It may have escaped your attention (I’d meant to post on this a few days ago) but North Korea is no longer a communist country. They’ve scrubbed the constitution of all references to communism:

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has officially made Kim Jong-il its “supreme leader” and his “military first” policy its guiding ideology, according to the text of the country’s newly revised Constitution made available on Monday.

The Constitution also declared for the first time that North Korea “respects and protects” the “human rights” of its citizens, and expunged the term “communism” from its text.

It’s been replaced by Songun, roughly “militarism”. Isn’t that cheery? I’m certainly encouraged.

What you’ve missed the past week if you’re not reading Manzine:

Features:

• Mad About Mad Men (James Joyner) – “Mad Men” is the hottest show on TV, having somehow captured the zeitgeist with its meticulous portrayal of early 1960s Manhattan.

• Guide to Homebrewing Beer (Tim F) – Brewing your own beer is pretty easy. Here are answers to questions would-be homebrewers often ask.

• The Chrome Dome (Jon Stonger) – A masculine approach to baldness.

• Great Potatoes For Great Steaks (Matt Mehaffey) – Because you need a side dish worthy of your great steaks. And nothing goes with meat like potatoes.

Shorts:

• World Bartender Championships (James Joyner)

• North Korean Compensation? (Jon Stonger)

• Quote of the Day – Drinking Edition (James Joyner)

• Prostate Cancer: Get Checked (James Joyner)

• The Benefits of Starting a Side Business (Alex Knapp)

Dick Cheney is breaking the mold on how recently-departed vice presidents act. First, he immediately went into attack mode against President Obama. Now, he’s going after President Bush, too. Bart Gelman for WaPo:

Cheney’s disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets.

“In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming. It was clear that Cheney’s doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times — never apologize, never explain — and Bush moved toward the conciliatory.”

The two men maintain respectful ties, speaking on the telephone now and then, though aides to both said they were never quite friends. But there is a sting in Cheney’s critique, because he views concessions to public sentiment as moral weakness. After years of praising Bush as a man of resolve, Cheney now intimates that the former president turned out to be more like an ordinary politician in the end.

Gawker’s The Cajun Boy is quite amused:

Now, only Dick Cheney could ever possibly reflect on the “stay the course” presidency of George W. Bush and somehow come to the mangled conclusion that it was conciliatory in just about anything that it did. If there’s one thing that objective people can probably agree almost universally on when assessing Bush as a president, it’s that he and his administration were hopelessly, tragically stubborn.

But Cheney’s actually quite right here. As I’ve been arguing for months, Bush’s foreign policy returned to the Realist roots he campaigned on over time. Wolfowitz, Feith, and the gang were gone in 2005 and Rumsfeld followed them in late 2006. Gelman:

Cheney’s imprint on law and policy, achieved during the first term at the peak of his influence, had faded considerably by the time he and Bush left office. Bush halted the waterboarding of accused terrorists, closed secret CIA prisons, sought congressional blessing for domestic surveillance, and reached out diplomatically to Iran and North Korea, which Cheney believed to be ripe for “regime change.”

This apparently not only hurt his feelings but, more importantly, a shift away from a national strategy Cheney legitimately thought necessary to protect his country. As Kevin Drum intimates, it’s amazing that he thought we were on the right course.

But Cheney himself seems to have changed his mind on a matter of honor. He’s now working diligently on a tell-all book to set the record straight.

Some old associates see Cheney’s newfound openness as a breach of principle. For decades, he expressed contempt for departing officials who wrote insider accounts, arguing that candid internal debate was impossible if the president and his advisers could not count on secrecy. As far back as 1979, one of the heroes in Lynne Cheney’s novel “Executive Privilege” resolved never to write a memoir because “a president deserved at least one person around him whose silence he could depend on.” Cheney lived that vow for the next 30 years.

As vice president, according to one witness, Cheney “was livid” when the memoir of L. Paul Bremer, who led the occupation of Iraq, made the less-than-stunning disclosure that Cheney shared Bremer’s concern about U.S. military strategy. A Cabinet-level Bush appointee recalled that Cheney likewise described revelations by former Treasury secretary Paul H. O’Neill and former White House spokesman Scott McClellan as “beyond the pale.”

