Waco goes nuclear

You couldn't have failed to have come across the news that the country with the dead guy as president has acquired nuclear weapons.

The extent of this development is unclear and the future unpredictable - except what people will say about it.

A couple we have in already show the now familiar tendency for some to interpret events of this nature in almost complete insularity. For them the significance of a nuclear North Korea lies not in the intrinsic nature of this reality but only in terms of how Bush and Blair will respond.

For the comrades of the Socialist Worker, for example, the primary danger lies in the possibility that the United States would use it as a rationale for attacking Iran.

To complete the sinister tale of sabre-rattling and planned attacks, the Socialist Worker informs us darkly that:

"The US is now pushing for the United Nations to impose sanctions against North Korea."

That Russia, Japan and China have too appears to have escaped their attention. Thing is, they may well be right to argue that sanctions would be ineffectual, punishing the people rather than the regime - but what would they suggest as an alternative?

I think the plan might be something along the lines of more demonstrations since for them this problem only exists as a function of the "US's war drive".

This and highlighting hypocrisy. That'll work. CND have come to the same helpful conclusion:

"Kate Hudson, Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said, "North Korea has the mistaken idea that having nuclear weapons will increase its security. This is wrong - nuclear weapons do not make a country safer. Unfortunately this is also a view taken by many of our own political leaders, hence their desire to replace Trident, but it is as wrong for Britain as it is for North Korea"."

By acknowledging we are wrong, everything will be all right. Nice idea but not very practical, is it?

North Korea's nuclear ambitions would have never existed had it not been for Western imperialism? One would have thought the extent to which one could blame the US for the character of this crazed Stalinist outpost would be rather more limited than usual, to say no more than that.

But anyway, that's besides the point because nuclear ambitions it has, and has clearly come closer to achieving this. A situation I doubt will be made any less dangerous by adopting the most impeccably 'anti-imperialist' version of its origins.