Associated Press
On a large television screen in front of Pyongyang's railway station, a North Korean state television broadcaster announces Tuesday that North Korea has conducted a nuclear bomb test.
If North Korea hoped to get the world's attention, it succeeded.
North Korea confirmed on Tuesday that it had conducted its third, long-threatened nuclear test, according to the official KCNA news service, posing a new challenge for the Obama administration in its effort to keep the country from becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.
The KCNA said it used a "miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously" and that the test "did not pose any negative impact on the surrounding ecological environment."
The test, reportedly more powerful than North Korea's first two nuclear blasts, was the first since Kim Jong-un became the country's new leader.
It also drew the immediate ire of international community, and the United Nations Security Council will meet in about an hour for an emergency meeting. Presumably, sanctions will be a major topic of conversation, though it's not clear what more the Security Council can do -- sweeping sanctions were already recently tightened and the country is already a global pariah. Unless China is prepared to cut off trade with North Korea altogether, the international community's options appear limited.
As for China, which had urged North Korea not to do this, and which expressed its "staunch opposition" to this latest nuclear test, it's unclear how Chinese officials will respond at the Security Council meeting, though chances are, they are not at all pleased. Andrei Lankov, a veteran analyst of North Korea based in Seoul's Kookmin Unversity, said China "explicitly warned North Korea against conducting the test, but they were ignored."
North Korea's defiance comes against a backdrop in which the country's leaders appear eager, if not desperate, to use the threat of nuclear weapons to normalize relations with foreign adversaries. It's a bizarre pattern to watch -- North Korea wants to be taken seriously, so it antagonizes the world and ignores international sanctions. This, in turn, fuels global animosity towards the country, which North Korean officials interpret as a sign they need to antagonize its rivals even more. The cycle just keeps repeating and reinforcing itself, with no evidence that it's likely to end anytime soon.
The timing of this new nuclear test is open to some interpretation, but it's not lost on the Obama administration that it comes the same day the president is set to deliver his State of the Union address.
In a statement, President Barack Obama described the test as a "highly provocative act." He said that -- following a "ballistic missile launch" by North Korea on Dec. 12 -- the test "undermines regional stability, violates North Korea's obligations under numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions, contravenes its [international] commitments … and increases the risk of proliferation."
"North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs constitute a threat to U.S. national security and to international peace and security," Obama said. "The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and steadfast in our defense commitments to allies in the region."
He said North Korea's "provocations do not make North Korea more secure" and the communist state had "increasingly isolated and impoverished its people through its ill-advised pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery."
"The danger posed by North Korea's threatening activities warrants further swift and credible action by the international community," Obama said, saying the U.S. would work with the international community to "pursue firm action."
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The cost to the Chinese pride and the pragmatic value of an incendiary non entity in the big picture , hmmm ...
Eeny meeny minee moh catch a China by the toe
If it hollers kiss your sinecure goodbye
Eeny meeny minee moh
Unfortunately for the Chinese they kind of have to put up with it because the alternative is basically having a US ally with lots of US support and even troops directly across their border.
The other problem for the Chinese is that if North Korea were to collapse as a state the result would be complete chaos in the region and massive destabilization of the Chinese economy...and therefor the worlds.
The one thing that seriously scares the Chinese about North Korea is that they might go off and do something insanely stupid. The Chinese have seen the Fallout projection maps
While the polished Chinese saber thundering act progresses from eighty eight Vietnamese sailors and soldiers killed defending their portion of the continental shelf without additional hitch hiking bad news .
Oh we built a facility on a rock that is under water
We are the Voice of reason
Against our Korean clients and their
Eensy beensy cupidity
We are the hedge against Insanely Stupid !
Their client hasn't shot down any commercial airliners yet , so there is that .
In meantime, in confirmation hearins, Senate Re-puke-licans are focusing on the well-trodden Benghazi issue
If you check out the USGS site, you can see there was a M5.1 "earthquake" in North Korea at a depth of 1 km.
Which just goes to prove that not just Repubs have issues with reality.
Thank goodness !
After ten thousand years of history , whew ...
Perhaps this is a case of "suicide by cop" writ large.
Or, maybe the guys running the place have been watching our Senate.
Funny, how N. Korea is considered a pariah because they want nuclear weapons, yet India, Pakistan, Israel already have them and no one says a word. Who started this race for destruction of the world? And why aren't all nations giving up nuclear warheads? The US currently has enough nuclear weapons to annihilate life on this planet as we know it - and the fact that there is a remote possibility of another ignorant, warmongering dufus like Shrub in office that might start another war to enrich his cronies should be enough to bring all Americans out marching to stop with the nuclear weaponry period!
How nice, a country that can't keep its own people fed is shaking the world with a new toy. I bet those North Koreans would get rid of that pesky nuke program and their leaders in exchange for a shipment of burgers and fries.
Thus we witness once more the total disconnect between a government and its people or more to the point---reality.
Here is my opinion on nukes...the only country insane enough to use one after we showed the destruction it would cause is Israel. Terrorist yap about wanting a nuke but it aint really a terrorist weapon. It just makes a good scare tactic for our government to use on us. If we are led to believe "they" have one then we will be glad we have a bunch.
As with all societies that form governments or chains of command, those who lead like leading so they will use fear and propaganda to remain in charge.
If you look at the heliplot from the Japanese seismic stations you can see an unmistakable signature of an explosion which you wouldn't see in an earthquake. Really cool since you don't see that everyday.
Any country with a Leader who lies about his golf score in such a brazen way deserves scorn...
