Detonating another possible H-bomb yesterday yielding 5.1 on the Richter Scale, 32-year-old North Korean President Kim Jong-un thumbed his nose at President Barack Obama and the U.N. Security Council. Already wracked with severe economic sanctions for past nuclear tests, Kim boasted about developing the technology to pack A-bombs into Intercontinental ballistic missiles, endangering not only neighboring countries but now the U.S. and its allies. Obama’s taken a go-it-alone approach, relying heavily on collective action at the U.N. to develop some type of nuclear containment for Democratic Peoples Republic of Korean. Calling Kim “maniacal recklessness,” South Korean President Park Geun-hye condemned the atomic blast from the ASEAN summit in Laos. Since Kim’s last suspected H-bomb blast Jan. 5 yielding 4.8 on the Richter scale, Obama has done nothing.
White House officials dismissed Kim’s Jan. 5 H-bomb blast as mostly bluster, insisting an H-bomb was unlikely. “Heaven and earth are shaking because of this historic event,” said North Korea’s state-run KCNA TV. “It is our legal right as a sovereign nation to own hydrogen bomb for justice as we stand against the U.S., which the culprit of invasion and who is looking for every opportunity to attack us with its vast pool of murderous nuclear weapons,” said KCNA’s robotic female newswomen. Gloating over the accomplishment, today’s blast goes further, highlighting the accomplishment as miniaturizing the atomic weapons to fit inside an ICBM. Shown the extent of North Korea’s paranoia over the U.S. nuclear arsenal, North Korea has nothing to worry about with Obama at the helm. Barack prefers to invest the U.S. military into low-intensity warfare in the Middle East.
Kim Jong-un’s been watching Obama carefully in Syria and Iraq, where he watched a reluctance for U.S. intervention.. Kim talks about the U.S. vast nuclear arsenal but watched Syrian President Bashar al-Assad cross Obama’s redline without consequences. While politely condemned by Russia and China in the U.N. Security Council, most the outrage is left for the U.S. and South Korea, both unwilling to do anything to stop Kim’s maniacal pursuit of nuclear weapons. Firing off three medium-range ballistic missiles Aug. 4 during the G20 in Hangzhou, China, the world’s most powerful economic powers yawned. “Sanctions have already been imposed on almost everything, so the policy is at an impasse,” said Tadashi Kimiya, a North Korea specialist at the University of Japan. U.S. and U.N. officials face the ugly prospect of having no credible deterrent for North Korean
In the nuclear age, mutual deterrence, or the theory of Mutual Assured Destruction, has kept the world from another nuclear strike since the U.S. dropped A-bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. “In reality, the means by which the United States, South Korea and Japan can put pressure on North Korea have reached their limits,” said Kimiya, highlighting Obama’s big problem. With less than five months left in his term, Obama isn’t likely to do anything to deter North Korea, other than more feckless U.N. resolutions. Obama has driven U.S.-Russian relations to the lowest point since the Cold War’s Cuban Missile Crisis. Some Kremlin watchers believe that Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants a war with Russia, a prospect utterly unthinkable. Yet Hillary speaks only disparagingly about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
GOP nominee real estate mogul Donald Trump has been attacked by the Hillary campaign for daring to say he wants better relations with Russia. Obama tossed out 60-years of U.S.-Russian diplomacy, slamming Russia for invading Crimea, backing pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s Donbass region. Instead of finding common ground with Putin in Syria, Obama’s spent his presidency opposing Putin. Past presidents, including Ronald Reagan, practiced linkage, developing strong bonds with historic adversaries, hoping to find common ground on important geopolitical issues. Without linkage with Russia, Obama finds himself with limited options, trying to contain a growing nuclear threat. Japan’s 61-year-old Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called North Korea’s nuclear tests “intolerable,” yet faces the same dilemma as Obama and the U.N., not knowing what to do.
Painting U.S. foreign policy into a corner, Obama’s compromised U.S. national security, allowing relations with Russia to deteriorate. With better U.S.-Russian relations, regardless of Putin’s invasion of Crimea, the U.S. would summon its partner to figure out the best leverage with Kim Jong-un. “So North Korea can no show off their nuclear capability proudly,” said Kune Y. Suh, a nuclear engineering professor at Seoul National University. Suh estimates the blast yield at about 10 kilotons, about two-thirds the size of the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima. With nuclear dangers escalating, you’d think Obama would do everything possible to build better ties with Moscow. Pitting the U.S. against Russia in Syria, Obama, and now Hillary, can’t explain why backing the nearly six-year-old Saudi proxy war to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is more important than close ties with Russia. Closer ties to Russia helps the U.S. deal with unexpected global threats.
