Unrestrained Bellicosity

Kim Jong Un inspects landing and anti-landing drills at an undisclosed location on North Korea's east coast. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

It's the real thing, world. North Korea has might and it believes it has right. And it has its detractors in its cross-hairs. The inheritor of the Kim dynasty may be young, but he is old in craftiness and the capacity to project the unerring image of himself as decisive, prepared to meet the condemnation of the United Nations, and its double nemesis, South Korea and the United States with a ring of fire that will be destined to consume them both into a pitiable remnant of their former glory.

When he speaks, they will tremble. Does he not have the means at his disposal to destroy them? Has not the advanced technological skills of his scientists, his physicists, his nuclear experts developed ballistic missiles the equal of any that they themselves have shown to the world? If a measure of power and technological expertise is required to convince the doubting, the launching of satellites should suffice. And did not the world tremble in disbelief with the testing of atomic power?

My name is Kim Jong-un, the Great Person Born of Heaven, the Great Successor, Outstanding Leader of the Party, Army and People, Supreme Commander, Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair! Apologies to Percy Byce Shelley

North Korea's Supreme Command has elevated its artillery and strategic missile forces to readiness -- to "combat-ready posture", in preparation of a strike against South Korea, against Japan and against American territory. It has announced its preparedness to "show off our army and people's stern reaction to safeguard our sovereignty and the highest dignity through military actions."

What more need be said? Is the world prepared to meet this challenge that they prefer to believe is mere bellicosity, but which North Korea's Supreme Commander stands prepared to demonstrate goes well beyond rhetoric? "We are concerned by any threat raised by the North Koreans. We take everything they say and everything they do very seriously. They need to stop threatening peace -- that doesn't help anyone.

"North Korea will achieve nothing by threats or provocations which will only further isolate North Korea and undermine international efforts to achieve peace and stability in northeast Asia. We stand ready to respond to any contingency", stated the Pentagon's spokesman, George Little. How unfortunate a choice of name for a spokesperson for the most powerful country on the globe, for little is not what might constrain the Supreme Commander (for whom symbolism is vital).

Who was inspired by his exposure to his proud military units, witness to their exercises involving his troops storming ashore in a preview performance of their courageous future launching of attacks against the enemy. It is official, the Korean Central News Agency has signalled that North Korea is no longer willing to generously overlook U.S. nuclear and military threats. And obviously, meeting those threats with their own mirror-image will no longer suffice.

A deeper commitment to ensuring that the world recognize North Korea as a world leader in full command of weapons of mass destruction, with full intentions to use them to the best advantage stands on the brink of fulfillment. "The U.S. nuclear war racket has gone beyond the danger line and entered the phase of an actual war, defying the repeated warnings from the army and people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."

In North Korea purple prose is lauded and heartily approved of. Sinister drama and wild hysterics befitting a spoiled juvenile delinquent appear seemly to them in their obvious belief that tantrums can achieve much - and perhaps in a sense they're correct. People in authority are so aghast at the liberties of expression and intention taken by this benighted, indigent country headed by veteran thugs it becomes difficult not to belittle them rather than take them seriously.

Since the United Nations Security Council chose to pronounce a unanimous vote to introduce further sanctions against Pyongyang on the proud occasion of its latest test of a miniaturized nuclear device, North Korea had little option left to it, it would appear, but to firmly warn South Korea, reminding Seoul that it "should be mindful that everything will be reduced to ashes and flames the moment the first attack is unleashed."

There are those, obviously, who are in the camp of the doubters. The disbelievers who will not credit North Korea with having yet met the criteria for attack viability on the scale which it threatens; that its bellicose rhetoric is empty, an illusion, a sham, a delusion of a fanatical and dangerously neurotic madhouse of a nation.

"From what we know of its existing inventory, North Korea has short- and medium-range missiles that could complicate a situation on the Korean Peninsula -- and perhaps reach Japan -- but we have not seen any evidence that it has long-range missiles that could strike the continental U.S., Guam or Hawaii", scoffed the Asia Pacific editor from IHS Jane's Defence Weekly.

The question then becomes, presumably, how much damage, on how wide a scale can be tolerated before joint action is undertaken to disqualify further threats from North Korea from becoming reality? How much can be sacrificed in the process of allowing North Korea to demonstrate just how far it is prepared to travel along the road to self-immolation, in the pursuit of which many lives will be lost.

North Korea considerately chose the day that South Korea memorializes as the third anniversary of the sinking of its naval corvette Cheonan in a torpedo attack that North Korea was clearly responsible for, and which killed 46 South Korean sailors in the Yellow Sea. North Korea presents as quite unique in its unwillingness to stand down from its rhetoric ramping it up as it sees fit.

Where Mutual Assured Destruction worked very well during the Cold War period between the then-two superpowers, the United States and the United Soviet Socialist Republic in the hopes that neither would launch an atomic attack against the other unleashing the very real prospect of mass destruction on an inconceivably atrocious scale, there are few guarantees that the lunacy of North Korea is amenable to reasonable doubt.

Without doubt, the United States and South Korea are in part responsible for the situation that has resulted from their provocative joint military exercises that has raised the ire of the incorrigibly virulent North Korea whom China, its regional ally, appears unable to reign in, while the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea's partner in defiance of world order and technical advances in weapons delivery and nuclear warheads looks on with absolute delight.

It doesn't take much, on the other hand, to arouse the raging anger of a country whose leaders are consumed with a sense of victimhood. A mass psychosis at the leadership level entrenches the belief that malevolent outside sources want to occupy North Korea, to colonize it and drain it of its resources, though what those resources aside from human capital that the state itself oppresses, is not readily apparent.

Whatever North Korea can achieve in intimidating both their mutual enemies stands Iran in good stead as well. If the most powerful nations on Earth along with the world body whose mandate is to promote peace, cannot find a way out of this dilemma, the choices open to them inadequate to the purpose of halting nuclear proliferation and weapons delivery systems, then the collaboration of the two outliers has been a resounding success.

The only question remaining: where do they and we go from here?