Very few folks are talking about the hottest spot in what I am tempted to call the "Warm War" era for obvious wordsmithing purposes, except that there is too godawful much searing of human flesh in a world gone mad again to allow such a tepid phrase even momentary legitimacy. That spot is Korea--North and South: We must remember that the world (and more importantly, the Koreans) was bequeathed a divided Korean Peninsula by an arbitrary stroke of the then young Dean Acheson's pen along a ruler laid across a map shortly after his generation had defeated fascism in Germany and Japan but were even more hell-bent on "containing communism."
Nicholas Kristof is almost alone among major American columnists when he writes about what a terrible threat to the world a fully nuclear-armed North Korea would be. I have been meaning to post this particular column for a few days; forgive me if you've already been there.
I will post the lead graphs and the link below:
N. Korea, 6, and Bush, 0
Here's a foreign affairs quiz:
(1) How many nuclear weapons did North Korea produce in Bill Clinton's eight years of office?
(2) How many nuclear weapons has it produced so far in President Bush's four years in office?
The answer to the first question, by all accounts, is zero. The answer to the second is fuzzier, but about six.
The total will probably rise in coming months, for North Korea has shut down its Yongbyon reactor and says that it plans to extract the fuel rods from it. That will give it enough plutonium for two or three more weapons.