“If he goes out and writes a memoir that spills beans about what took place behind closed doors, that would be out of character,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as White House spokesman during Bush’s first term.

Yet that appears to be precisely Cheney’s intent. Robert Barnett, who negotiated Cheney’s book contract, passed word to potential publishers that the memoir would be packed with news, and Cheney himself has said, without explanation, that “the statute of limitations has expired” on many of his secrets. “When the president made decisions that I didn’t agree with, I still supported him and didn’t go out and undercut him,” Cheney said, according to Stephen Hayes, his authorized biographer. “Now we’re talking about after we’ve left office. I have strong feelings about what happened. . . . And I don’t have any reason not to forthrightly express those views.”

I’m generally with Old Dick Cheney on this one. Unless one resigns in protest, one owes a certainly loyalty to those whom one serves. Cheney is one of the more controversial and important figures in recent American political history, though, and getting his considered reflections on why things unfolded as they did should be fascinating.

UPDATE: I appeared on Russia Today to talk about this issue.

I’ve refrained from rapid reaction to the controversy over Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea to secure the release of two American journalists because I’ve been torn between competing maxims.  I agree with the critics who say rewarding despots who have seized American citizens is bad precedent, incentivizing illegal behavior.  Yet, Bob Manning is right, too:  our leaders have no good alternative to talking with our adversaries.

Dave Schuler and I discussed the topic at some length toward the end of last night’s edition of OTB Radio and I’ve written an extensive essay on the matter at New Atlanticist entitled “Bill Clinton’s North Korea Gambit.”

The short version is that:

• We don’t know what, if anything we gave in exchange for the hostages, making it difficult to assess the deal

• Bill Clinton was clearly just a high profile courier in this mission, there to take pictures and bring back the hostages according to a pre-arranged deal

• While I’m not terribly hopeful it will bear fruit, this opens a window to improved bilateral relations

Of all the commentary I’ve seen on the North Korean hostages, I think that this has to be the most execrable.

That said, and now that they are out of jeopardy, Ling and Lee deserve to be held accountable, at least in the realm of public opinion, for the unthinkably bad judgment they displayed in their preposterous, vainglorious, and astoundingly naive venture. Possessing some fantasy about presenting an inside look at North Korea on an justifiably unwatched (because unwatchable) cable channel called Current TV, they thought they could sneak undetected into a Gulag state, film some footage with a DV camera, and then sneak back out to the hosannas of the Peabody Award committee. This is something they chose to do and were given license to attempt by their employers, and for which they paid a horrific, far too horrific, a price.

That is a pretty damning judgment, especially one that’s provided with no evidence whatsoever. Most people would assume that two young women risking their lives to reveal to the world the truths about what I assume are the horrors of day-to-day life in North Korea is something heroic. Reporters all over the world risk their lives day to day to bring us real news stories (and day to day life in North Korea is definitely news.)

Of course, as far as I can tell, Podhoretz has been doing simple punditry his whole life, not any actual reporting, so these might be alien concepts to him. After all, the news shows up on his TV and newspaper every morning like magic! And it’s his job to interpret that news for the benefit of the unwashed masses. Clearly, that’s the more important gig.

So really, this comment isn’t that much of a surprise. Because his livelihood depends on being a partisan hack, he’s incapable of recognizing that somebody who disagrees with him politically could possibly have done something worthy of admiration. It’s a typical inside-the-beltway response which can only view the issues of the day through a horserace mentality. Anything that the other side does well has to be spun as being bad.

(link via Balloon Juice)

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 5:30-6:30 Eastern.

Dave Schuler and I will be talk about the Cash for Clunkers program, the Birthers, Bill Clinton’s North Korea trip, and other topics in the news.

We’ll also be taking calls at (646) 716-7030. Owing to a high trolls to legit callers ratio, however, we’ll be using the BTR chat feature to screen for legit calls.

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As if we didn’t have enough to worry about apparently the Burmese have built a secret nuclear reactor:

Two of Asia’s most oppressive regimes may have joined forces to develop a nuclear arsenal, according to strategic experts who have analysed information supplied by a pair of Burmese defectors.

