The news last week from the Korean Peninsula about yet another ballistic missile launch was déjà vu all over again. This one had an estimated range of 8,100 miles — long enough to hit Washington, D.C., or anywhere else in the continental United States. President Trump responded with angry tweets, but Kim Jong-un has good reason to be cocky.
The strongman knows all too well that a military response is highly unlikely. There are some 8,000 North Korean cannons and rocket launchers aimed at Seoul, in effect holding the approximately 10 million inhabitants of that city hostage. All sides realize that the human and economic costs of another Korean war are simply unfathomable.
Several American presidents have tried to persuade the Kim dynasty to abandon its nuclear ambitions, through a combination of sanctions and negotiations. But these efforts have been unsuccessful.
In part that’s because the Kim family never ran North Korea like a normal nation. Even in a rogue nation like Iran, the vise of economic embargoes can force hard-liners to change their behavior. Not so with North Korea, which has been able to skirt sanctions and United Nations resolutions because it is run more like a Mafia fief than a state.
The North’s criminal empire is vast and global. According to the Strategic Studies Institute, it includes narcotics trafficking and the counterfeiting of United States currency. North Korea has also been accused of the online hacking of bank accounts; the sale of nuclear know-how; black-market arms sales, including scud and other missiles to Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Eritrea and other nations; and a whole military enterprise set up to steal crypto currencies.Read the rest from Nitsana Darshan Leitner HERE.
If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.
No comments:
Post a Comment