The international community has come to expect scary threats from North Korea, particularly when the country's totalitarian regime is criticized or sanctioned. But Pyongyang's reaction to this week's U.N. Security Council resolution, which tightens sanctions over the insular nation's nuclear weapon and missile programs, is extreme even by North Korean standards.
While there's plenty of customary bluster to be found in statements reported today by North Korea's state-run news media, there's also a stunning admission. For decades, Pyongyang has claimed that its nuclear program is geared to develop energy plants to generate electricity, which is in short supply or nonexistent across the entire country. North Korea abandoned that ruse today.
In announcing plans to conduct the country's third test of a nuclear bomb, the North Korean National Defense Commission said, "We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States."
In other words, the North Korean regime has admitted its determination to build intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads capable of hitting the United States.
Since the suspension of the Korean War nearly 60 years ago, the North Korean government has used the spectre of a U.S.-led invasion as a prime tool to control and subjugate its citizenry. The international community's standard response to this constant source of diplomatic aggravation has amounted to containment, keeping Pyongyang in a tight little box and hoping for some path to North Korean regime change or reunification with South Korea.
The game is changing. And probably sooner rather than later, the containment playbook isn't going to work anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment