A North Korean box…
Once again the world has to wait to learn whether Kim Jong-il wants to complicate everyone’s life in Asia by going through with a nuclear weapons test that will end any doubts about whether his lonesome, isolated government actually possesses a nuclear bomb.
Problem is, there isn’t much any of us can do about it.
China and Japan have few more sticks they can throw at Pyongyang…and the Bush administration refuses to really sit down and talk to Seoul. (You can find my earlier Newsday column about Kim on the “writings” section of this web site.) A White House that would actually talk to Pyongyang and isolated the government’s key demands…might help avert us from moving another step towards nuclear conflagration.
Ironically, I have to speak about Japan security today at the Sigur Center at George Washington University…and it seems that the North’s new brinksmanship will only encourage Japanese leader Shinzo Abe to ratchet up his commitment to nationalism, speed revision of the war-renouncing sections of the Constitution and the resumption of an arms race, and perhaps a new Cold War across Asia.