It does seem likely that Pyongyang intends its development and advertisement of nuclear weapons capability to deter would-be attackers.
Kim is playing for high stakes. Clearly, he fears not just for the future of his regime but for his own life. Newsweek has quoted an unnamed visitor from abroad who says Kim laments that North Korean conventional forces are outmoded and inadequate. Without nuclear weapons, the current Great Leader believes, he would be personally targeted.
Call that paranoia, but it's rational enough, considering how many people in high places in Washington would dearly love to see him dead.
This gets to the heart of why I consider so many experts so dead wrong on Korea. The conventional wisdom is that if the poor 'ol Pillsbury Nuke Boy didn't fear our invasion (a "rational" fear), he'd be investing in consumer electronics factories instead of nukes.
This ignores their long-standing pursuit of nukes and one other big factor: If North Korea didn't have nukes, we wouldn't give a rat's ass (how's that for animal imagery?) about their pathetic regime. We're busy over here. You want to terrorize the neighborhood and your neighbors don't care enough to resist you? Fine. That's your neighbors' problems.
It is only because of their development of nukes that "many people in high places in Washington would dearly love to see him dead." Is that so hard to grasp? It may be, since as this CSM article notes:
The US has many nations to manage relations with, and tries to deal with crises around the world. But North Korea's not like that, points out Kun Young Park, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution Center for Northeast Asian Policy. Washington is its lodestar, the nation around which all its other international efforts revolve.
"The foreign policy of North Korea is its US policy," says Kun Young Park. "North Korea is very attentive to what US government officials say about them."
Given their intense focus on what Rumsfeld is eating for dinner and what that may say about trends in our policy toward them, the North Koreans may not have had any idea that we didn't spend all our time contemplating the actions of the brave porcupine.
Amazingly, the North Koreans have created the threat against their regime. They screwed up. They made us notice them.
And North Korea has made the world notice them. Pressure is not being applied to us to relent and give aid. Pressure is being focused on North Korea as the Japanese foreign minister noted:
"Should we let the time slip, then I think it will only worsen the situation, because I'm sure the international community will become tougher vis-a-vis North Korea," Machimura said.
Time is not on North Korea's side. Our goal must be to manage their collapse. And in the meantime get the Chinese to push North Korea to defang themselves. As I've said, if we don't get North Korea to give up their nukes, other countries that China does not want to go nuclear will likely go that route.
