The North Koreans appear to be gearing up for an underground nuclear test.
The North Koreans neither confirm nor deny it.
The South Koreans express some doubt about the likelihood of a test soon.
What should not be in doubt is that North Korea under the Pillsbury Nuke Boy's loving rule is ghastly beyond our comprehension:
How extraordinary it is, when you give it a moment's thought, that it was only last week that an American president officially spoke the obvious truth about North Korea. In point of fact, Mr. Bush rather understated matters when he said that Kim Jong-il's government runs "concentration camps." It would be truer to say that the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, as it calls itself, is a concentration camp. It would be even more accurate to say, in American idiom, that North Korea is a slave state.
Sadly for the North Korean people, they have the misfortune to live in a state that the United States considers part of an axis of evil. How can human rights activists sleep with a clear conscience knowing they in effect side with a cowboy American president in wanting to end that regime? Too tough to reconcile. They won't do it. They'll spend all their time at Gitmo instead. Much easier to get invited to the right parties with that on your resume.
But if mere human rights is no reason to treat North Korea as a scum state, will an opently nuclear North Korea do the trick?
Despite the doubts about what North Korea is about to do, everybody assumes they have at least one and maybe a half dozen or so nukes. Yet still the Chinese won't do squat to help and the South Koreans are too worried about actually winning to be forceful. (Not to dismiss their worries. Even victory will be costly in blood and treasure if Pyongyang starts a war before going down.) The Russians don't seem to care. Japan cares and we care.
So if North Korea has nukes, why not end the ability of some to pretend there is no problem? If North Korea lights one up, nobody can deny the need to confront North Korea. Do we really want this gulag with a UN seat to have nukes and survive for long? And the Pillsbury Nuke Boy will have one fewer nuke to wave around if push comes to shove. I'd certainly be happier if North Korea can't build nukes; but if they can, end the uncertainty.
With this cleared up, we can focus on containing North Korea. We can cut off all but a trickle of aid to keep them hoping for recovery rather than banking on war. We can welcome refugees. We can try to get information about the outside world into the north. We can build missile defenses around North Korea with the Japanese to guard against the worse. We can focus surveillance assets on the north. We can intercept any attempts to export nuclear materials or weapons. In short, we contain them and pull the plug so that they die. Regime collapse is our goal.
And we can prepare to strike North Korea's missile sites and leadership positions in a disarming strike should we detect signs of missile launch preparations. Remember, it is one thing to hide development in a deep cavern. But if you want a weapon, you have to bring it close to the surface where it can actually be launched. We can detect and strike these.
Just what is the status of deep penetrating small nuclear warheads, anyway?
So if North Korea can build nukes, I say encourage them to test it. It may be a clarifying moment for a lot of people.
