When the news junkies were busily familiarizing themselves with the unfolding Talibanization of Pakistan, North Korea has suddenly resurfaced from obscurity with a big bang, says RT military analyst Eugene Khrushchev.
Adding insult to injury, Pyongyang defiantly poked Washington in the eye with its ill-conceived nuclear missile teaser – exactly on Memorial Day occasion.
Final fallout
• For the UN, it’s a déjà vu reminder that resolutions, however tough or conciliatory, are definitely not a substitute for crisis’ solutions, especially for recalcitrant regimes.
• For the US, it’s a wakeup call that its unilateral puissance is morphing into rhetorical impotence, unable to foresee & forestall the looming challenges on the global stage with a stale second-hand plate of sticks & carrots.
• For NATO/EU/OSCE, it’s yet another embarrassing piece of evidence of their blatant irrelevance in crisis management all over the world. They love to ‘observe’ trouble-making, playing games in Georgia & Kosovo, but they abhor doing the troubleshooting where it really matters: Darfur, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, or, God forbid, Pakistan and North Korea.
The silver lining
It could have been Pakistan, but it’s North Korea that can facilitate the review of friend-or-foe formulae in international relations, on which I had already blogged before.
If the new US Administration has the wisdom & guts to steer clear from Brzezinski pathological anti-Russian heritage, it might as well participate in creating the genuine Quartet Coalition of the Willing: Russia & America and China & India.
Thanks to Pyongyang, these days anything is possible – sooner rather than later.