After an extremely active week of North Korean saber-rattling and nuclear brinksmanship, intelligence gathering has picked up information that a launch of a Taepodong-2 missile may take place within the next few weeks.  The Taepodong-2 is the same type of missile that was launched on April 5, 2009 and was the most notable event in the increasingly hostile rhetoric of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.  According to The Telegraph of London:

An unnamed South Korean government official told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper that North Korea will probably launch another long-range missile from the site as early as mid-June, in its latest act of aggression. US satellite photos have also picked up increased activity at the base, and the North Korean military has reduced its communication to essential messages only in order to foil eavesdroppers.

The base that has aroused interest is the same as the one used to conduct the April 5th test.

The fact that a launch would come so soon after the North Korean underground nuclear weapons test and a handful of short-range missile launches, offers reasons to speculate that North Korea may be posturing while a team of high-level US officials – including Defense Secretary Robert Gates – makes a tour of Asian capitals this week.

There are signs that, despite having made only a series of condemnatory statements with regard to North Korean acts of aggression, American officials are beginning to polish up their use of hard diplomacy lingo.  From Monday’s Irish Times:

THE US and its Asian allies could look at tougher responses should diplomacy fail to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme, officials at a security conference said at the weekend.

US defence secretary Robert Gates told his counterparts from South Korea and Japan that while diplomacy was preferred, other steps may be considered.

Gates has also explicitly rejected the idea that the US can continue to pursue a containment policy and must consider preemptive action to reduce the North Korean threat.  While speaking to at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore this Monday, Gates’ own words began to take the shape of a warning to the renegade Korean state.  From The Australian:

“We will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to reap destruction on any target in the region or on us,” Dr Gates said…

However, without knowing what the endgame is for Kim Jong Il, predicting his reactions to American stick-shaking might prove easier said than done.  He may be emboldened by America’s reluctance to clash with China, and ever-crumbling conditions within his desperately poor nation, to take a bolder step and possibly cross a line that should give the eggheads at the State Department and the Pentagon nightmares. 

Would a nuclear-armed North Korea, with China passively protecting its flank, be challenged by the United States should it launch a live missile?  The cost to benefit analysis of such a move may be closing in on a breakeven point, but it is also equally possible that North Korea is breaking in a new American president, teaching them the language of North Korean-US relations in the same way they did the Clinton and Bush administrations.  President Obama should be forewarned that the net result of those engagements has been for North Korean to continue its behavior as a rogue state, offer no measure of reform to its enslaved population, and siphon billions in cash from the West that has almost assuredly gone into its military coffers, particularly in its nuclear weapons program. 

Lie to me once…

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