North Korea's Launch -- Perhaps more Farce than Crisis? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

1.  North Korea watchers have been predicting this launch for a year -- not because North Korea is making inexorable technical progress (see below) but because North Korea's political m.o. is to use technical events to demand that it get back on the top of the international agenda.  Afghanistan, Iraq, economic meltdown... they may not make it into the G-20 but they can be top 20 for international nuisance value.

2.  All the major players (US, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, EU) had agreed in advance that the response would be to go immediately to the UN -- meeting set for 3pm today -- and in some ways, that signal of unity is as important as anything that comes out of the UN meeting.  It means that regional talks -- the only thing that has stopped or slowed North Korea for the past two decades -- can put united pressure on the North.

3.  It looks as if the rocket failed to get its satellite payload into orbit.  Extra-terrestrial life is safe from the recordings of songs praising the Dear Leader that the North Koreans promised us.  Follow along on this and other technical analysis of just how good the rocket really was at armscontrolwonk. 

4.  This may be a bit contrarian, but I actually think the North Koreans did Obama a favor by tying their launch to his non-proliferation speech -- their action demonstrates clearly what a global problem weapons of mass destruction are, and why their falling into that hands of states or non-state actors who don't share traditional calculus on their nations' interest (ie, who don't appear to care if masses of their citizens starve or are otherwise annihilated) is such a problem.

All in all, I'm struggling with the temptation to compare this to a soap opera -- dramatic, crowd-pleasing but highly predictable and involving far less actual drama than meets the eye (unless, again, you are a citizen of that wretched place).

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The failed North Korean launch also destroys the Right's claim that we need a missile defense system, because of states like North Korea developing ICBMs. If the North Koreans cannot launch a simple satellite it is very unlikely that they could put a nuclear warhead onto one of their rockets. So therefore we really don't need Gingrich's fantsiful laser.

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A correction toward my earlier reponse it appears that Obama still favors missile defense if it works. I really do not know why Obama is taking this line because Iran is not likely to try to nuke Europe and therefore there is no need to base missiles Eastern Europe. Moreover missile defense is an obstacle towards Obama's greater strategic goal of eliminating nuclear weapons.

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I don't think this is a farce for the Japanese. However weak and flawed these rockets are, they have been shown to be capable of reaching Japanese territory.

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and Japan called a timeout to avoid fighting
Obama came in and said "rules must be binding"
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