North Korea: Don't cough, we might get nuked

I’ve been keeping a careful eye on Pyongyang for a few years now and the more I see the more nervous I get. Their latest utterings, in response to US President Barack Obama suggesting that they are a “grave threat”, are the most ominous to date and indicate that where once their conduct might have been adjudged to be that of a spoiled child, now it borders on national insanity.

“If the US and its followers infringe upon our republic’s sovereignty even a bit, our military and people will launch a one hundred or one thousand-fold retaliation with [a] merciless military strike,” the state-controlled Minju Joson newspaper said.

The newspaper described Obama as a hypocrite for supporting a nuclear-free world while making what it claimed were “frantic efforts” to develop new nuclear weapons at home. “The nuclear programme is not the monopoly of the US,” it said.

Russia, which shares a border with North Korea, quickly responded that any missile heading for Russian airspace would be promptly shot down. “We will see it and shoot it down,” the deputy defence minister, Viktor Popovkin, said, according to Interfax.

The North Korean warning came as reports in Japan and South Korea said the regime could be preparing to test launch two long-range ballistic missiles, possibly in retaliation against sanctions agreed by the UN Security Council at the weekend. (Guardian)

Those of you who have been following this highly volatile region will be aware that up to now the rhetoric coming out of North Korea focused on what Pyongyang would do if the US and its allies attacked them. This included any attempts to blockade or intercept their shipping which they described as “an act of war”.

The basic premise underlining their approach being that if they were confronted they would respond in kind and then some.

The latest warnings refer not only to an attack or confrontation but any “provocation” from what it perceives to be its enemies. Provocation in the case of North Korea, appropriately described as the “Hermit Kingdom”, could quite frankly represent anything from ignoring its demands to befriending South Korea.

As such even an overt innocent act might be construed as hostile by this extremely hostile and paranoid regime.

Analysing why this might be the case — as we have done in previous articles — is not going to be very helpful to those in Seoul if Pyongyang were to order a missile strike or a barrage from the largest artillery concentration on the planet right now.

The bottom line is that the options available to the US and her allies are very limited. They normally are when someone has a gun pointed at your head as is the case here.

What more and more analysts are starting to realise is that North Korea may well start a war — even if it is only on a limited basis — in order to be taken seriously.

I suggested the same in my previous article.

What is also of interest is that many of the technical buffs are saying that North Korea does not yet have the capability to reduce the nuclear payload sufficiently to target countries as far away as the US — as yet.

That of course does not detract from the fact that it can deliver enormous damage to its neighbours as Russia’s response (see above) clearly demonstrates.

With the US now having a clear indication of what can happen in a region where you have allowed an unstable regime to acquire military nuclear capability the lesson might well have been learned.

We will know soon enough from Obama’s dealings with Iran.