Kim Jong-il’s missile launches are nothing more than publicity stunts, says edward luttwak |
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Kim Jong-il is depicted at home as by far the world's greatest leader. Every statement and deed is of colossal and global significance. His political and economic genius has made North Korea a universally envied paradise.
This collides with the reality of misery and periodic starvation, in spectacular contrast to South Korean affluence. But at least the regime can claim global importance whenever the outside world reacts to its provocations.
Past furores over nuclear programmes have allowed Kim to gain attention from American presidents and Japanese prime ministers. They have also brought large amounts of money from South Korea, whose rulers have repeatedly attempted to buy peace - even at the cost of subsidising the dictatorship that cruelly oppresses their fellow Koreans.
Obviously, having learned that it pays to be
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| Kim is a prize buffoon, whose threats should never be acknowledged, let alone contested |
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provocative, Kim is doing it again, this time by test-launching ballistic missiles. What is much harder to understand is why America and Japan have allowed themselves to be manipulated again, by responding to the provocation exactly as Kim will have wanted.
Threats of unspecified sanctions are almost entirely useless against a regime that exports almost nothing and imports even less, and for which international isolation is no threat at all but rather the key to survival.
As for the earlier US warnings of a preventive air attack to destroy the ballistic missiles, all this sound and fury - duly relayed to Kim's captive population - just shows how the world's richest countries tremble before North Korea and its mighty leader.
The obvious alternative for the US, Japan and all other responsible powers is to defeat the North Korean gambit by a combination of silence and low-key denigration.
Kim is a prize buffoon, whose threats and pronouncements should never be acknowledged, let alone contested.
As for his ballistic missiles, it would be  |