The men, who played key roles in helping the isolated military junta before defecting to Thailand, have provided evidence which suggests Burma has enlisted North Korean help to build its own nuclear bomb within the next five years.

Details supplied by the pair, who were extensively interviewed over the past two years by Professor Desmond Ball of the Australian National University and Thai-based Irish-Australian journalist Phil Thornton, points to Burma building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facility with the assistance of North Korea.

It’s for peaceful purposes, of course. Not to mention the prestige and being able to extend the North Korean and, presumably, Iranian nuclear programs far beyond their borders and away from the prying eyes of pesky IAEA inspectors.

This is the real threat of the sort of nuclear proliferation we’ve been seeing over the period of the last twenty years, first from Pakistan through North Korea and Iran and now Burma. I’m concerned about a sort of nuclear assembly line with the stages separated far enough that no single stage looks like an appreciable threat but the aggregate result is nuclear weapons everywhere.

Michael Gerson pronounces the Obama Doctrine of engagement DOA:

But even lacking an ideology, the administration does have a doctrine. The defining principle of President Obama’s foreign policy is engagement with America’s adversaries. Much of the president’s public diplomacy has been designed to clear a path for such talks — expressing respect for legitimate grievances, apologizing for past wrongs and offering dialogue without preconditions.

Six months on, how fares the Obama doctrine? Concerning North Korea and Iran, the doctrine is on its deathbed.

North Korea responded to administration outreach by testing a nuclear weapon, firing missiles toward U.S. allies, resuming plutonium reprocessing and threatening the United States with a “fire shower of nuclear retaliation.” During congressional testimony, Clinton admitted, “At this point [it] seems implausible, if not impossible, the North Koreans will return to the six-party talks and begin to disable their nuclear capacity again.”

The Iranian regime’s reaction to engagement was to cut the ribbon on a nuclear enrichment facility, add centrifuges, conduct a fraudulent election, and kill and imprison a variety of political opponents. Regarding administration overtures, Clinton recently told the BBC, “We haven’t had any response. We’ve certainly reached out and made it clear that’s what we’d be willing to do . . . but I don’t think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now.”

I agree with Mr. Gerson’s view that President Obama actually believes his campaign rhetoric. However, as James has chronicled effectively, President Obama ran successfully against President Bush’s foreign policy c. 2003 but as president affirmed Bush’s foreign policy c. 2008 with astonishing regularity. The Obama presidency is still in Act I and he’s been fortunate so far to have escaped serious foreign policy challenges.

They will come. And when they do perhaps a recalcitrant North Korea or Iran will come to the bargaining table. Or President Obama may doggedly try to continue to dance with the one that brought him, however ineffective it might be.

Or he may successfully redefine himself as he has done with protean facility throughout his adult life. Stay tuned.

Over the weekend North Korea fired a volley of short range missiles into the Sea of Japan in defiance of UNSC resolutions, heightening tensions between North Korea and its neighbors, South Korea and Japan. The Guardian Council has certified the election results in Iran and President Ahmadinejad and the “hardliners” that he represents seem even more firmly in control of Iran than they were before the election. He blames us and the Brits for the protests against the patently phony election that overwhelmingly returned him to office. Even as the U. S. envoy returns to Venezuela, Venezuela’s President Chavez blames the United States for the coup in Honduras that has ousted its president.

Today President Obama landed in Moscow to meet with Russian President Medvedev and other Russian leaders:

MOSCOW — President Obama arrived in Moscow Monday for a summit meeting with Russian leaders that is aimed at reaching an agreement to cut stockpiles of nuclear warheads, but is also expected to touch on the war in Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, terrorism and the jousting for influence in other former Soviet countries.

The summit meeting comes less than a year after the conflict in Georgia caused the worst tensions between the United States and Russia since the end of the cold war. Mr. Obama has called for a “reset” in relations, and the summit meeting will offer the most telling evidence so far about how difficult it will be to achieve this goal.

In opening remarks at the Kremlin, Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev said they hoped that the meeting would improve relations in both tone and substance. Mr. Obama noted that he and Mr. Medvedev had met previously at the Group of 8 summit meeting in April in London.

