The news of North Korea’s announcement of the detonation of their first nuclear weapon is reverberating around the world.  It is certainly an unwelcome development if true.  Now the question is, can that junior varsity Stalinist Kim Jong Il resist the temptation to use it in a warshot? Or, sell copies to a growing list of unwholesome groups bent on the delivery of radioactive hellfire to the infidel crusaders?  What may actually be worse than having one go off in the US is our possible response and the cascade of events that follow.  What would we actually do? Whose home soil would we vitrify in our wrath? Whom would we smite? I fear that our reply would have an Old Testament ring to it. 

 I’m reminded of the famous quote by J. Robert Oppenheimer-

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that one way or another.

I vaguely remember talk of the nuclear genie when I was a skinny Iowa farm boy in the 1960’s.  Knowledgeable people assured that once the nuclear genie was out of the bottle there was no putting him back in.  North Korea and Iran remind us that the nuclear genie is still out of the bottle.  And while we worry less about a barrage of ICBMs flying over the north polar cap towards us, or Warsaw Pact forces storming into western Europe, we are stirred out of our slumber by third or fourth tier states cobbling together a fission apparatus. 

An hour and a half drive from where I am typing this can be found missile silo’s.  Deep underground in undisclosed locations Air Force Missileers monitor the status of their squadron of missiles while maintaining readiness.  Kim Jong Il’s shenanigans have brought back an immediacy to the matter.

Kim is aware that the fact of power is the act of power. And swinging around a nuclear bomb is definitely an act of power.  The real danger of a North Korean Bomb isn’t just in the immediate threat to possible victims. The larger threat lies in how the existying nuclear powers respond.  Once a North Korean nuclear bomb is triggered in anger, restraint will fly out the window. It would be a difficult time for the North Koreans and whomever bought their bomb.