Meanwhile, In North Korea…
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The WorldThe only country in the “Axis of Evil” that supposedly has nuclear weapons is about to test a long range missile that could reach the US.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — North Korea is believed to have completed fueling a missile capable of reaching Alaska, raising the probability of an imminent test launch, U.S. officials said on Sunday.[...]
Washington has warned Pyongyang against the launch in a message passed to North Korean diplomats at the United Nations but there was no response, American officials said.
Heh. Not that this is a laughing matter, but much like the situation in Iran, we have pretty much squandered any chances of really negotiating with these countries. At least North Korea can’t cut off oil supplies and wreck our economy. On the flip side, they might be able to hit Alaska with a nuke. Something tells me they wouldn’t dare.
And let me open up the floor to a pretty straightforward question: can we really stop nuclear proliferation?
This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 and is filed under The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 20th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
No, because we can’t be everywhere at once, and we can’t possibly keep tabs on what everyone is doing.
What I think is interesting, however, is that countries like North Korea and Iran are really out of the nuclear closet. If I were them, I wouldn’t tell anyone I had the bomb and hope that no one ratted me out.
June 21st, 2006 at 7:48 am
You can’t negotiate with a rabid dog. If you can’t shoot it, the nexy best strategy is to confine it until it dies of its disease, so it doesn’t hurt anyone.
NK is probably just posturing as they have in the past. They want something, so they do something silly to get attention. That’s their M.O. Might provide an interesting live-fire test of our ABM systems, though.
If their missile can hit Alaska, it can hit all of China, most of southeast Asia, and a good chunk of India. They could also target the Straight of Molucca, through which flows about half the world’s oil.