North Korea's Tests Second Nuke

Over the week-end, North Korea set off another nuclear bomb, testing a device about as strong at the Hiroshima Bomb at an underground test site near the city of Kilju. The sociopathocracy followed this up with a few missile launches to keep it neighbors in a state of suitable nervousness. President Obama and the rest of the world fussed appropriately, but no one has figured out the real solution to the Pyongyang problem. China holds all the cards, and when Taiwan gets a nuke, Beijing will have to play ball.

The truth is that the People's Republic of China keeps North Korea alive and has done since General Douglas MacArthur rolled up to the Yalu River and got his ass handed to him by the People's Liberation Army (someday someone must explain how that bozo ever got a single star let alone five). The PRC issued a statement through its foreign ministry that the BBC translated as saying, “Disregarding the common objections of the international community, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has again tested a nuclear device. The Chinese government expresses its resolute opposition to this.” Oooh, that hurt.

In fact, North Korea's seemingly erratic behavior suits the Beijing dictatorship quite well. China can't very well undermine its neighbors and destabilize the Northwest Pacific; it has too many trading partners. Nevertheless, it remains a revisionist power in search of chaos that it can use to its own advantage. To that end, North Korea is a delightful catspaw. Pyongyang can do the things Beijing can't, and plausible deniability makes everything OK for Beijing.

And that crap has to stop. The world is a messy enough place without North Korea behaving like Yosemite Sam on bad crack. The six-party talks among the Yanks, Japanese, South Koreans, Russians, Chinese and North Koreans are largely a waste of time. The South Koreans and the Japanese are scared of the Kim-regime; the Russians have other fish to fry, so something has to happen to get the Chinese to reign in their client.

The only thing that can do this is the threat of Taiwan, allegedly a rogue province of China's, getting the Bomb. Beijing has declared it will fight to the death if Taiwan declares independence, but if the Taipei regime were to get its own Bomb, it is hard to see how Beijing could respond without catastrophic results. So, it's quite simple. Taiwan will get the Bomb unless Beijing reigns in Pyongyang. While nuclear proliferation is generally undesirable, in this instance, the world ought to look the other way until China quits its game playing.

© Copyright 2009 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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