One of those mysterious North Korean explosions and the intractability
of Iran dramatize, if more evidence were needed, just how dangerous the
world [again!] has become in the post-Soviet era. The events of 9/11
only served to focus the nature of that new jungle out there. Grappling
with it is as complex as only a worldwide phenomenon could be. But the
threats posed by North Korea and Iran do segment and dramatize it.
Pyongyang’s explanation of a “planned hydroelectric construction
explosion” is not only ridiculous, but further evidence of the rickety
nature of the regime. Big “events” are always trumpeted as obeisance to
The Dear Leader. Certainly not a hydroelectric project in an area
notorious for its aridity but known to have underground weapons
installations. It does demonstrate the dichotomy of Communist regimes –
relatively efficient weapons production accompanied by starvation, in
living memory in a “revisionist” China and continuing today in
ultra-Stalinist North Korea. [Note even the less than prosperous
post-USSR Russia and Ukraine are grain exporters; the extent of the
perennially failing Soviet crop used to be a measurement hotly debated
among the Kremlinologists.]
Tehran’s conflicting statements and the International Atomic Energy
Agency’s equivocation about its snooping is only matched by the wishful
thinking [again!] among the US’ allies in Western Europe – now Britain
as well as Germany, and, of course, France. They are holding out for
diplomacy [appeasement?] to halt what has to be the mullahs’hellbent
effort at producing nuclear weapons. There is no logic, as they
maintain, in an impoverished society with some of the world’s largest
petroleum reserves seeking “a full nuclear fuel cycle” for electricity–
even for obscurantist Islamicists drowning in their 7th Century tribalism.
It is no accident, as the Communists used to say, joint development of
missiles – and perhaps nuclear technology – bind the two pariah states.
They have not only abetted each other. But their external support for
diverse but equally deadly terror organizations notoriously continues.
North Korea has graduated from aiding student revolutionaries in Mexico
City, airport massacres in Israel, public assassination in Burma, and
kidnapping in Japan, to peddling high tech weapons for its survival.
The Iranian mullahs are still in the same old business: arming
terrorists working out of Syria [again!], to Iraq, Lebanon, and
Pakistan. But their ambitions are now grander. With nuclear arms, a
large population base, nascent industrialization, and a strategic
position, they see themselves as the dominant Mideast power. These
dreams are not new. But in the Shah’s time [with the exception of a
little problem of OPEC and higher oil prices for the US and the West]
nostalgia for past Persian glory was within the bounds of a U.S.
alliance -- and a modernization toward more universal values.
It’s there all the efforts for compromise founder. Compromise is the
product of diplomacy – and a shared reasoning. But in neither instance
is there much hope of that.
Its proponents argue were the U.S. to negotiate on a one-on-one basis
with Pyongyang, it would produce disarmament agreement which would
remove the threat of a nuclear clad North Korea, and, worse, its selling
such weapons, possibly even non-state terrorists like Al Qaida. Yet that
logic dictates North Korea would have to transform itself, at least as
far as Communist China has, into a more viable society with access to
and dependence on foreign investment, trade and technology transfers.
There is no evidence North Korea’s leadership does not see such
developments as the regime’s death warrant. It seeks nuclear weapons to
maintain the dictatorship of a military elite. The Bush Administration’s
strategy, limping perhaps through the untrustworthiness of its allies
[again!], is to seek the help of North Korea’s neighbors. They all have
an interest in a North Korea without nuclear weapons, at least in
theory. The threat of an economic blockade is the alternative to a
compromise which would include economic aid for the regime. The problem
is our allies – South Korea, and to some extent, Japan – are unwilling
to consider applying those sanctions. China, the principle player, while
mouthing platitudes, continues to be the main prop of the regime.
Moscow’s Putin, ever ambivalent, blames U.S. rhetoric for the impasse.
The mullahs present an even more horrendous predicament. They see
themselves as instruments of a higher power for world domination,
justifying all prevarication and obfuscation with infidels. At their
furtherest reaches, they pursue a fanaticism in which their followers’
death is only the entrance to paradise. But the Europeans base their
hopes for the kind of change which came in Central and Eastern Europe
under the Communists on a policy of “engagement” with these same
mullahs. Meanwhile, the threatening clock ticks louder, not only for
Iran’s Mideast neighbors, but for Europe as the range of their missiles
lengthens.
Iraq, with all its problems, is only the opening act of the drama now
ahead of us.
/Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders AT comcast.net
<mailto:solsanders AT comcast.net>), is an Asian specialist with more than
25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for *Business Week,
U.S. News & World Report* and *United Press International.* He writes
weekly for *World Tribune.com*./
September 2, 2004
[Homestead] Back in the Real World,
Tvoivozhd, 09/19/2004