“We are confident that we can continue to build off the extraordinary discussions that we had in London,” Mr. Obama said, “and that on a whole host of issues — including security issues, economic issues, energy issues, environmental issues — that the United States and Russia have more in common than they have differences, and that if we work hard during these next few days, that we can make extraordinary progress that will benefit the people of both countries.”

There is no more important bilateral relationship between nations than that between Russia and the United States. Between them the two nations have at least 95% of the world’s nuclear weapons. We literally have the ability to destroy the world.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much basis for a good relationship between Russia and the United States. Russia’s population is dwindling, its economy languishing, it survives largely by selling its natural resources. Russia would be a difficult market for American goods and its natural customer for its oil and gas is Europe. We don’t really need Russia’s cooperation on pressing world issues like climate change.

Russia has had consistent and clear interests over the period of the last 200 years or more: annexing or at least neutralizing its neighbors.

The viewpoint of Russians, expressed neatly by Fyodor Lukyanov in the Russian Gazeta, is that it’s all our fault:

On Moscow’s part, too, there’s a desire to break the deadlock, but Russia doesn’t feel it bears any blame for creating it. A common opinion is that Americans have made a pile of mistakes, so now the ball will be in their court for a long time to come. Moscow doesn’t believe it needs to change anything, but is more than ready to respond more constructively to U.S. proposals. Russian representatives acknowledge that that the climate of negotiations has changed for the better, and so two angry monologues have given way to a difficult dialogue.

There’s a grain of truth to that. When you consider the expansion of NATO membership into some of the countries that made up the old Warsaw Pact, U. S. participation in what many Russians viewed as anti-Slav military actions against Yugoslavia, the overtures made to countries like Georgia or Ukraine in Russias “near abroad”, and the plans to deploy missile defense in the Czech Republic or Poland which Russians characteristically view as being directed against them, the view isn’t completely without basis.

While nuclear arms reduction is certainly a vital interest of the U. S. is it our only interest? Very nearly all that we have to offer Russia other than our own arms reduction is to give them a free hand in their dealings with their neighbors. Is arms reduction important enough to us that we should stand on the sidelines as Russia re-assembles the old Soviet Union or creates a chaotically weak buffer zone around it?

The title of this post was inspired by Clive Crooks’s column in the Financial Times:

So much for soft power. Mr Obama’s friendly outreach to other states – be they hostile, unco-operative or even supposedly friendly – has been no more productive, say the critics. China is about as implacable, North Korea just as deranged, Europe just as feckless. Russia, which Mr Obama visits this week, bullies and bribes its near-abroad with as little finesse as usual. What a surprise: the world is not smiling back.

He is not attacking President Obama’s foreign policy but rather defending it:

In foreign policy, Mr Obama is muddling through. He can do no more. He never exaggerated the transformational power of a handshake. His supporters did, to be sure, and he did not go out of his way to disabuse them. But the oddest thing, after Iran, is where some of those supporters have ended up. They stupidly believed that the president’s face was all it would take to change the world. Suddenly they want him to be less like Barack Obama and more like George W. Bush.

In my experience nearly every president has come into office convinced that the foreign policy mess he inherited is largely the fault of his predecessor and has left office disabused of that notion, largely reaffirming the decisions of his predecessor. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there have been four different American administrations, two Republican and two Democratic. Each has come into office with the full intention of revitalizing and improving the relationship between Russia and the United States. Three have left office with relations no better than that of his predecessor or possibly even worse. That includes George W. Bush.

What have been constant through the period are Russia’s perceived national interests and the character of Russia’s government. I wish President Obama the very greatest of success in his meetings with President Medvedev. He has his work cut out for him.

As widely expected, the DPRK fired some missiles on the 4th of July. Apparently, however, they were not aimed at Hawaii.

North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles off its eastern coast Saturday, South Korea said, a violation of U.N. resolutions and an apparent message of defiance to the United States on its Independence Day.

