News flash one: well, it happened. News flash two: our firm but
gentle approach with North Korea — a far cry from preventive war
on the Axis of Evil — is working anyway! Look around the world and
tell me what you see: the six-party talks undead, with Russia still
on our side; China and Japan closer than ever, of one voice on the
error of Pyongyang’s nuclear ways; insistence, on our part, that
that flat statement about “not living” with a nuclear PDRK was not
a threat of force; and stone dead silence from the rest of the
world.
Not a peep in favor of a nuclear North! Not from the South
Koreans, often so eager to smooth over the rough edges of
un-unification; not from Venezuela, where a tide of protesters ten
thousand strong throws a shadow on the reign of Hugo Chavez, once
again; not even from Iran, which has lapsed into one of those
monthly brooding silences. It appears that not a single human being
outside of North Korea was actually in favor of Kim Jong-il trying
out the Bomb. Or, if they’re out there, they won’t cop to it.
That no one can blame them must be chalked up as a victory for
that “soft power” people keep talking about with regard to hard old
America. Even a blind squirrel, blind with hegemonic rage (or was
it hubris?) finds a nut sometimes — in this case, finally, a dire
issue of national security that doesn’t inflame the Arab street.
But what have we earned for our trouble? What does soft power get
us? Soft success, the foreign-policy version of soft rock?
Here, at last, at long last, the international community speaks
with somewhere between one and 1.5 voices on the intolerableness of
North Korean nuclear proliferation. It’s an earnest stance, and
that’s important. But how durable is it? And what happens — this
morning, this Wednesday, this weekend — when the details leak out
and flow in?
Then the world shall take a long and unpleasant look at the
mirror, on the long and unpleasant morning of another nuclear
hangover. It’s been so long since we’ve seen that haggard face. We
can’t keep this up like we used to. The early years of the Bomb
went by so fast and high-strung — and then that mid-life crisis in
1998? When India and Pakistan nearly blasted each other back to
Gondwanaland? — where has the time gone? We locked up A.Q. Khan
and swallowed the key, yet stashed under the bed — way in the
back, covered in dust bunnies, just out of reach — was Dr. Evil
himself, fermenting away.
And now we are told the cork has popped. Of course we didn’t
want it to. But if history tells us anything — about life in
general and militarized, paranoid hermit kingdoms in particular —
we were going to get it anyway.
So rises the morning-mouthed specter of useless unanimity. What
difference would it have made if the world — or the international
community, since as everyone knows secretly they’re not the same
thing — sent seven mixed messages to the North Koreans? Would Kim,
awash in confusion, have just called the whole thing off? Or even
have postponed, like a date with second thoughts? Not our Kim. He
has kept his survivalist state alive on the premise of playing for
keeps.
Why, gazing deeper into the mirror, should we even have bothered
to drum up such a collective frown in the first place? Who didn’t
treat the North like a nuclear power already? Couldn’t we have
saved something — a few hours sleep, say? — by dashing off a
well-publicized communiqué saying, in so many words,
Whatever? You’re still so alone? Nobody liked you
anyway?
It could have been so low-impact.
Only, that seemingly useless unanimity has a higher calling, a
broader purpose. It has a Purpose-Driven Life. Unlike at the United
Nations, where your votes on enforcing international law can be
cast in plenty bad faith, in the real world of norms and agreements
trust has to be built on the best of faith. When it came to North
Korea, America wanted the great powers and South Korea to want what
America wanted, and the great powers and South Korea wanted America
to want what they wanted. Thus did international isolation and
condemnation go hand in hand with a bombs-off policy.
REMEMBER WHEN BUSH COULDN’T stop talking about political capital?
Well, there’s an open exchange market in international political
currency, too, and right now in Asia we’re running a surplus.
Changing the mind of the DPRK has been tried once before. And it
succeeded — at the cost of a comprehensive lie that bankrupted the
Agreed Framework and allowed the United States to start over by
framing for the world the North Koreans as bad-faith partners. And
then the real bonding could begin.
Sure, there may be little practical consequence of the united
front against NK nukes. China and Russia, in particular, will not
do anything even remotely related to touching off a flood of
wild-eyed and malnourished citizen-prisoners streaming across the
Yalu. But however much of a ticking time bomb Kim’s regime may be,
east Asia is entirely unlike the Middle East in one key regard:
proliferation already happened. Japan is understood to be a
whopping six months away from an operational nuclear arsenal. China
and Russia are, of course, well taken care of. And South Korea is
garrisoned, lest we forget, with American troops…and weapons.
Given such a chessboard layout, the firm public support of all
parties builds a habit of consensus and reflects what surely are
stronger private commitments. By aiming for bland but substantial
unity, the American policy of encircling North Korea has set the
stage for the rising tide that will lift all boats: that nuclear
test.
Outrage, at this point, will be mandatory. Outrage calibrated to
strike a unified chord will be, too. Japan will shout the loudest,
but that’s okay — it doesn’t have an army. Or nuclear weapons. But
every other party does.
Splash some water on your face. As we try to be in the wake of
all hangovers, we’re well-prepared to make the best of a bad
situation. Kim’s detonation is as ominous as a glimpse, for the
first time, of a long-growling cur glaring out from behind a
chain-link fence. The fix was in before the test, it is on this day
of it, and it will remain so long afterward. It’s old news — and
in a world reeling from new news in other corners, we could really
use some more of that.
