North Korea, part 2
Well, I guess part one of my question about North Korea might actually see an answer. Insofar as we can determine that the test was real, we are surely going to see some interesting political machinations, different from before, go on over the next year.
If North Korea really did perform the test successfully (insteading of, say, exploding massive amounts of dynamite to trigger a small quake), it seems likely that they still don’t have capacity to attack someone with a nuclear weapon, since that requires infrastructure, and if they had that infrastructure, they probably would have performed their test over the Pacific Ocean. Yet how long can it be before they develop that capability? 6 months? 2 years?
If the United States, or anyone else, for that matter, steps in, they might set off a very unfortunate chain of events (people say that North Korea has pretty substantial conventional military capabilities, and Seoul is so close to the border). If North Korea is left untouched, however, then that sets a precedent for other nations interested in developing nuclear capabilities (most of them?), it gives a tremendous boost to the right-wing in Japan calling for military and nuclear capabilities, and it gives North Korea a resource that they could try to sell to others (Iran? Islamic jihadist networks? Anyone bristling under the heel of US foreign policy?).
Unfortunately, much like the situation between Israel and its neighbors, I don’t see any certain way out. Everything seems so much like a lose-lose resolution that it’s hard to even find a position to advocate.
North Korea 1
How would the world react if North Korea performed a successful test of a nuclear weapon? How should the world react?