The Chinese have already indicated to the US that the two Koreas will eventually be reunited but not as a communist state. It would be in China's best interests for them to stop North Korea from any further testing because it poses a threat to China as well as Japan and other Southeast Asian countries. That threat is very real because the leadership is very unstable and defiant. I would not be surprised if the Chinese force North Korea to end its nuclear program as a condition for China not going along with further sanctions. If they do not end the nuclear programs, there is a real possibility that Japan will seek to develop a nuclear bomb and that would pose a very big threat to China which is more paranoid about Japan than N. Korea. In addition, N. Korea is drawing the US and UN into the situation which means further US and other countries military ships will be in the area increasing the risk of an accidental confrontation. We will have to wait until the UN votes to see what China will do about N. Korea and its nuclear testing.
Senate's Contribution to National Insecurity:
This as a threat to National Security must also reflect the deliberations of the U.S. Senate, who in performing its duties, has left the world to fester.
In suffering the Senate's waste of time in mean political machinations, to deflect and misdirect, to posture and conflate, to raise the dull sword of words against phantom windmills swirling the misty fog of fact and fancy.
What can be done to correct and to direct, that most powerful body, toward its founding purpose?
Nothing: As the Constitution indelibly describes the Senate makes its own rules, placing the Senate completely above the document that created it. It would be impossible to imagine that the honorable and trusted gentlemen that formed this Constitution failed to contemplate that the Senate would then be called to overrule the House (mob), or an errant executive, or to oppose an errant Amendment, but that it had no way to overrule the Senate itself.
If we succeed in calling your attention to how the Senate is 'perceived' by the wider world as of today, will we ever command you attention to the actions of that Senate has having sat in the same position of power for past generations? Can we even define and 'cause and effect', when 'cause and effect' have themselves been define as Cause equals Senate and Effect equals Senate.
The Senate does not know its Power, and North Korea cannot know anything but Power.
Neither knows compromise, the word either does not exist, or needs to be removed from the dictionary; neither side is capable of yielding.
One side is willing to guess that other side will not risk annihilation and the other side unwilling to annihilate.
Possible Consequences:
- (North Korea is willing to be annihilated, but knows that the United States is unwilling to annihilate?)
- (If United States is willing to annihilate then the United States loses by using Power, North Korea may vanish, but then so does the United States as Power annihilates free government?)
- (Once free government has ended the only government left is Power?)
- (North Korea wins by leaving the world ruled by Power?) Or (United States wins by leaving the world ruled by the Senate's Power?)
Conclusion: If actions are taken short of annihilation then the problem be extended indefinitely North Korea and United States will continue to exist with the problem.
The Infant State:
The test shows the world that North Korea is a “nuclear weapons state that no one can irritate,” Kim Mun Chol, a 42-year-old Pyongyang citizen, told The Associated Press in the North Korean capital. “Now we have nothing to be afraid of in the world.”
This from the mind of child, having a child throw tantrums reflect poorly on the parental qualifications, where prevention is the better cure. Children are designed to be irritating because it tests the natural boundaries, giving in by parents is nearly always the wrong action. I assume that this does not mean that North Korea can attack anyone who irritates North Korea, the silliness of the statement at worst indicates a delusion of weaponry.
Children are capable of using fear to gain attention, of all the peoples of the world there hasn't been a country more fearful, made so by generations being held in check by fear. We don't know what that fear is like, but it clearly points to the willingness to give up life. But to be unafraid of the world at large, begs the question of all that fear suffered at home for generations. To say the least, this North Korea problem, was man-made and should have been resolved along ago when it was between China etal and the United States etal (over the status of Taiwan), but it was left as a Power Standoff, but was not because the United States Senate then did not understand its duties in the Power vs Power conflicts [#,##]. The fact that three generations have passed has made the old problem into a new and much worse problem.
If China's tantrum throwing child were three generation removed from (compromise; it goes back much further), then what might it take to solve that problem? Gasp the expression 'solve that problem', leaves us stunned. No one wants this child, or 25 million of them, how would correct this, and to keep correcting it for three more generations.
Diplomatically Assisted Conflicts:
[#] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea#Division_of_Korea - After the Soviet forces' departure in 1948, the main agenda in the following years was unification of Korea until the consolidation of the Syngman Rhee regime in the South and a brutal crackdown on Communist sympathizers under his presidency. In 1949, a military intervention into South Korea was considered by Kim Il-sung, but failed to receive support from the Soviet Union, which had played a key role in the establishment of the country.
The withdrawal of most of the American forces from the South in June dramatically weakened the Southern regime and encouraged Kim Il-sung to rethink an invasion plan against the South. The war proposals were rejected several times by Joseph Stalin, but along with the development of Soviet nuclear weapons, Mao Zedong's victory in China, and the Chinese indication that it would send troops and other support to North Korea, Stalin approved the invasion which led to the start of the Korean War in June 1950.
[##] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Glaspie#Meetings_with_Saddam_Hussein - "It seems far more likely that Saddam Hussein went ahead with the invasion because he believed the United States would not react with anything more than verbal condemnation. That was an inference he could well have drawn from his meeting with United States Ambassador April Glaspie on July 25, and from statements by State Department officials in Washington at the same time publicly disavowing any United States security commitments to Kuwait, but also from the success of both the Reagan and the Bush administrations in heading off attempts by the United States Senate to impose sanctions on Iraq for previous breaches of international law." (Journalist Edward Mortimer wrote in the New York Review of Books in November 1990)
If there was ever a wizened little speck of Stalinist insanity that wouldn't be missed if it disappeared in a mushroom cloud, North Korea is it.
Bribe the populace with food!