Much has been made of the relevance, as North Korea might see it, of the fact that after America toppled Iraq’s Saddam Hussein (which would not have happened if he had had nuclear weapons), Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, responding to U.S. Although vicious, it has been methodical and more or less predictable. To wager is to put something at risk, but it is strange to say that North Korea’s regime takes risks recklessly. North Korea has repeatedly won this wager.
It also has wagered that the weapons, when wedded as they soon might be to intercontinental ballistic missiles, extort from other nations, especially the United States, attention, and economic benefits intended to wean North Korea from the nuclear weapons that are the only reason anyone pays attention to it.
The regime has wagered that nuclear weapons would guarantee the loyalty of the only possible internal threat to the family, the armed forces, and would immunize the nation from external threats. This regime has been run exclusively by and for the Kim family since 1948, during which time it has demonstrated an unswerving willingness to immiserate its people to ensure the regime’s survival. This question is central as the president undertakes to bring about the “complete, verifiable and irreversible” dismantling of the nuclear weapons program that has been the North Korean regime’s obsession for more than 60 years. WASHINGTON - Back when the Soviet Union had a first-rate nuclear arsenal but a ramshackle third-world economy that produced no consumer goods other than vodka and caviar that anyone elsewhere would buy, the nation was disparaged as “Upper Volta with rockets.” Today the question is: Would North Korea like to become Upper Volta without rockets and without exportable vodka or caviar?
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