Informed Speculation

That’s the colorful metaphor employed by Fred Kaplan regarding the failure of North Korea’s long-range missile test:

If you’re going to defy all your enemies and allies, you’d better come away from the gamble with added strength and leverage. Kim Jong-il emerges from the Taepodong disaster with his chips spent and a pair of deuces on the table.

Once Kim hoisted that rocket onto the launchpad, the scenario could have played out three ways. First, he could have bowed to the international pressure, drained the liquid fuel, rolled the rocket back to the warehouse, and requested direct talks with Washington in exchange for his “good-faith” measures. Bush, who has long avoided direct talks, would have been in a spot.

Second, he could have tested the missile with successful results. His friends and foes would have been furious with him, but in the end they would have had to face the fact that North Korea now had not only a nuclear bomb or two but the potential, someday, to pack a warhead on a missile and fire it wherever he wanted.

In either of those two scenarios, Kim would have come out of the game ahead.

Third, he could have tested the missile and watched it fail. That would have been the worst possible outcome, and that’s what happened yesterday. It’s like a bank robber who gets everyone’s attention by firing his gun at the ceiling—and a little flag with the word “Bang!” pops out of the barrel. The only effect is that he’s no longer taken seriously.

Kim Jong-il, these past few years, has adroitly played his otherwise miserable hand because of two cards that everyone believes he holds—nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Yesterday’s dud raises the possibility that the missile card’s a bluff, that there may be (as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland) “no there there.” The next tempting step is to wonder about the nukes. We know that he has enough plutonium to build some bombs, but has he built them? Can he build them?

I’ve been asking similar questions; I take it as a given that he has the plutonium, but it’s not a given at all that he has employable weapons.  Kaplan also includes an ominous cautionary note:

The worrisome thing about the prospect of North Korean nukes isn’t so much the nukes as the North Korean. The missile launch confirms the worst fears about Kim Jong-il—not merely that he’s a guerrilla diplomat who takes wild gambles but that sometimes the gambles go awry.