Village fool

North Korea is not about to attack us. We are merely in danger of catching some of the debris rockets discard as they move out to space.

The projected flight path of the missile Pyongyang plans to launch will cut across southern Japan, move east of Taiwan and then drop its debris in the sea east of Northern Luzon. Manila declared a no-fly zone in the area when the launch happens.

The entire region frowns on this missile launch — not the least because the poor state of North Korea’s rocket technology basically means this device could go haywire and land anywhere. A nation whose vast majority of people is starving is unlikely to produce high-end rocket scientists.

Also, while Pyongyang declares they are launching a satellite into orbit, everyone else thinks they are really testing the capabilities of their intercontinental ballistic missiles. The rated capacity of North Korean missiles is 6,000 miles, enough to hit the western coast of Mainland US.

There is no indication North Korea has the capacity to effectively target their missiles. Their bombs are not smart. The real peril, however, is that North Korea’s leaders are dumber than the bombs they built.

This is the reason why there is so much hostility to what Pyongyang is trying to do. Building ballistic missiles while her people starve is immoral to say the least. The strategic intent of those missiles is to keep South Korea and Japan under constant threat.

Should Pyongyang’s missile technology improve and their ability to deliver nuclear payloads to selected targets become more credible, that hermit country will become a menace to the region. It will escalate tensions and create a climate of high anxiety. That will be bad for trade and finance in the region. We will all pay for the regional instability the lords of Pyongyang create.

This is the reason why leaders of East and Southeast Asia have joined in chorus strongly objecting to the projected missile tests. They are joined by the major powers, specifically the US, whose populous cities could come within North Korean missile range.

Pyongyang’s love affair with nuclear weapons is beyond the pale of supervision by international regulatory agencies. This is the reason the scheduled missile tests are considered renegade.

Japan has mobilized its own sophisticated war machine on the eve of the missile launch. Tokyo indicated its intention to shoot down any missile Pyongyang fires. Should that happen, the lords of Pyongyang will likely throw a tantrum. We have seen before how crazy they can get when that happens. A few years back, North Korea shelled a South Korean island after the South conducted live fire military exercises close to the common border.

This will be an interesting spectacle. Obviously, North Korea will not take happily to the shooting down of what it claims is a satellite launch. A shoot-down will be like a slap on the face of Pyongyang’s brand new leader.

A shoot-down will also demonstrate the superiority of Japanese Self-Defense Forces, elevating that country’s stature among nations of the western Pacific — its dwindling economic prowess notwithstanding. One can imagine Tokyo doing a Dirty Harry: “Ok punk, make my day!”

Unfortunately, the Philippines does not have the capability to take the same no-nonsense stance Japan has taken towards the North Korean missile tests. We cannot shoot down their missiles when they cross our airspace. We can only cover our heads and hope nuts and bolts do not come raining down on us. We have enough problems with our weather patterns.

While we cannot possibly threaten to shoot down stray North Korean missiles (we are definitely within their range), we can do relentless diplomacy. If you cannot fight force with force, harry the enemy by frenetic diplomatic shuffle.

Relentless diplomacy is exactly what we are doing. Manila has taken the lead in rallying Asean support behind our efforts to stop Pyongyang from firing missiles. There are limits to what diplomacy can accomplish, however. Pyongyang has had a tendency to harden its position in the face of adverse regional opinion. The hermit kingdom does not really care about what the rest of the region thinks.

North Korea is like the village fool. It does very little diplomacy with the region. While it is interested in food aid, it is not interested in confidence building measures. This is the reason why Washington chose to cut food aid to North Korea to show its displeasure over the nuclear tests. That will hurt.

It is always difficult to plot how Pyongyang will think and behave. The country has been cut off from the mainstream of modern civilization for so long it seems they have begun to think in a separate universe.

It might be easy to ignore North Korea were it not for the fact that they have nuclear weapons. The country has no important export — save for illegal drugs. Their national self-reliance policy, although an abject failure, meant they import virtually nothing — save for the steady stream of food aid mainly from the US and Seoul.

The North Koreans have not encountered the mobile phone. They have no cable television. They are standing outside of the cyber universe. For all intents and purposes, they are a lost civilization. Their population is unskilled in the trades that matter in the modern world, illiterate as far of contemporary cultural literacy is concerned.

The only way they can avoid being thoroughly ignored by everyone else is to be such a nuisance, the region must be forced to constantly deal with them. That is the reason the country’s leaders always seem to behave like mad dogs.