Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Oops ? !

All kinds of speculation that the North Korean nuke was a "fizzle" -- that is, a dud.

Who knows ? If so, I pity the poor sod who had to tell the Dear Leader. . .

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

speaking outside the throneroom, i.e., EJM comment at chester, i would like to take this opportunity to offer a minority opinion.
i still hold the position that this was done with the permission, encouragment, and blessing of beijing.
just imagine for a moment you want to get your hands on some high tech nuke design. what better method to obtain said technology than to have a wackjob neighbor come into possession of said technology, read 1994 jimmah cawtah agreement. you get a top of the line design to copy and let the wackjob neighbor make all the noise he wants. and that licensing agreement for the design?
fahgeddaboutit.
if the wackjob sets of a nuke and kills 100 million people, china, save india, is the only country on the marble that will look at is as less mouths to feed. i.e., they still have more than a billion to take care of.
still in minority mode here.......
that poor sod maybe the dear leader explaining to his masters in beijing why, after all the bluster and money, all KJII did was make the worlds largest dirty bomb.
i always thought that the chinese were using NK as a balance against taiwan. the US couldn't act against NK without china lauching a couter-strike at taiwan.
with the KMT pushing for re-uniting with the mainland now, taiwan may soon be off the table.
proximity has its influence. and while i never did "go native" very well, my proximity to this situation was about twenty minutes by car.
5 seconds by mig.
did i state that my opinion was minority?
fringe.
i'm just glad we had this discussion outside the throneroom.

El Jefe Maximo said...

Considering past cooperation between PRC and NK's, that's a defensible point of view. I don't know, though, if the Chinese would have to go through such a high stakes wringer to get the aforesaid "high tech nuke design" -- if they wanted one, they could just buy it from some security-challenged facility in the US, or get the NK's to ship them whatever they had in exchange for the latest vegetable truck run.

The NK's would be hardly likely to object if it would keep the PRC onside, one would think.

If the Chinese wanted to do testing, or have less mouths to feed -- then they could arrange same tout suite (remember the "Great Leap Forward" ?) and have it all done and swept under the rug in time for the Olympics, and get all our usual suspects to argue that nukes or millions less mouths really an internal Chinese affair of no concern to us that should not affect the price of items at Wal Mart.

I really think the Chinese are in the loser bracket on this one. The NK step adversely affects the Taiwan issue, because (1) it gets the Japanese majorly upset; and (2) it consumes Chinese diplomatic bandwidth to deal with North Korea.

The Chinese now have Zimbabwe with Nukes right across the Yalu river all ready to vomit refugees into Manchuria if things come unglued in Kimland. They CANNOT be happy about that.

Their program to make China a big modern power is going along right well, thank you -- the US is buying all the gimcrack knick-knacks they can sell, (which helps their none-too-healthy banking picture) rearmament is proceeding well, a navy is getting built and the Taiwan issue might well solve itself. There is no reason for China to take a chance on bad risks like the Kim dynasty.

Speaking of Bad Risks...Dear Leader Kim needs to pay up the life insurance. The Chinese are bound to be on the prowl for somebody else to put in Pyongyang willing to eat his Kimchi without smelling up the neighborhood.

I don't think US action against NK has ever, really, been on the cards. Last time we tried that, per Douglas MacArthur's suggestion, things did not come out too well. The status quo suits everybody fine, cept for the less practical and more nationalist among the South Koreans. A few millions starving North Koreans probably think re-unification would be great too.

El Jefe Maximo said...

Addendum to last: I meant US action against NK that we start...