The launches, which came two days after North Korea fired what were believed to be four short-range cruise missiles, will likely further escalate tensions in the region as the U.S. tries to muster support for tough enforcement of the latest U.N. Security Council resolution imposed on the communist regime for its May nuclear test.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said three missiles were fired early Saturday, a fourth around noon and three more in the afternoon. The Defense Ministry said that the missiles were ballistic and are believed to have flown more than 250 miles (400 kilometers). “Our military is fully ready to counter any North Korean threats and provocations based on strong South Korea-U.S. combined defense posture,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

Maybe Kim heard that Americans like to shoot off illegal fireworks in celebration of our independence and wanted to join the party? It wouldn’t be any nuttier than anything else he’s done lately.

The United States is a very large and diverse country, its people have many differing views as you’d expect in such a country, and, not particularly surprisingly, some of those views are in diametric opposition. That’s particularly apparent in Americans’ views of how we should interact with Iran.

Isolationism remains a strong strain of thought in the United States and many if not most Americans are largely uninterested in what goes on in the next county let alone halfway across the world as long as it doesn’t affect their daily lives. These Americans would just as soon ignore the Iranian election as anything else. Another strain of isolationism sees dealing with Iran as the responsibility of international institutions: the United Nations, NATO, the IAEA, anybody as long as it doesn’t involve us. Make no mistake “let George do it” is as isolationistic as simply wishing it wouldn’t bother us.

For some Americans, pessimistic realists, the only way to deal with Iran is military force. So far those who favor attacking or invading Iran haven’t come up with an explanation of how they’ll achieve their objectives with anything short of an exterminatory strike or why such a course would be morally justifiable, what forces they’d use for an invasion of Iran, or that there’s political support for such a course of action.

In the blogosphere lately optimistic idealists have been stridently vocal in their support for the Iranian people’s aspirations for freedom. That presupposes that those in Iran who want a freer, more democratic Iran are representative of Iranians, generally, that if a fair reckoning of the vote had been made it would have resulted in a different outcome, that any likely outcome of the processes that are unfolding in Iran would result in a freer, more democratic Iran, and that how we or our government react can have any positive influence on how events develop in Iran.

President Obama has heretofore taken the position that we should negotiate with whomever is elected to the presidency in Iran and has responded warily to the demonstrators and whatever opposition movement they represent.

This morning Nader Mousavizadeh, consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, makes an interesting suggestion in an op-ed in the Washington Post, that we should engage Iran and ignore Ahmadinejad:

First, the administration should provide unequivocal recognition of Iran’s popular movement for greater freedoms and openness, and condemn the government’s crackdown. Whether an “Obama effect” has been at work in the streets of Tehran the past few days is not important; what matters is that after 30 years, the tired chant of “Death to America” has been replaced by “Death to the dictator.” A change is echoing down the capital’s boulevards that this U.S. president cannot fail to honor.

Second, the administration should interpret Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s sanction of Ahmadinejad’s “victory” as confirmation — if any was needed — that the supreme leader is the power that matters in Iran, and, as such, is the person with whom a strategic dialogue should be established. Taking Ahmadinejad’s bait for another four years would be both counter-productive and unnecessary. Already, the Obama administration has explored ways to establish a line of communication with Khamenei. Through trusted intermediaries and imaginative diplomacy, opportunities for a direct dialogue with the supreme leader will present themselves. They must be seized.

The key elements of this negotiation are well known: persuading Iran not to weaponize its nuclear program and to urge its allies in Hamas and Hezbollah to pursue their aims through political and not military means. In return, Iran could look forward to acceptance of a legitimate role for itself in regional security and, over time, reintegration into the international community. It is as clear now as it was before last week’s voting that such a strategic dialogue, however challenging, is better served by starting with areas of common interest — such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq — as opposed to the nuclear dispute. If Iran’s true nuclear capabilities remain shrouded in mystery today, its people’s intentions regarding a future of greater freedoms and peaceful engagement with the world have never been clearer.

That’s a program that makes sense to me. To his “key elements” I’d add ensuring that Iran conforms fully to its obligations under the NPT and relevant UN resolutions on North Korea.

That might be interpreted as placing President Obama in something of a predicament but I don’t think that’s true. Pursuing different policies when circumstances change, as they clearly have been revealed to have done in Iran, isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of sanity.

