Nuclear Chicken - the end of the road

How much longer it will take before someone pushes the button - few people know.

But, according to Jim Lobe, neocons are using North Korea's latest defiance as an excuse to come out with guns a blazin' -

Encouraging Japan to build nuclear weapons, shipping food aid via submarines and running secret sabotage operations inside North Korea's borders are among a raft of policy prescriptions pushed by prominent US neo-conservatives in the wake of Pyongyang's reported testing of an atomic bomb.

Writing in publications ranging from National Review Online (NRO) to the New York Times, neo-conservatives claim . . . that Monday's supposed test vindicates their long-held view that negotiations with "rogue" states such as North Korea are useless and that "regime change" - by military means, if necessary - is the only answer.

"With our intelligence on North Korea so uneven, the doctrine of preemption must return to the fore," wrote Dan Blumenthal, an Asia specialist at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) who worked for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during President Bush's first term, in the NRO on Tuesday. "Any talk of renewed six-party talks [involving China, Japan, Russia, the US and the two Koreas] must be resisted."

The North Korean test "has stripped any plausibility to arguments that engaging dictators works", according to Michael Rubin, [also] a Middle East specialist at AEI, who added that the Bush administration now faced a "watershed" in its relations with other states that have defied Washington in recent years.

"This crisis is not just about North Korea, but about Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba as well," said Rubin. "Bush now has two choices: to respond forcefully and show that defiance has consequence, or affirm that defiance pays and that international will is illusionary."

Bush "must now choose whether his legacy will be one of inaction or leadership, Chamberlain or Churchill" [.

This echoes the line of reasoning published in Haaretz yesterday:

Kim Jong-Il ignored all warnings and pressure from the U.S. government, and pushed the button. The "international community" was exposed in all its weakness and ineffectiveness. This could convince Iranian rulers Ali Khamenei and Mahmud Ahmadinejad that they better hurry to THE POINT of NO RETURN, because those who hold the bomb are immune and can no longer be threatened militarily.

But, in warning of some future 'point of no return' the author ignores the fact that the US and Israel are already at that point - that's what the game of chicken is all about.

This is the end of the road. Full-spectrum dominance knows no compromise.

If the US and/or Israel don't use overwhelming force to crush all opposition, there's no turning back - they are no longer invincible, and by implication no longer immune.