Gorilla's Blog

North Korea isn’t too happy about South Korean-American military exercises this weekend, and threatens to use its “nuclear deterrent” if they go forward…

Putting aside whether this threat is genuine (the guess here is that it’s not), the problem with North Korea is that it’s only a threat to South Korea, and nobody’s going to war over that.

So what’s the point of all these military pr exercises?

To demonstrate we’re serious about something, although it’s not clear what.

To show the Chinese we mean business, although they’ve correctly concluded our bilateral relationship is far more important than anything we say or do about fifth-rate regional irritants.

To put the brakes on anyone in Washington getting too zealous about cutting the defense budget, presumably we need all those ships and planes to defend ourselves against the collective might of North Korea, Iran, and the Taliban.

Once the sabers have stopped rattling, we’ll again confront the same issue: do we or do we not wish to engage in serious, bilateral diplomacy with these very minor rogue states and insurgency movements?

In Afghanistan, we clearly want a deal with the Taliban, but can’t be seen to be negotiating. So we allow Karzai to make sympathetic outreach noises and the UN to undertake very drawn out talks with the principals.

In Iran, we can’t be seen to be negotiating directly because that won’t play well on the local news in an election year. So it’s another round of sanctions and lots of huffing and puffing.

In North Korea, we could negotiate directly, but we also want to play the Chinese off against our Asian allies for some as yet undetermined benefit (aka “the Jack Spratleys strategem”).

Gorilla says: “Pretending to care is always easier than pretending to dare!”