North Korea has been a lamb compared to Israel.

But your analysis won’t wash. NK is an outlaw state, run by a military ruling class that has run the place into the ground for so long it can’t back out now; they fear the fire next time when they lose their grip. No place else is anywhere near this screwed up, not modern Iran or Saddam’s Iraq or Khadaffi’s Libya; not even Zimbabwe, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. They may have brutalized their own people, but they didn’t threaten to attack the world.

And the Koreans know what happens to governments like theirs–sooner or later. Some kinds of evil cannot be blamed on economics or religion or ideology or the reaction to them. Some people are just no damn good.

The big difference is NK actually does have WMDs.

I think North Korea has responded to a difficult situation the only rational way available to them. And I don’t believe much of the demonizing done by the Western media. They are manipulated mercilessly. We only have to look at recent history to see how unreliable our “news” is.

The great cost of diverting funding from hardening our silos and filling enough of them with cheap city-busters in sufficient numbers to survive and then respond to a Soviet attack was enough to telegraph the message loud and clear to the USSR: we had every intention of striking first and didn’t give a damn if they knew it. The installation (at great expense) of this technology on our missile submarines (supposedly our last line of defense to punish an attacker who managed to get in the first blow) drove the message home with astonishing clarity. We were going to hit first and hold their cities hostage to their second strike.

Everyone in the industry not indoctrinated by chickenhawk Neocon warmonger ideology or infected by Hermann Kahn’s nuclear cowboy fantasies was perfectly aware of this. I was, I worked in the industry at the time, and I briefly worked on two separate intelligence systems designed to frustrate Soviet deterrent strategies, NOT to discourage them from engaging in a pre-emptive strike.

Whatever Soviet retaliation survived the American blitz would be mostly absorbed (hopefully!) by Star Wars, a system we had threatened the Soviets with hellfire about when they toyed with the idea back in the 70s. Remember? We pressured them into signing the ABM treaty with threats and bluster, and then did a one-eighty when it served our purposes to engage in that exact same strategy ourselves. I believe we were closer to nuclear war in the 80s than at any time in our history, even more so than in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

We got lucky. The Soviet Empire collapsed, and I must grudgingly admit, they showed remarkable restraint during their last days. Things have settled down now with the Russians, and the Neocons were eventually totally discredited in the Iraq fiasco, but I wouldn’t want to press my luck with the Koreans. Those guys are crazy, and they are desperate. They’re not dumb enough to start a war on purpose, but they aren’t smart enough to keep one from happening by accident.

The same might be said about us.

As I recall, Reagan called a missile with multiple hydrogen bomb warheads the “Peacemaker”. I’m sure North Korea has the same mindset as did Reagan, and do NOT make decisions based upon someone’s wife’s astrologer.

Unfortunately, this sort of policy can easily get out of control. Events are set in motion which tend to take on a life of their own, particularly when they are directed at an opposition (or an ally!) that may interpret or respond to them in unpredictable ways. This is how World War I got started (to choose an example from safely in the past…)

As Caspar Gutman put it: