 2006 @ 3:43 pm
I don’t think it makes much difference, people are people. I see increasing wealth driving individuals toward more open self expression, not the other way around. Wealth isn’t a substitute for civil rights, but a precondition for their acquisition.
All men seek self determination, and those with economic power acquire it sooner rather than later.