This Has Been a Test . . . in the Event of a Real Emergency. . . .
We’ve known that North Korea had nukes for a long time now, so the test they conducted shouldn’t be a surprise, any more so than their previous ballistic missile attempt. Everybody treats North Korea like they’re the village idiots: unpredictable, probably dangerous, but not terribly bright. A recent Robert Kaplan article in the Atlantic Monthly outlines why that kind of thinking is what’s dangerous about North Korea and takes a more forward-looking view of the eventual, inevitable collapse of the Pyongyang regime. Validation of their nuclear capacity does make the situation more immediate to the world, if no more destablising to the region than Pakistan and India trading tests was not so long ago. China does need to take more of a hand than they’ve been seen to do up to now, but in the end, North Korea seems less likely to launch a war than to leverage foreign aid and an increased period for the Kim family to hold power. We should, however, keep our heads as we work out what to do in response to the test. North Korean claims must be assessed with as much accuracy as possible. Already there appear to be reports that seismology reports are conflicting. While that doesn’t make the prospect of their atomic weapons capacity any less, it does raise some interesting questions about their claims in general and in some specifics. Was it a “neutron” device, designed for high radioactivity and a lower blast, for example.