Narrow-minded nuke freaks

The worrying behaviour of a neurotic dictator has been hitting front pages and news bulletins over the last weeks. I’m talking about North Korea. That island (not geographically) of despair, mental isolation, hard-line communism, starvation and nuclear chess games.

So North Korea’s old and frail leader Kim-something has done an underground nuke test the size of the Hiroshima or Nagasaki blasts, followed by several missile tests. It has brought the world on the edge as there are no direct, practical and political steps that can be taken here and now to stop the military gung-ho madness. It reflects the world’s serious limitations towards such rough states, with at the helm a leader that mentally doesn’t operate in the real world but rather in a theoretical bi-polar vision of us vs them that is a reflection of the cold world from the 50s and 60s. A nation stuck in the narrow-minded ism of theoretical, old-style politics.

It’s serious. In a post-Reagan and post-Soviet time the world had stepped back from a money- wasting nuclear arms race. And rightly so. But North Korea, and Iran (although both are totally different type of states), are still walking the path of overkill-deterrent.

The timing of such nuke tests is always suspicious. Is North Korea testing the incoming Obama administration? Or, as is often the case, there are growing internal rifts? In a closed, non-democratic, un-free society like North Korea it is hard to measure dissent as those openly asking questions from within the country are likely spending the rest of their lives in jail or in “educational camps”. Rotting and starving away. And North Korea’s leader Kim-something is not around forever. The cult around him might create an impression of eternity, but even dictators can’t stop the hand of time. Also for them the grim reaper will have the final say. So maybe within the clique of those around him there are people jostling for new positions in a post-Kim-something North Korea. And that makes leaders nervous and in times of internal rifts it’s always the easiest way to go and focus back on the external enemy and show some “courage” by playing some nuke games.

It has raised stress levels across the region and the world, even in neighbouring China. The military on highest alert in South Korea. Extra US spy planes to the region. Emergency meetings in Japan. It’s all very edgy. Also because the world is pretty limited in dealing with a rough nation like North Korea that lives in a different state of mind than the rest of the globe.
But it was this cold world narrow-mindedness that has created the Korean split in the 50s. Despite French, US and UN troops the country got artificially divided. It was the creation of the northern madness.

And as in Iran, those nuke programs always go hand in hand with missile testing because if you have a bomb but can’t deliver it then that nuke power is useless. Remember, that’s why the US – straight after world war 2 – sucked in some Nazi missile experts, to develop the US nuclear deterrent capability. Because as you might remember the US atomic bombs over Japan in 1945 where dropped from planes and thus operationally much more risky than putting them on a rocket thousands of kilometres away.

In the North Korean, and Iranian, context it is certainly also necessary to stress that the world’s democracies have been working hard to come up with and establish a so called non-nuclear proliferation treaty. An attempt to stop nuclear material and knowledge to flow freely over the world. It’s a sad to admit that it was the West that started the nuke race and now trying to stop it. Anyway this non-proliferation treaty is a more than welcome piece of paper, but – and here are already big gaps in the credibility of it – democracies like Israel, India and Pakistan refuse to sign this anti-nuke treaty. That of course shoots big holes in any anti-nuke rhetoric by let’s say Washington or London. It makes it ten times more difficult to come knocking on Iran’s door and say “Hey mate, stop this nuke program”, when the US’ buddy Israel is refusing to sign up to it. Certainly no sane mind can support an Iranian leader that openly dreams of the destruction of the state of Israel. The state of Israel has totally the right to exist,.... although it’s treatment of Palestinians is totally unacceptable, racist and inhumane.

So you now have to deal with North Korea but you don’t have too much options or tools to choose from and your credibility – because of Israel, India and Pakistan - has big holes in it. A tough one to crack!

North Korea is a disgraceful dictatorship that lets its people starve to death to avoid having to open up borders. Iran is more complicated. It liberated itself from a US-backed dictator in the 70s but as a counter-swing ended up with a religious conservative state. And also the difference with North Korea is that at least Iran has elections. New ones coming up any day now. And from previous polls they are reasonably free and fair as such. I stress the “as such” part. It’s not like in China where the ruling party gets 95% or so. In Iran there is some kind of contest. Not totally free between all types of political parties like we see for instance in Europe, but there are opposing parties at least. And yes we must admit her and now too that there are still severe restrictions within Iranian society, like full media freedom for instance. But interesting elections to watch and see if the hardliners gain or lose, and what the rural-urban divide will be too.

Here’s a thought. Why doesn’t Israel announce they will sign up to the non-proliferation treaty and accept UN nuke inspectors, if Iran does the same too. That would be a fantastic positive step and also would put North Korea’s madness and isolated behaviour even more in a corner. But Israel has a hawkish government now and Iran is in election fever. And thus the timing isn’t ripe for bold moves that narrow-minded hardliners on both sides will spin as weakness. Maybe in a few months.... Hope is a drug.

Throw out. Listening to "Remain in memory" from punkrockers Good Riddance. Their final gig on cd. Great stuff!

C-Ya

collateral - the dawn of June 2009