North Korea fired two more short-range missiles today. These are in addition to the three short-range missiles it fired yesterday, after its underground explosion of a nuclear bomb:

The missile firings came just hours after South Korea said it would join an American-led operation to stop the global trafficking in weapons of mass destruction, an action the North has previously said it would consider a declaration of war.
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The missiles launched Tuesday were surface-to-ship and surface-to-air projectiles, a South Korean official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. The South Korean news agency Yonhap said the missiles had a range of 80 miles. They were apparently launched from a base on the central eastern coast into the sea opposite Japan, further rattling nerves in the region.

The South Korean Defense Ministry declined to confirm the report.

After its nuclear test on Monday — its second in less than three years — the North test-fired three short-range missiles, also off its east coast. An intelligence official in Seoul said that move indicated Pyongyang was “getting its back up” about the possibility that United States military aircraft would fly close to North Korea in an attempt to collect radiation data from the nuclear blast.

Blogger response right now is centering around an article in Forbes written by a retired Indian intelligence official that says, basically, North Korea is responding to perceived weakness on the part of Pres. Barack Obama — Obama is turning into Jimmy Carter, you see.

Movement conservatives are more than happy, of course, to use North Korea’s threatening moves as evidence that a hawk in the bush is worth two doves in the hand.

Even war enthusiasts are stopping short of calling for a military response, though — although at times you can imagine their teeth grinding in frustration, as in this snip from an op-ed by Dan Blumenthal and Robert Kagan:

After decades of diplomacy and “probing” Pyongyang’s intentions, one thing is clear: Kim Jong Il and his cronies want nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. What will dissuade them? Isolation and more punitive sanctions would make sense if China and Russia would go along. But they haven’t, and they won’t.

We would support military action against North Korean missiles and missile sites, if we had prepared ourselves over the past few years to protect our allies against possible North Korean retaliation. Former defense secretary William J. Perry and current defense undersecretary Ashton B. Carter recommended this course of action in The Post a few years ago. But the supposedly bellicose Bush administration didn’t take such action, and the odds of this administration doing so are even smaller.

Neoconservatives can be so entertaining sometimes! Of course, it could not possibly be the case that the reason for the only “supposedly” bellicose Bush administration not taking military action against North Korea was the fact that the gentle and peaceful Bush had all he could handle with an unnecessary and aggressive war against Iraq while still in the midst of a war with Afghanistan and threatening a third war against Iran. Give the man a break, he had too many military actions on his plate as it was.

If war isn’t a realistic option right now, the next best thing, of course, is missile defense — even though the technology of missile defense is unproven and largely discredited, would do nothing to prevent North Korea from selling plutonium to terrorists (a more immediate threat, since North Korea does not yet have the delivery systems to launch a nuclear attack against the U.S. or Europe), and would very likely lead to a new arms buildup in space.

The reality is, there are no truly good — much less ideal — options for dealing with North Korea right now. But some options still are better than others — and the best of those at the moment may be, simply, patience:

One can already imagine a spate of articles coming from the pens of John Bolton, Charles Krauthammer, former Vice President Cheney, and others that Barack Obama should he fail to ratchet up the Pacific-based war machine is really just an “appeaser in chief.”

The fact is that the Chinese and Russians are mostly right about the need for more patience and are calling on the White House privately not to get in a tit-for-tat escalation with North Koreans — particularly when there may be a serious leadership crisis underway to succeed the ailing Kim Jong Il.
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Americans are schizophrenic on North Korea. During the end of Clinton II, there was an enormous amount of attention focused on North Korea — capped off by a visit by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and had Monica Lewinsky not appeared on Bill Clinton’s docket, many believe that Bill Clinton would have gone to North Korea before the end of his term.

Colin Powell tried to engineer continuity between Clinton and the first George W. Bush term but was quickly mugged by President Bush who wanted to derail the course US-North Korea relations were on. North Korea envoy Jack Pritchard and then Under Secretary of State John Bolton engaged in a highly public feud over North Korea policy — though both worked, theoretically, for the same Secretary of State.

The anti-progress hawks won the day until the second George W. Bush term when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill brought the worsening North Korean situation around to something with new, constructive possibilities and made the Six Party Talks something serious.
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North Korea may simply be unstable while uncertainties about political succession stew in the muck of Pyongyang’s opaque political scene, but at the same time — America does not have a “Chris Hill” in Christopher Hill’s old position.

Waiting patiently and quietly in line is the highly capable Kurt Campbell who should be on this problem now — but he has not been confirmed, and the Obama team needs to fix this — and needed to yesterday.

North Korea’s provocations are reckless but while going higher up the ladder of naughtiness, they do not meet the standard for invasion or attack — and a tougher “sanctions regime” may give the bad guys in North Korea’s unstable political order exactly what they want.

America cannot do nothing. Obama can’t be a sitting duck for the attack that will predictably come from John Bolton and fellow travelers. But there are simply few real options.

Making patience look like the smart strategy, even the tough strategy, would be wise.  …
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What needs to be avoided is a hot escalation of words and deeds during a probable leadership crisis. America needs to do all it can to avoid an attack on the Korean peninsula that will not only be devastating for all parties in the region but do incalculable damage to the highly important US-China relationship.

Obama needs to make patience look like the right, and the tough, course — and he needs to find a way to co-opt the North Koreans into a new dance.

Darren Hutchinson and Ron Beasley each have excellent take-downs of Bahukutumbi Raman’s blame-Obama argument at Forbes.

Finally, Robert Kagan and his neocon buddies may think they know a lot about nuclear and international strategic issues, but Cheryl Rofer actually does.

Kathy Kattenburg

PAST CONTRIBUTOR.