Deterrence Eroded

Mark this day well.

This is the day the United States has effectively lost its military deterrence in the world.

North Korea’s nuclear test this past Sunday in defiance of a stark warning from the United States exemplifies how rogue regimes are no longer intimidated by the United States. In just a couple of days after the Bush Administration declared, “We are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea,” the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong II, responded by detonating what many believe to be a nuclear weapon.

In response to this blatant act of defiance, the U.S. presented the North Korean crisis to the U.N., that most ignoble and corrupt of organizations. The North Koreans, in contrast, casually brushed off the threat of sanctions and demanded that the U.S. hold direct talks with it or nuclear missiles will fly. Tit for tat.

Excuse me?

Since when did such a small, backwater country get the temerity to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons?


Perhaps while we rented our shirts and wailed over domestic sex scandals...

Perhaps while we whined over gas prices, in spite of our unparalleled booming economy...

Regardless, we were otherwise detained with more... um... pressing issues...

Any military strategist knows that a country’s military might is only as strong as its national will. A nation, like ours, with boundless natural resources and technological superiority over its enemies is utterly meaningless if that nation does not have the will to use it. This is not to say that we must use our military might in any and all cases. However, we must not leave a doubt in the minds of our enemies that we will use this terrible power to defend ourselves and our interests.

In plain words, we must have an effective deterrence against the Kim Jong’s and Ahmadinejad’s of the world. And it is this deterrence that has eroded in the past two decades.

Note this brief article from Seoul:

SEOUL (XFN-ASIA) - North Korea may move towards conducting further weapons tests and deploying nuclear warheads on missiles, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported, citing an unidentified North Korean official.

The official told Yonhap's Beijing correspondent that Pyongyang's next moves will largely depend on 'how the situation develops,' adding this will in turn depend on the actions of the United States.

North Korea wants the situation to be resolved soon before it deteriorates to the point of 'launching nuclear missiles,' the official said.

The official said the US continues to threaten North Korea, while rejecting dialogue, the report said.

'The US may want us to remain a 'powerless rogue state' in a bid to maintain the balance of power in Northeast Asia but the US will never have its way,' the official said.

North Korea sees the nuclear test, in diplomatic terms, as a means of expressing Pyongyang's desire to hold bilateral talks with the US, the report said.

As for expected sanctions against North Korea by the UN Security Council, the official told Yonhap: 'We have already lost enough... Sanctions will never be a solution.'

It is clear that North Korea does not believe we will go to war over their nuclear weapons program, despite a 50-year Cold War to prove that we just might. The difference between the Cold War and now is lack of restraint on the part of our enemies. While we attempt to conduct world affairs from the lofty position of high idealism, our enemies desire to bath themselves in the blood of their enemies—whether the wholesale killing in Dafur or the Muslim takeover of Mogadishu... or killing over two thousand Americans with jet airliners.

The Visigoths are slamming together their battleaxes and shields in front of our gates, and we have been giving them food in hopes they will just leave; or handing them our technology to coax them into benevolence... no, better yet, we’ve sent them psychiatrists to simultaneously diagnose their bellicosity and to further explain that our own neuroses and so-called "imperialism" has the cause of their bloodthirst...

The threat of sanctions against North Korea, perhaps, might yield results to our interests, though I am hard pressed to find a single example of sanctions actually leading to friendly behavior. I am also hard pressed to find a single example of the U.N. doing anything useful without U.S. involvement.

I think it is time for us, the people of United States of America, to take a long hard look at this crisis and the world in general and ask ourselves this simple question:

Are we going to stand by and watch the madness of the world destroy us? Or will we garner the will, unashamed, to defend ourselves and our interests before the threat becomes reality?

If we decide to preemptively strike North Korea and Iran, we must also decide to back the President in what he decides because, in truth, he is the only man who can decide. Either we back our President in this endeavor, or we should sit down and remain silent when our government appears indecisive. It would be a very bloody exercise in futility indeed if we demand the President to fight on the one hand, and then undercut and undermine him at every turn on the other, as we have consistently done with Iraq. Had we supported him all the way from the start and throughout, the mess now in Mesopotamia needn’t have happened.

We said, “Destroy the enemy, but try not to kill anyone.” (It’s a massacre if we do.)

We said, “We aren’t winning fast enough, so let’s pull out our troops now!” (It’s for oil, anyhow.)

We said, “It’s a quagmire! We should have sent in more troops!” (I beg your pardon, Europe, can you spare some?)

Are we so infantile that we demand perfection in life and war; that if it isn’t perfect, then it is excrement? In truth, the price of victory is always paid in blood, either in our blood or that of our enemies, but there will always be that terrible price to be paid.

Know that at the end of the day when the shouts of demagogues and banter of pundits fade inexorably to silence, it is “We the People” who are steering this ship of state. We ultimately decide our own fate, whether we stand as a people or fall.

Abraham Lincoln described this most eloquently. To wit:

“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

And so it is, and so the question remains.

What will the people of America choose?...