North Korea Conducts Third Nuclear Test

First time accepted submitter WolfeCanada writes "North Korea apparently conducted a widely anticipated nuclear test Tuesday, strongly indicated by an 'explosion-like' earthquake that monitoring agencies around the globe said appeared to be unnatural." North Korea has confirmed the test, according to the Washington Post, in an article that touches on its political context. Among other things, the Post notes that this "is the first under new North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun and the clearest sign that the third-generation leader, like his father and grandfather, prefers to confront the United States and its allies rather than make peace with them." Adds reader eldavojohn "KCNA news claims that the test was safe and cited the threat of the U.S. for conducting the test, saying 'The test was carried out as part of practical measure of counteraction to defend the country's security and sovereignty in the face of the ferocious hostile act of the U.S. which wantonly violated the DPRK's legitimate right to launch satellite for peaceful purposes.' RT is posting a feed of the many condemnations from governments and organizations."

Comments

"Wantonly violated?"

[scotts13]

"...wantonly violated the DPRK's legitimate right to launch satellite for peaceful purposes"

I'm sorry, I must have missed where we were shooting down their satellites. What the hell are they talking about?

Re:"Wantonly violated?"

[guttentag]

When North Korea makes announcements it often comes off sounding schizophrenic. Before the "satellite" launch, it announced that it was merely a peaceful satellite. After the launch, it bluntly announced that it was actually a cover for an ICBM test to help it one day deliver a nuclear weapon to the U.S. Now it's back to calling it a peaceful satellite. I suspect three possibilities:

• when you are as accustomed to crafting a manufactured reality as North Korea is, it's easy to lose track of what you claimed before. I have found that one of the most effective ways to catch a person lying is to ask for details until the person contradicts himself, indicating that rather than remembering what actually happened, he lost track of what lies he fabricated earlier. That may be what we are seeing here from the propaganda machine.
• North Korea's propaganda machine changes the message as often as necessary to suit its needs of the moment. Think of Orwell's 1984, where "The Party" would say it was at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia, and this had always been the state of things, except Winston knew that four years ago it was not the case. And by the end of the book it switches back again, with the people accepting that it had always been that way. When it suits North Korea's purposes to tell its people that it is making scientific progress, it is launching a satellite. When it suits The Party's purposes to show that it is standing up to its "evil" sworn enemy (the U.S.), it is an ICBM test. When they have no data from their "satellite" to show, they claim the U.S. shot it down, which conditions people to be more accepting of an ICBM test in the future.
• North Korean leadership is far from monolithic. There was actually speculation that the young new leader did not want to escalate tensions with the rest of the world, having been educated in Switzerland. However he might have to bow to the pressure of the military that was already in power. So analysts were waiting to see if he would truly depart from the confrontational stance his father took. If there were still any lingering doubts, this test shows that he is either unwilling or unable to deviate from that course. The changing messages from the propaganda machine may be an indication of internal conflicts: one group tells the propaganda machine to announce it has peaceful intentions, while the other bluntly announces it is preparing to nuke the U.S. The more extreme the contradictions, the more likely it is that you have two factions fighting over the same mouthpiece.

Re:Even China is getting tired of their shit

[jythie]

And that gets to the heart of the issue.. countries with nukes have a lot less to fear from the 1st world then countries without them. While not quite MAD, it changes the whole political equation. I know if I was running a nation that was on America's shit list, getting a viable nuclear weapon would be pretty high in my priority queue. If you can not actually hurt the US, US foreign policy is pretty nasty... even when international rules should curtail the US's behavior, we usually ignore them unless they other country has some kind of bargaining chip or power to push back.

Which is why the US is so adimiment about countries it doesn't like not having nukes.. not because there is any belief that rouge nations will go around attacking people, but because (naturally) we want to be in as strong of a position as possible and others as weak as possible, so anything that means we can not unilaterally push them around is something we want to prevent.

Re:Making Peace?

[Opportunist]

Germany did see a drop in its economy. Hauling the East on board took a giant's effort and they were "lucky" enough to be one of the strongest economies on this planet so they could pull that off. That doesn't mean that everything in the East was "bad" or outdated, but a lot of corruption was going on as well, leading to a big loss where actually competitive companies were sold off cheaply and the state being stuck with the duds. Crime and unemployment are currently a serious problem in the East (with unemployment rates as high as 20-25%), and it's not really likely that this is going to change soon.

If anyone, it wasn't the population that really won in the unification. It was mostly a win for big business. Sadly, that doesn't automatically translate into a windfall for Germany's economy. It mostly means that the country is now forced to deal with a lot of unemployed people while the assets of the East were squandered to "friends" of the government that was in charge back then.