
 |
|
Nov, 21, 2008
Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Money matters?
Caroline B. Glick:
Civilization walks the plank
Nov, 20, 2008
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bronfman's blindness
The Kosher Gourmet
By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto
Nov, 19, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality
Elliot B. Gertel:
'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?
Nov, 18, 2008
Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason
Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?
Nov, 17, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason
Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?
Nov, 14, 2008
Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia
Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead
Nov, 13, 2008
Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic
The Kosher Gourmet
by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla
Nov, 12, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers
Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks
Nov, 11, 2008
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?
Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate
Nov, 10, 2008
Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?
Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist
Nov, 7, 2008
Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality
Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy
Nov, 6, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism
The Kosher Gourmet
By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes
Nov, 5, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors
Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie
Nov, 4, 2008
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law
Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East
Nov, 3, 2008
Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart?
Jonathan Tobin:
Was He Wrong About Everything?
Oct. 31, 2008
Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Our Immutable Noble Essence
Caroline B. Glick: Running against Bush
Oct. 30, 2008
Jonathan Rosenblum: The End of the Special Relationship?
Steve Lipman: 'Kid Kosher' Gets A Title Shot
Oct. 29, 2008
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: GET US THE TAPE THE L.A. TIMES REFUSES TO RELEASE, AND WE'LL GIVE YOU CASH!
Dr. Ari Korenblit: Making The Write Choice for President
Oct. 28, 2008
Mona Charen: Denial runs through American Jewry
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Sell-off to capitalism or sell-out to Islam?
Oct. 27, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Are tax deductions for charitable donations moral?
Jonathan Mark: The Mystery Of The Arab-American Vote
Oct. 24, 2008
'Why aren't all religious people vegetarians?': Response by Miriam Kosman
Caroline B. Glick: Testing Obama's mettle
Oct. 23, 2008
Daniel Pipes: Obama Would Fail Security Clearance
The Kosher Gourmet
by Linda Gassenheimer: A fast chicken dish with an Asian accent
Oct. 20, 2008
Gary Rosenblatt: Still One Torah
Jonathan Tobin:
Government 'Gifts' Are Not Free
Oct. 17, 2008
Jonathan Rosenblum: Sukkos and the Great Meltdown
Caroline B. Glick: The disappearance of law
Oct. 16, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Copying DVDs: RIP OR RIPOFF?
Cal Thomas: Blaming the Jews (again)
March 22, 2007
J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Oct. 10, 2006
/ 18 Tishrei, 5767
North Korea's nuclear test? Yawn
By
Jack Kelly
| >
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In the fantasy world many liberals inhabit, every person on the planet except George
W. Bush is a decent, rational human being with whom satisfactory settlements can be
negotiated, if negotiations are conducted in good faith (that is, the U.S.
acknowledges that tensions which exist are mostly, if not entirely, the fault of the
United States).
North Korea's nuclear test this weekend has shaken this comfortable presupposition.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is hard to love even by those who have warm, fuzzy
feelings for Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. There just isn't much nice
to say about a regime that routinely starves its people in order to build more
weapons, even for people who love to say nice things about those who hate the United
States.
The reported North Korean test has brought international condemnation, and has
prompted an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
The reported test also likely will spark renewed interest in ballistic missile
defense, especially in light of views like this, expressed by North Korean spokesman
Kim Myong Chol in the Asia Times last Friday:
"A next war will better be called the American war because the main theater will be
the continental U.S., with major cities transformed into towering infernos."
So why don't I share in the general alarm?
First, North Korea has been suspected of having the bomb since at least 1998, and
declared that it did in 2002. The test merely confirms what was already widely
supposed.
Second, the bang wasn't very big. South Korean and U.S. estimates place it at
roughly half a kiloton. This means the test probably was a dud, said Jeffrey Lewis,
director of the Managing the Atom project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
"A plutonium device should produce a yield in the range of 20 kilotons, like the one
we dropped on Nagasaki," Mr. Lewis wrote on the Defensetech Web site Monday. "No
one has ever dudded their first test of a simple fission device. North Korean
nuclear scientists are now officially the worst ever."
Third, the test has alarmed the South Koreans, who are rethinking their appeasement
policy toward the North, and angered the Chinese, without whose continued support
the North Korean regime cannot survive.
When they were developing their bombs in the 1990s, neither India nor Pakistan
announced their nuclear tests in advance. Kim did, because he uses brinksmanship as
a negotiating ploy, one which in this instance seems to have backfired.
"If Kim Jong Il deliberately timed the test to coincide with Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe's visit first to Beijing and then to Seoul, he may have dreadfully
miscalculated," wrote Donald Kirk in the Asia Times Monday.
Kim's Stalinist policies have so screwed up North Korea's economy that only massive
shipments of food and fuel most of it provided by and nearly all of it funneled
through China, keep the country barely afloat. If China were ever to cut off the
largesse, the regime would collapse.
China has resisted using threat of an aid cutoff as a negotiating tool in part
because it fears the consequences of a North Korean collapse (tens of thousands of
starving refugees flooding into Manchuria), and in part because China enjoys the
migraines North Korea gives South Korea, Japan and the U.S. But North Korea's
provocations are changing the calculus.
A North Korean nuke means Japan, and possibly South Korea, will obtain nuclear
weapons of their own, a development China would very much like to prevent.
The six party talks (about getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear program) have
been going nowhere because China and South Korea have been unwilling to shake
meaningful sticks at Kim's regime. But that calculus is changing.
Josh Manchester, a former Marine whose Web log (Adventures of Chester) is must
reading for serious students of national security policy, thinks the test proves
"American policy against North Korea is working.
"That policy, in a nutshell, is this: use all methods short of war to harm the
economy of North Korea, making it impossible for that government to raise revenue
from illicit activities, and thereby more and more difficult to retain power or fund
its nuclear ambitions.
"This creates cascading effects that work in favor of the U.S: the possibility of a
North Korean collapse forces China and South Korea to consider changing their
stances in the six party talks, making it more likely the (five) will agree on a
unified plan to de-nuke the peninsula, and that North Korea will have no choice but
to accept."
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a
deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan
administration. Comment by clicking here.
Jack Kelly Archives
© 2006, Jack Kelly
|
|

Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Rod Dreher
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
David Harsanyi
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
James Klurfeld
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Jonathan Last
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
The Medicine Men
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Jonathan Tobin
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Jeff Stahler
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
Marybeth Hicks
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Nutrition Myths
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|