SOUTH KOREA: “MR. PRESIDENT, WE CANNOT ALLOW A MINE SHAFT GAP!”

4/3/13

My thoughts on North Korea’s saber rattling were neatly encapsulated in my post of a few days ago entitled KIM JONG EUN:  “I’M SMART, NOT LIKE EVERYBODY SAYS, LIKE DUMB.  I’M SMART AND I WANT RESPECT!”.   The situation keeps developing, however, and this story promises to provide nearly as much grist as the Redflex speed camera scandal in Chicago politics; see only my latest post on that treasure trove, 3/26/13’s REDFLEX’S EXCELLENT CHICAGO ADVENTURE:  EDDY BURKE ENTER(ED) THE FRAY.

Now we learn that South Korea wants to renegotiate a 1972 treaty under which the United States provides the South with nuclear fuel and technology for its electricity generating and research reactors.   The South would like to increase its own skills in enriching uranium and reprocessing the spent fuel.   The South Korean government, through a spokesman, insists

“This government has no intention at all of pursuing nuclear capabilities in terms of weapon.”

So in the wake of North Korea’s restarting one of its reactors and threatening to obliterate Seoul and, now, Washington, D.C., it suddenly becomes urgent for South Korea to enrich uranium to generate electricity.   I know we are dealing with international relations here and we have to speak diplomatically, but just how naïve are we supposed to pretend to be?   This is the nuclear equivalent of the growing enthusiasm for hemp products among people who just happen to enjoy smoking pot.

Leaving aside the hypocrisy that masquerades as diplomacy, one has to ask one’s self just how much more dangerous the world would become were South Korea to produce its own nuclear weapons.   Yours truly, for one, would rest much easier knowing that Kim Jong Eun would be losing sleep pondering the possible retaliatory actions of a nuclear armed South next time he wants to rattle the nuclear rattle to get a little attention.   A nuked up South Korea might even permit us to bring out tripwire troop presence home from the Korean peninsula.

There is no logical reason why responsible countries, like South Korea, should not have nuclear weapons should they choose to acquire them.   Some might argue that allowing responsible countries to have nuclear weapons would eventually lead to irresponsible countries having nuclear weapons.  But having such horrific weapons tends to sober up countries quite quickly; one’s neighbors’ having such weapons has an even more immediate and permanent sobering effect.   Note that it was the presence of nuclear weapons have kept the peace, or at least have kept things from getting completely out of hand, since the dawn of the nuclear age, despite many countries we once regarded as crazy having their hands on these awesome (In this case, that adjective is used properly, but I digress.) weapons.

A better question is where the United States and other nuclear powers get off deciding who should have nukes and who shouldn’t, who is sufficiently responsible and who isn’t.  Why should the South Koreans, or anybody else, have to come to us and beg to acquire the means to defend themselves?    Why is it any of our business?  As the sisters used to say back at St. Walter School in my youth, and usually to an often obnoxiously precocious yours truly, “Who died and left you boss?”