[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[Steel Wolf]

I seriously doubt they coordinate on things of this nature, but it's interesting to see North Korea act as the rodeo clown for the Iran bullrider. It's in their interest for Iran to go nuclear, simply to dilute our power and focus. It's also in their interest to make us think that a nuclear DPRK must be acknowledged, and that nuclear powers are all basically equals.

They may have no strategic goals in common with Iran, per se, but they both benefit from having more friends in the room, waving capes at the U.S. bull.

[.cnI redruM]

The way those missiles performed last time, they could accidentally hit Los Angeles.

[Flavius]

oh common why dont they just offer france to do it for them

[Little Ray]

I think they're compelled to make certain their bombs work...

[monday]

"North Korea said Tuesday it will conduct a nuclear test in the future, claiming it is compelled to do so due to U.S. hostility."

So they wanna see some hostility do they? Time to vaporize North Korea.

[Billthedrill]

Timing is everything in propaganda and public relations - but there I repeat myself - and Kim's isn't especially good. At this point a successful test is more likely to result in a collective "how about that? The little creep finally managed to make one go off" than a collective gasp of horror.

At least as far as the U.S. goes, that is. Japan and South Korea won't be laughing. Those are both high-technology industrial states with enough disposable income and know-how to construct their own weapons in weeks or months at the outside, if in fact they haven't already done so. They'd be fools not to. The same might be said for Iran's neighbors.

Essentially the Non-Proliferation Treaty is a dead duck and has been for some time. It is an odd notion of international relations that posits a "right" to possess weapons intended to blow one's neighbors to smithereens but that is one upshot of the overlaying of multicultural mores onto international diplomacy. But in practice non-proliferation always did depend on the good intentions of the signators and a preference for the economic rewards of compliance. North Korea is a chilling example of what happens in the absence of these economic rewards, stretched over decades. Iran feels that it can avoid this by simply trading with the West anyway and the French have given them good reason to believe that they'll get away with it. And that's really all that's needed to kill the NPT.

And so we're again going to have to ramp up production of our own nukes and even more important, the anti-missile technology that diplomacy was supposedly going to make unnecessary. Plowshares into swords. "The other was only a maiden aunt's fancy." (Robert Heinlein)