Via Mediaite. Alternate headline: “Confirmed: Megyn Kelly’s a RINO.” Seriously, though, explain to me (and her, by proxy) how the NorKs would have behaved differently over the past two years with Bush in office, especially given that their first nuclear test came on his watch. When they went ahead with their ICBM test launch in April 2009, The One demanded that they be punished with the same ceremonial wrist slap that all U.S. presidents resort to, i.e. a Security Council statement. They responded by breaking off from six-party talks, and not only has he refused to re-engage them — even after their nuclear test last year (and notwithstanding his nonsense during the campaign about talking with anyone without preconditions) — but officials in the White House are already warning that they won’t reward bad behavior by rushing into new talks after yesterday’s incident either. On the contrary, Obama’s going ahead with a joint carrier exercise with South Korea in the Yellow Sea this weekend, which is bound to annoy China as much as it will North Korea. What reason is there to think North Korea’s been more erratic lately because of who’s in the White House than because of the instability created by the succession of power from Kim pere to Kim fils?
As for Crowley’s point about ultimate responsibility falling on China, it’s well taken — so much so, in fact, that she sounds a lot like the State Department’s own spokesman. Two things, though. First, and ominously, it’s an open question of whether China has as much control over North Korea as we think they do:
The shelling, however, could not have come at a worst time for China. President Hu Jintao is scheduled to make his first state visit to the United States in January, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will travel to China that same month to smooth out tensions that have complicated the military’s relationship with its Chinese counterpart. The Chinese government was as surprised as the United States to learn last week that North Korea was much further along in its uranium-enrichment project than previously thought–the exact type of unexpected announcement that Beijing officials had hoped their recent meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il would prevent.
Second, even if NK is operating as a proxy here, China’s bound to test the United States more in the coming years because we’re heavily invested militarily in other parts of the world and, after all, as a growing power the Chinese want to assert themselves in their region. Having a president who’s perceived as weak is an added inducement to do so, but there are already plenty of inducements present.
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