It's been a week now since our neighbors, the Kims, allegedly set off their first nuclear test explosion. I say "allegedly" because statements by the DPRK authorities have a very low probability of being true. Almost everything they ever say is a lie. (There are so many more ways to lie than to tell the truth, after all.) I won't report those here; you can find them elsewhere. You can look up Megumi Yokota and a few dozen other kidnapped Japanese slaves, the agreement on a non-nuclear Korean peninsula, and various other pacts over the years.
We also cannot believe the reports of other intelligence agencies. If Iraq taught us anything, it taught us not to believe that something is true just because 3 or 4 national intelligence agencies are saying it is so. Although several agencies confirmed the North Korean statement, they all did so with widely varying numbers. The Russians, in particular, seem to have been tipped off in advance, like the Chinese, and just reported the number the DPRK gave them rather than look at their seismographs.
The US has been slow to confirm that it was a nuclear test, and only yesterday claimed to have found an atmospheric sample consistent with a release of radioactive gas. We don't know if this was cherry-picked intelligence, though, one sample out of a hundred, or what. We certainly cannot trust American integrity or competence (in this administration).
The half-kiloton yield was more typical of a test of a suitcase-bomb or some small artillery nuke. Every state that has tested a nuclear weapon before now has had at least a 9-kiloton explosion. Recall that the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was a 22-kiloton weapon, and most modern(?) nuclear weapons are in the megaton range. Is it consistent with the personality of Kim Jong-Ill to explode the tiniest possible micro-nuke, or would he want to make a big bang? He would want to make a big bang, so either it was 1) a dud, 2) a conventional explosion to feign that he had worse weapons than he really does, the strategy that misfired for former CIA agent Mr Saddam Hussein, 3) they didn't have enough enriched uranium or plutonium, and had to conserve the core material, or 4) they are even more advanced than we thought, and are making suitcase nukes for export now.
I would say that it was either a dud, a fake, or their only ready-to-go model. Newsweek seems to be talking up the option number 4 above.
The only thing worse than listening to DPRK propaganda is to hear people talk of opening negotiations with the DPRK. This may be a rare issue that the Republicans understand better than the Democrats, probably because like the Kim Jong-Ill entourage, Republicans are also driven by hatred. As much as I hate the un-elected ambassador John Bolton, he sort of understands North Korea. They hate his guts because they can't mindfuck him like they could Jimmy Carter or Madeline Albright. The DPRK leadership are people more like Asian versions of Dick Cheney. They really believe their own propaganda, you see. It is a scaled-up model of what Jim Jones was doing, but more Stalinist in tone. It really doesn't matter what they say. They will say and have said anything and everything. It also doesn't really matter what you say to them either. If you say anything, it can just be conditionals: "If you do A, we will do B. If you do X, we will do Y." However, that may just restrict your options. By saying military options are unthinkable, it actually gives them leverage, because they can always hold Seoul hostage. Regarding "negotiations," there really is no reason for the second-generation politician Dear Leader to meet his second-generation politician counterpart deer-in-the-headlights (cheer)leader. Nor is there reason to send Condoleeza "Birth-Pangs" Rice, the so-called international peacekeeper and destroyer of worlds, aside from the slim hope that Kim may hold her hostage! (It's worth a try!)
As odious as DPRK is, however, there is plenty of blame to go around for the state of proliferation. A Q Khan may have set up nuclear weapons programs in two dozen small countries. Khan is a sort of Johnny Appleseed for developing nations' nuclear weapons programs, and is protected by Perv now, under house arrest, a national hero to Pakistanis. In the long run, his shadow may dwarf that of small-time pirate Osama binLaden. Perhaps the US or UN should insist that he be handed over for an international tribunal, where the extent of who he sold to could be determined.
Quite a lot of the blame for gutting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty also has to go to the US, which is still busy designing and building new nukes even as it dismantles old nukes, and claiming the right to weaponize space with nukes, too. It is the same kind of non-leadership that was shown on the Kyoto climate treaty. It has always been clear from the earliest days, that the nuclear-armed states would have to climb down if they ever expected the rest of the world (all more insecure than the Permanent 5) to not arm themselves. They have been blowing the world off for 50 years.
It seems more and more that we will have to drift into another Hiroshima or Nagasaki before the non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament efforts are really given the attention they deserve. It may be impossible to bottle that genie, so maybe we should start designing more dispersed non-cities and building earth-sheltered housing for the day when 65 countries, 23 companies, and 12 terrorist groups all have suitcase nukes.
