| 12 October 2006 Poking Snakes I have not been having a good week. I was in Baltimore, for one, and although the Charm City has its attractions, the hotel chain where I stay at the Inner Harbor has sealed the windows and banned smoking inside the building. A smoker's area near the front door, only a quarter mile from my room, was provided for my convenience. I was trudging down there, concerned that things are happening that are far beyond my small span of control. I was hoping desperately that the Tigers would beat Oakland in Game Two of the American League Championship Series. I was wondering how to get The Bomb away from the Koreans. I had been accused of being soft on the Enemy, and that my resolve to stay the course was weakening. It is confusing these days to recall which course I expected to navigate. There are many choices, what with the election coming, a couple land wars and tumult in northern Asia. I grant willingly that I do not toe the line as well as I used to. Retirement has brought out the contrarian in me, and there has always bee a streak of the anarchist in me, which I suppose makes my chosen profession of military intelligence a bit of an odd fit. I don't see the contradiction. I think it is every citizen's responsibility to stand on the ramparts for a while to keep the barbarians at bay. That is not a universal view. When I put on the uniform, it was not long after we had won the Silver Medal in the Southeast Asian war, and Henry Kissinger himself muttered that the Communists were going to triumph eventually, and we should negotiate the best terms as we went along. He was in error about that, or perhaps he was right on a more fundamental level, just having the enemy wrong. We have all been so obsessed with the war on terror that we had quite misplaced the rest of the Axis, the pesky North Koreans. At best we had a holding action in Northeast Asia My views about their nuclear program are suspect, and that I am dangerously Clintonesque. The appeasement by the last Administration is what true has brought us to this nasty place, where any Xenophobe who actually develops a nuclear capability gets a free pass to threaten his neighbors with annihilation. That is the line, anyway, though I am not convinced. I am no pacifist in this regard. I think the North Koreans are dangerous and duplicitous. I believe that they are quite possibly a hazard to our health as real as cigarettes, though we may not have to walk to the lobby to encounter it. They are striving mightily to bring it right to our rooms. I know the Iranians are looking on the controversywith interest, which links the Koreans to the war on terror, which I suppose is the round-about logic that led to the declaration of the Axis of Evil. Looking back on it, it is one of those quotes that is simultaneously spot-on and utterly idiotic. As we all know, it is one thing to know something, and quite another to blurt it out at the dinner table. Iraq, Iran and North Korea are indeed connected, after a fashion. Despite the blood feud between Saddam and the ancient Persian threat, he still gave them his air force when we threatened to blow it to pieces. I don't know if any of those jets remain in the inventory of the Islamic Republic, any more than I know if there is any pesticide still buried in the sands of Anbar Province. I was certainly convinced that there was at least that. I know there were things much more lethal in development. All three of them wanted a shield against the West, and acquiring a nuclear capability seems the easiest way to get one. It worked for Pakistan and India, didn't it? I know that Pyongyang happily has provided technology to Tehran. They would do anything to keep the Dear Leader in cognac and new-release DVDs. President Amahdenijad, for his part, would love nothing better than to have a nuclear weapon to provide safe haven against the Americans and the Israelis. The most significant connection between the members of the Axis of Evil is fear of us. Remember the alliance between apartheid South Africa and Taiwan? It wasn't that they liked one another particularly, but there really wasn't any one else. They shared the technology that no one else would provide. It was considered to be in the interest of national survival. This morning the press is yammering about the intelligence failures that brought on this latest crisis with North Korea. The sources are the predicable ones, un-named Administration sources who are querulous that their forthright policy of strength has brought an unfortunate and unexpected response from the Hermit Kingdom. I have been called on the carpet for supporting a policy of engagement with the lying and deceitful Koreans. All I can say is that if the eight years in which the North did not have The Bomb were enough to have changed China, the mainstay of Pyongyang's survival, then perhaps it was worth it. Not from a position of idealism, but from sheer pragmatism. >From the first day I set foot in the Land of the Morning Calm, the question was not “if,” but rather “when.” Both sides of the DMZ felt that way, but only one side was able to play the card of desperation and mass destruction. What was the alternative to the constant provocations by the North? An invasion? China is going to have to deal with the mess when the regime implodes, though at least they have the advantage of being upwind. I am certainly in the number of people that would like to see the regime in the North consigned to the dustbin of history. My preference is to achieve that goal with diplomacy and carrots, rather than the stick. Given the history of the Peninsula, it may not be possible. But you can only call the Dear Leader paranoid if there is not, in fact, someone out to get him. I think it is reasonable that one should only poke a snake if you have the means, and the desire, to crush him on the spot. Talking to snakes is a subject that has its own history, as Eve could tell, but chatting while looking around for a suitable rock probably would probably have been a more prudent course of action. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |