How About Adding a North Korea Crisis to the Mix?

With much of the rest of the world — Egypt, Iran, Libya, and others — in escalating turmoil and with other potential hot spots getting hotter, events on the Korean peninsula may well be getting less coordinated attention from the Obama administration even than they normally do, and even than they got when the still simmering Korean mess erupted late last year.

More recently, the Obama administration found itself wallowing in bad intelligence and conflicting administration statements as to Egypt. That deficiency continues even as to Libya, the current hot spot de jour; the worldwide economic consequences of the situation there may be very great.

The situation in Pakistan is heating up with probable consequences greater than potential embarrassment over recent unofficial confirmations that Raymond Allen Davis — for whom Pakistan had refused to honor diplomatic immunity demanded by the United States — “had been working as a CIA security contractor for the U.S. consulate in Lahore.” Further protests in Pakistan have resulted and the already shaky United States-Pakistan alliance seems to be fraying perhaps beyond repair.

Venezuela may become another hot spot before very long. When might the situation in Israel explode into an open and declared war? That situation is continuously exacerbated perhaps beyond redemption by the mixed signals the Obama administration continues to give; that is the only consistency it has shown. Is the “administration simply too incompetent to understand the significance of its actions”?

Highly volatile situations in parts of the world distant from the Middle East -- particularly on the Korean peninsula -- require attention lest they spiral out of control while the unfocused gaze of the Obama Administration continues to be directed elsewhere. Once that has happened it will be easy to look back and attempt to explain why it happened. It seems more useful to look ahead now at what can reasonably be anticipated; that's what the Obama Administration should be doing but apparently is not.

Most of the sources cited and linked in the article are non-U.S. sites; the United States media are paying but scant attention to events in Asia and that is unfortunate because that's where even worse problems than in the Middle East may soon arise. Here is a synopsis of the high points:

1. The tunnel needed for further North Korean nuclear tests is nearing completion; already 800 meters deep it need go only another 200 meters. China has blocked publication of a report prepared for the Security Council on the North Korean nuclear program.

2. The North Korean defense minister has threatened Secretary Gates with "catastrophic" nuclear consequences unless there are two party talks between the United States and North Korea. Admiral Robert Willard, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, recently warned of more North Korean military activity within the next few months; his warning echoed that of South Korean Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik.

3. North Korean military construction in, and naval craft movement to, the disputed waters off western South Korea continue.

4. Meanwhile, starvation in North Korea is being exacerbated by rapidly spreading hoof and mouth disease which started at military pig farms in Pyongyang. Rather than take even rudimentary measures to limit the spread the animal carcasses are being sold for food and other uses. This increases the likelihood not only of further spread and more starvation but also of heightened discontent and for consequences displeasing to the Kim regime.

Whatever happens in North Korea seems unlikely to wait until 2013 when we may have a new and far better president of the United States. New and wiser heads than are now ~~leading~~ advising an uninterested President Obama, who cares far more about his domestic initiatives, must warn against continued dithering and stumbling aimlessly down the path of least resistance toward political expediency. Of equal importance, they must tell him how and try to push him in the right direction. Unless these cautions and advice have the desired effect those advisers must resign and their advice must be revealed candidly and ventilated without reservation in House and Senate hearings.

Being a community organizer is pretty easy; despite President Obama’s best efforts to bring to the presidency such talents as he developed in that capacity, it’s really tough being the president. The keys to making it less tough and less dangerous for the United States and her allies are available to President Obama. It is up to him to use them; if he fails to do so, it is unfortunately up to others to try in the only lawful ways at their disposal to force his hand.

Egypt... Iran... Libya... Pakistan... Venezuela...

And Yemen, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia...

Iran (shh! don’t wake the president)

Also the Philippines, the Horn of Africa (pretty much the entire thing, except for Ethiopia), Sudan, pretty much every Muzzie country except for Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon — and who’d have guessed Lebanon would be one of the stable ones? /s

North Korea? Can’t be a crisis, it’s been going on too long.

Thanks DanMiller.

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