North Korean nukes

This is thoroughly unsurprising:

North Korea said on Tuesday it plans to build light-water atomic reactors and develop two other reactors that can produce large amounts of fissile material to boost its nuclear deterrent.

The official KCNA news agency blamed the U.S. administration of President George W. Bush for the decision, made during a hold up in six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

This is further evidence that attempting to solve the nuclear standoff through diplomacy is an exercise in utter futility, short of giving North Korea everything it wants. I could go on about this at length but I'll save myself some time and just direct you to this column by Nick Eberstadt.

As far as I'm concerned we should let the North Koreans do whatever they want with the nukes. Seriously. Let them build reactors to their hearts content. I would simply inform Kim Jong Il that if he ever used those nukes, or if we ever caught them being smuggled outside the country to terrorists, that he would be effectively signing his own death warrant and that hostilities against his country would commence immediately. Contrary to popular belief, Kim is not crazy. He is a perfectly rational actor. Given the choice between the destruction of his regime and his quite comfortable current lifestyle I think he'd go for the latter.

The second thing I would do is make North Korea's human rights abuses a paramount issue in policy towards the country. I would ask why the Dear Leader was spending money on nukes while his people starved. Why he could afford expensive French wines while his people could barely afford life's necessities. I would publish photos of the concentration camps that exist in the country and attempt to raise the issue's consciousness. I think that while most people would agree that KJI is a bad guy that few realize the extent of just what a creep he is.

We've got the moral highground, not him, and we need to make use of that fact.