We Can’t Ignore North Korea’s Proliferation Threat

I’m a very big fan of B.R. Myers and very seldom disagree with him, but he’s dead wrong when he tells us that the best way to deal with North Korea’s threats is to ignore them. First, the idea would only be practical if B.R. Myers set editorial standards for all the world’s news media. In fact, Kim Jong Il is very good at not being ignored, and if the media comprise the fourth branch of our government, any minor civil servant can verify that it rules the other three. Second, the world’s news media are right that Kim Jong Il is a threat, though not necessarily for the reasons they dwell on.

I agree with both Heritage and the overwhelmingly left-of-center media that Kim Jong Il’s missiles are a threat — in limited circumstances — and that missile defense is therefore a necessity for our security and that of our allies. But because North Korea poses a direct threat only in certain narrow circumstances, the probability of massive retaliation mitigates the risk of a direct North Korean attack.

The probability of massive retaliation does not mitigate the far greater risk that North Korea will supply weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, to those who are undeterrable. North Korea, the world’s most promiscuous peddler of WMD technology, knows that it would get away with this, and it has repeatedly threatened to sell nuclear weapons to terrorists. In the two years since North Korea signed up for Chris Hill’s Agreed Framework 2.0, it was caught building a nuclear reactor for Syria and flying some still-undisclosed WMD-related cargo to Iran. And then, there is this:

Aggravating the insult, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a delegation of 15 senior Iranian launch experts from the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group to help out. Pyongyang announced it will fire the rocket sometime between April 4 and 8. [Henry Sokolski, National Review]

Ignore that at your peril.