10/22/2002

Logic of Mass Destruction

Supporters of invading Iraq have been vocal in their attempots to explain to us poor liberal naive fools how Saddam is not deterrable.

I imagine that there will now be a rush to explain how Korea is deterrable?

UPDATE: Suman Palit does just that, and does a good enough job explaining it that I am convinced (I probably violated some central axiom of blogging in that I'm no9t supposed to actually be convinced by other people's arguments. Maybe I just have a weak mind).

Related - William Burton has a fairly comprehensive Plan of how to deal with Korea. It's based stringly on realpolitik arguments, and I'm not entirely comfortable with some aspects of it, but teh general point that he is making is that the DPRK has plenty of levers of pressure that can be applied.

UPDATE 2: Slate notes another difference between Iraq and N Korea. Not what you think, though.

UPDATE 3: Thomas Nephew has a counterargument to Suman. I appreciate his point, but emotionally speaking, my bubble of alarm at the DPRK nuke story remains punctured. My main fear about China with regard to Iraq centers on Taiwan.

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