North Korea: The Rogue Nuclear State

For the past fortnight, the Democratic Republic of North Korea has been threatening nearby nation states with frequent missile tests, even sending missiles which, while deposited directly into the sea, fly directly over Japanese territory and prompting the government to warn it’s citizens to shelter indoors. Further shows of military force were conducted in response to the US sending the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan back to Korean waters, the last in a pattern of demonstrations of aggression and military blackmail from one of the world’s most absolutist states.

Following the Korean War, while it’s counterpart in the South evolved into a “genuine democracy” North Korea’s leadership has relied heavily on missile launches as a form of military blackmail, coercing countries into seeking the price of stopping said military programs as a less than amicable form of foreign aid. Having developed into a “caricature of a Stalinist state, arguably the most absolutist police state in the world today”, possessing an economy irreparably incapable of competing in global markets and consistently on the verge of mass starvation, the DPRK continues to tredge on due to three factors: it’s ruthless security forces, it’s population’s strictly enforced isolation from the rest of the world, and it’s status as a “rogue nuclear state”.

Source: The Heritage Foundation

North Korea has utilised it’s “nuclear weapons a means with which to intimidate their neighbours and discourage outside intervention” in the past decades to the extent that countries like the US and South Korea have agreed previously to supply technology and natural resources to the DPRK in exchange for even a suspension (not abandonment) of their nuclear programs. The true political manifestation of a 'ticking time bomb', it seems the most effective strategy to counter this nuclear coercion at the moment is to cross our fingers and hope that, unlike those manufactured by America and South Korea, DPRK missiles do not spontaneously explode mid-flight.

(Sources: Does America Need a Foreign Policy? by Henry Kissinger)