Yesterday’s headline in The Daily Telegraph – “North Korea ‘preparing to launch missile towards Hawaii’” - reinvigorated fears many have had about the Obama administration’s rush to abandon the path of progress defense contractors have been on in establishing a capable defense against missile attack. The U.S. press picked up the ball on the story adding information about America’s preemptive response, the decision to have the military move missile defense assets into the region. Not exactly a deterrent to what was designed from the start by Kim Il Jong and Co. to expend a missile, but certainly better than the “speak softly and speak softly” diplomatic method-acting that has characterized the White House-led lacklash to North Korea’s crescendo of aggression.

From Friday’s Wall Street Journal online edition:

The U.S. is moving ground-to-air missile defenses to Hawaii as tensions escalate between Washington and Pyongyang over North Korea’s recent moves to restart its nuclear-weapon program and resume test-firing long-range missiles.

…

Mr. Gates told reporters that the U.S. is positioning a sophisticated floating radar array in the ocean around Hawaii to track an incoming missile. The U.S. is also deploying missile-defense weapons to Hawaii that would theoretically be capable of shooting down a North Korean missile, should such an order be given, he said.

When President Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates, announced the Pentagon budget in May, the drastic reductions in the military’s spending on missile defense was one of the items that leapt immediately to my attention. Without considering irritants in the global solution on restricting proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (North Korea, Iran), or nations that appear to be interesting in building missile-ready infrastructure and building “swinging door” nuclear energy programs (Venezuela and Cuba), the world still contains several nations in possession of superpower-sized nuclear arsenals. The end of the Cold War, and a period of relative calm in relations between the U.S. and the governments of Russia and China, should not be misinterpreted to give comfort that we live in a world without enemies capable of inflicting Armageddon should a cascading sequence of events lead to such catastrophic circumstances.

Of course this will get President Obama’s attention, with it being his home state and all, but will U.S. interests be put front and center in a way that this administration, and those preceding it, have failed to do? North Korea is following its well-worn track of nuclear brinksmanship as they have in the past, always in an effort to extract funds, or negotiate exceptions to sanctions, in exchange for promises to halt their nuclear program. The result has been predictable. Concessions from the U.S. and its allies are used to expand the North Korean nuclear program, thereby giving the North Koreans an ever-increasing advantage in the future negotiations, which will ensue at whatever point in time coincides with the next big weapons advancement. Furthermore, sanctions may have had the reverse effect in the North Korean case, creating a monetary incentive for them to attempt to find markets for their technology to bring in much-needed cash.

The North Korean strategy of nuclear blackmail and making disingenuous agreements may have an endgame. Now that North Korean nuclear weapons technology has achieved very limited capabilities in both its launch platforms and the bombs themselves, the game of cat and mouse may not have to end as swiftly for the North Koreans; both the potential for surprises and the fallout from appeasement have raised the stakes exponentially. Which launch will they use to test the complete launch-to-detonation cycle of one of a weapon? Even if a settlement is reached in this international crisis, there is no way to guarantee that a nation willing to subject its citizens to unbelievable poverty under the sanctions that remain the only tool of enforcement short of a military response.

This time around, because American national security experts must err on the side of assuming that North Korea may have the capability to put the jelly in the doughnut, so to speak, and arm their missile with a warhead. Though this is unlikely at this time – their technology appears to be years away from accomplishing that feat – if we continue along this zig-zag course of false progress, the day will eventually come when nuclear bombardment from North Korea will be a reality affecting all Pacific Rim nations.

Final thought: My understanding is that the knock on North Korea’s missiles is that they have very unreliable guidance systems. Even if they’re intending to fire a shot over the bow of the last remaining free-world superpower (which is they really plan to conduct the test), who says they’re going to hit what they’re aiming at? My guess is that things are going to be very tense in the 50^th state for the next couple of weeks.

Final, final thought: Isn’t it wonderful that the United States couldn’t even consider a military response at this time? Even if we were able to secure a miracle détente agreement with China and Russia to permit policing action against a rogue state, we would not be able to finance such a venture. After decades of runaway government spending, combined with the unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility of the Obama administration (and he’s not done yet, folks), we are now one step away from becoming paupers unable to even pay the cost of our own security.

Update:

A very detailed rundown on the hardware being moved into place can be found here on Wired’s Danger Room blog.  The post sheds a little doubt on whether the technology can be render Hawaii 100 percent missile-resistant.

Joint Chiefs vice chairman General James Cartwright said he was “90-plus percent” sure the U.S. could intercept a Nork missile, in the unlikely event it overflew U.S. territory.

Aloha.

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