North Korea's Lesson - Nukes for Sale - NYTimes.com - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...eas-lesson-nukes-for-sale.html
north korea lesson nukes sale nytimes US politics history crisis obama
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HE most dangerous message North Korea sent Tuesday with its third nuclear weapon test is: nukes are for sale.
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Testing a uranium-based bomb would announce to the world — including potential buyers — that North Korea is now operating a new, undiscovered production line for weapons-usable material.
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North Korea’s latest provocation should also remind us of the limits of Western policies, led by the United States, that focus on “isolating” the hermit kingdom.
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Hence the grim conclusion that North Korea now has a new cash crop — one that is easier to market than plutonium. Highly enriched uranium is harder to detect and therefore easier to export
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American policy makers’ attention has been consumed by Iran’s attempt to build its first nuclear weapon. During those years, American officials believe, North Korea has acquired enough plutonium to make an arsenal of 6 to 10 nuclear bombs,
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American experts therefore believe that Pyongyang must have another still-undiscovered parallel plant that has been operating for several years. That plant by now could have produced several bombs’ worth of highly enriched uranium.
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history shows that the North Koreans will “sell anything they have to anybody who has the cash to buy it.” In intelligence circles, North Korea is known as “Missiles ‘R’ Us,” having sold and delivered missiles to Iran, Syria and Pakistan, among others.
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With what consequences for North Korea? Pyongyang got paid; Syria got bombed; and the United States was soon back at the negotiating table in the six-party talks.
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Given America’s failure to hold Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, accountable when he sold Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, the technology from which to make a bomb, could the younger Mr. Kim imagine that he could get away with selling a nuclear weapon or bomb-making material?