Poor method for behavior modification
One of the first things wise parents (are supposed to) learn in navigating that swamp called discipline is not to threaten with something you can’t follow through about. Things like “no more TV for the rest of your life” or “you’ll never get another toy” just don’t scare kids the way they do in the comic books. Kids know better.
As do those countries that are card holders in the “Axis of Evil”. Today, Obama warned North Korea to stop playing with (nuclear) matches, or else. He reminded the Great Leader that the last few times around, the warnings had been wrapped in gifts of food and money and other things. This time around, no more Mr. Nice Guy.
Somehow, I don’t think the kid with the funny haircut and newly painted missiles really cares. In economic terms, the western world has no trade with his country. We can’t promise to stop going there on vacation. We won’t start with pirating music from the latest NK hit parade. What else is there?
Wiki tells me that NK is the last of the “centrally planned systems”. We don’t have anything that vaguely resembles a planned whatever here in Canada, so there’s no easy way to compare. Maybe the Wheat Board (which probably sent grains to P’yongyang during the Last Great Famine). The idea that some neighbour doesn’t want/need to trade with us for logs or slimy sands or (eventually) water leaves us without an economic benchmark.
That’s why I figure the kid with the funny haircut is going to keep bothering the more rational governments for some time to come. We don’t have a reprisal that means much in NK terms.
