At the risk of being overtaken by the sudden whim of a young dictator, or a mistake by players on any side, I wonder if the current crisis with North Korea might just end around the time that Exercise Foal Eagle does.
That's this year's annual joint military exercise by the U.S. and South Korea, running from March 1 through April 30.
Just before the beginning of Foal Eagle, designed to practice repelling an invasion by the North Korean army, the world's fourth largest (behind those of China, the U.S., and India), the dynastic North Korean regime headed by 30-year old Kim Jong-un jacked up tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in much of the rest of the world. Its mid-February test firing of a more advanced nuclear weapon than the Hermit State had previously demonstrated set off major alarm bells in the UN Security Council. Events accelerated from there, as I've been discussing recently in my archive of pieces on America's geopolitical pivot to the Asia-Pacific region.
Despite the fact that North Korea actually has nuclear weapons, more advanced missiles than all but a few nations, one of the world's largest militaries, and has recently attacked its neighbor South Korea, with which it still has only a truce some 60 years after the Korean War, relatively little attention has been paid to it compared to Iran.
Not that all the attention paid to Iran results in actual knowledge. Mitt Romney, who called Iran the most threatening nation in the world, declared in a presidential debate last year that Iran supports Syria because it's the Tehran regime's "route to the sea." As simple perusal of a map reveals, that would be no. Syria isn't next to Iran, and Iran has twice as much coastline as California.
North Korea is even more of an enigma with the advent of the younger Kim, who took power in Pyongyang just last year. It may be that he is determined to show he is tough throughout the entire exercise of American and South Korean arms not far from his country's borders.
His country has a long history of making aggressive moves and even more aggressive sounds, frequently ending up with more international aid as a result even as it continues to advance its weapons programs. This time it seems qualitatively different. The nuclear weapon test in February was more advanced, suggesting a major increase in the miniaturization needed to place a deliverable warhead on a missile. What's unknown is what range of missile can now accommodate a deliverable North Korean warhead, with lesser levels of miniaturization needed for shorter-range missiles.
While it's certain that threats to attack the U.S. mainland are still very empty, even if the missile could not be shot down, targets in South Korea or Japan, perhaps even the U.S. base at Guam a couple thousand miles out in the Pacific, might be in range.
Not that North Korea is likely to initiate hostilities with a nuclear strike. That would be suicidal. If there's anything to suggest that beyond the superheated rhetoric, it hasn't been reported.
But things could spiral out of control over the next few weeks. The key moment will come if and when a North Korean missile launch occurs.
Shoot-down? Or no shoot-down? Considering that two proud countries in addition to the U.S., South Korea and Japan, countries which would bear the actual brunt if war with North Korea ever came, are very much involved, that's not a question that can necessarily be decided in Washington.
In the meantime, events roll on.
President Barack Obama had a major Korea cast to his Thursday public schedule.
First, he posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor to Army Chaplain Emil Kapaun in the East Room. Kapaun, a Catholic priest who is a candidate for sainthood, is honored for his acts of courage in the early days of the Korean War. After deploying from Japan in June 1950 to the Korean peninsula, he was captured by North Korean forces in September 1950 and died in a prison camp from the effects of blood clotting and pneumonia on May 23, 1951.
Then Obama met with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in the Oval Office. Ban is a former South Korean foreign minister.
Before all that, North Korea moved mobile IRBMs (intermediate range ballistic missile) in place along the coast for a threatened test launch. The missiles have reportedly been fueled and readied for launch.
The U.S. has positioned anti-missile Navy destroyers and radar systems to protect South Korea and U.S. bases.
South Korea has moved its military to a high state of readiness. Japan has set up interceptor missiles around Tokyo, vowing to shoot down any missile that threatens Japanese air space.
North Korean officials have issued repeated warnings of "thermonuclear war," most recently in a statement from the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee. This, as the statement put it, "due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the South Korean puppet warmongers."
North Korea shut down the last major symbol of cooperative activity with South Korea, a major industrial compound just north of the border utilizing workers from both countries.
Having previously warned Russia and other foreign countries to close their embassies in North Korea, it then warned all foreign countries to have their citizens leave South Korea.
Over last weekend, new Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed a gathering of some Asia-Pacific nations for a business conference in the PRC's Hainan Province on the South China Sea.
Xi spoke somewhat elliptically of the need to rein in North Korea, saying that "No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains." But these comments were interpreted by some as also applying to the U.S. geopolitical pivot to the Asia-Pacific region.
China is engaged in tense stand-offs with many of its neighbors on the South China Sea, as is frequently discussed here, and on the East China Sea with Japan, which has a mutual defense treaty with the U.S. which both American and Japanese officials have pointedly noted will cover any potential clash with China over the disputed Senkaku Islands, which the PRC calls the Diaoyu Islands.
In his keynote remarks in Hainan Province, Xi noted that well over 50 percent of the global economic growth of recent years is accounted for by the Asia-Pacific region. Yet growth has been slowing of late in China, which nonetheless has hundreds of billions available for investment, much of which will have to go elsewhere if it is seeking a big return.China's foreign minister separately discussed the crisis with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and said of North Korea that China does not "allow trouble making on China's doorstep." Most of North Korea's energy, food, and goods come through China. But North Korea has been resistant to China's apparent counsel this time around.
One thing that is very refreshing, incidentally, about Asia-Pacific geopolitics is the relative absence of religion as a big factor. Confucius, like Buddha, is a philosopher, not a deity. Philosophy can be debated and challenged in ways that religion cannot.
Imagine how difficult this situation would be if divine authority was being invoked.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.