North Korea on Monday conducted an underground nuclear test and also fired off several missiles. It repeated the provocative missile firings again today. The United Nations Security Council has issued what seems like a worthless statement of condemnation and the President is promising a more vigorous effort to enlist the international community in answering the North Korean provocation.The less discerning on the right are happy to pounce on North Korea's actions as evidence of the weakness of the Obama administration's foreign policy, but in truth, the options of the United States and indeed the rest of the international community is limited where this bat s**t crazy, continuous crime against humanity regime is concerned.
Fellow Hoosier Thomas Barnett has called for the US to embrace a grand strategy that envisions a transparent and agreed upon international system for processing politically bankrupt states like North Korea, regimes that everybody wants gone. The wisdom of this concept seems manifest when confronted with a regime like North Korea. There really is no other true solution to the North Korean problem than regime change, indeed regime replacement. However, neither the US nor the international community have a mechanism for accomplishing the toppling of this regime and its replacement with another system of governance that will immediately take up the work of providing for its people and this is what is preventing great powers such as China from taking more responsibility for addressing North Korea's behavior. The Chinese fear the influx of millions of refugees were the North Korean state to be brought down without any way of standing up a replacement regime. This is perhaps even more critical a requirement in North Korea than in other places since all indications are that this is a state and society bizarre in the extremes to which the organized oppression of its people has been allowed to proceed and where its inhabitants may be frankly unable to function in anything resembling normal society for a period of time. We have the Leviathan force, but its the Sys Admin force we need to fix the North Korean problem.