As noted earlier, Michael J. Totten will be on OTB radio in 90 minutes talking about events in Iran and, time permitting, North Korea. He’s mostly blogging these topics at Commentary if you want to catch up on what he’s written.

What questions would you like us to ask him?

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 7-8 Eastern.

Dave Schuler and I will be joined by special guest Michael J. Totten to discuss the unfolding events in Iran and North Korea. Please join us.

We’ll also be taking calls at (646) 716-7030. Owing to a high trolls to legit callers ratio, however, we’ll be using the BTR chat feature to screen for legit calls.

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In reaction to yesterday’s UNSC resolution North Korea has vowed to throw off the restraint it has shown so far in its nuclear weapons development program:

North Korea has declared it will weaponise all its plutonium stocks and threatened military action against the United States and its allies after the UN security council imposed new sanctions to punish Pyongyang for last month’s underground nuclear test.

A spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry today acknowledged for the first time that North Korea is developing a uranium enrichment programme and said it would be “impossible” to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

In a defiant statement, the spokesman said that “the whole amount of the newly extracted plutonium [in the country] will be weaponised” and that “more than one-third of the spent fuel rods has been reprocessed to date”.

The ministry said the country had successfully started a programme to enrich uranium for a light-water reactor.

[…]

The regime is believed to have enough plutonium for at least six nuclear bombs. It has around 8,000 spent fuel rods that if reprocessed could allow the country to harvest 6-8kg of plutonium – enough for at least one nuclear bomb, according to analysts.

Imagine what North Korea can do if it doesn’t have one hand tied behind its back! That would leave one hand free with which to do weapons development.

I don’t mean to scoff at the threat that North Korea poses to peace in its region and U. S. interests there or even, possibly, elsewhere if it manages to export its small production of nuclear weapons. That’s a real threat and why interdiction is so important. What I’m scoffing at is the idea that the North Koreans have shown restraint so far. It’s difficult for a threat to have much force if we already believe they’re doing what they’re threatening to do.

I hope the interdiction policy extends to ships going to North Korea as well. With Iran proceeding in its pursuit of the “peaceful use of atomic energy”, the interactions between Iran’s and North Korea’s missile and nuclear development programs, and North Korea’s demonstrated nuclear weapons program, Iran’s possession of a complete domestic nuclear fuel cycle becomes more problematic.

The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously today to impose additional sanctions on North Korea:

UNITED NATIONS, June 12 — The U.N. Security Council unanimously voted Friday to impose a broad range of additional financial, military and trade sanctions on North Korea in response to its recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests, and called on states for the first time to seize banned North Korean cargo on the high seas.

The Security Council’s action marked a significant escalation in the United Nations’ effort to coerce North Korea into halting a barrage of ballistic missile tests and to prod it back into six-nation talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. The 15-nation council is now set to begin negotiations over imposition of an asset freeze or travel ban on additional individuals and state companies linked to North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile program

There are a couple of noteworthy things about the move. First, both Russia and China, on whom North Korea has been able to depend to oppose sanctions, voted for the additional sanctions. That the new sanctions are not a total embargo may have been the price of that support.

Second, the resolution authorizes the interdiction program that the United States has been organizing:

The resolution calls for U.N. members to inspect all shipments entering or leaving North Korea if there is a reasonable suspicion that the cargo contains banned nuclear or missile technology. Member nations would be given the right to search ships suspected of carrying banned materials on the high seas and to seize any contraband.

The resolution, however, includes important caveats, such as the need for the flag state — the country in which a ship is registered –to approve the searches. If the flag state does not allow inspections on the high seas, it would be required to direct the ship to a nearby port for a search. But council members would not be authorized to use force to ensure that happens.

This is certainly a move in the right direction and almost undoubtedly the most that could have been expected from the UNSC. Whether it will be enough to bring the hermit kingdom to heel on its nuclear weapons program is another matter. Frankly, I doubt it. Without it, they’ve got nothin’.

How much does it really matter? Using their nuclear weapons against Japan, South Korea, or U. S. interests would be suicidal. What have they to gain? If we can prevent their trading nuclear weapons and nuclear technology with a robust apprehension and search regime, doesn’t that accomplish enough? And this resolution makes such a program much more likely.