Opinion Missile terror By Douglas Lummis	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
核ミサイルという恐怖 核使用経験のある超大国アメリカと対峙している北朝鮮。 アメリカは、自分が認めない相手には先制攻撃も辞さない･･･。 ミサイル発射は遺憾だが、北朝鮮なりの「核抑止力」なのか？

Nuclear missiles are too terrifying even to think about. If you want to get on with your life, it's best to try not to think about them. That's what most of us do, most of the time. I live in Okinawa, one of the world's most likely missile targets. Surely Okinawa is one of the places that China's nuclear missiles are programmed to hit. And if North Korea develops a missile that can get this far, Okinawa will be one of its prime targets.

We can be sure the North Koreans know this terror. They have had nuclear weapons aimed down their throat for half a century. The missiles and bombs in the U.S. bases in South Korea, and on the ships and submarines of the 7th Fleet, all have "North Korea" written on them, as it were. You know Japan is "under the U.S. nuclear umbrella," but have you ever thought what that means? It means that every day Japan and the United States are threatening North Korea with nuclear attack.

"Threatening attack" may be too strong an expression, at least for the period when the United States was following the policy of "containment." Containment meant that the United States would not make a first-strike attack against its enemies (which is prohibited by international law), but would respond forcibly if the other side attacked. Under that policy, the North Korean regime could be reasonably (though not entirely) sure that it would not be attacked so long as it did nothing aggressive itself.

But all this changed when the Bush administration abandoned the containment policy (the basic U.S. policy from Truman to Clinton), and announced that the United States had the right to carry out preemptive attacks against its enemies. (Incidentally, the United States has never suggested that any other government has this right.) And this was not just threatening talk; the United States actually did carry out preemptive attacks against two countries whose governments it disapproved of. The president explained that the United States was carrying out a war against the Axis of Evil: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Iraq was invaded and occupied. Iran is being threatened with attack right now. What shall we suppose the North Koreans are thinking?

This is no paranoid fantasy.Tiny North Korea is under real danger of attack by the world's only superpower — the only country that has actually used nuclear weapons in war. If you were advising North Korea, what would you suggest they do? Should they surrender, throw themselves at the feet of the conqueror, beg forgiveness, and promise to install a nice, obedient puppet government? Perhaps they should, I don't know. But they made a different, more "common sense" choice. They announced they had nuclear weapons, and missiles capable of delivering them. And they even fired some of the missiles, so they might be believed. I don't like this behavior, but it's not difficult to understand. In diplomatic language it's called "nuclear deterrence." It's the same policy that Japan uses when it puts itself inside the U.S. "nuclear umbrella." And there are signs that, in its ugly way, it might even be working.

(524 words)