Monday, October 09, 2006

North Korea's Nuke Test: "Das Kapital" or The Capitol?

This is the great dilemma for the world now. And now is the moment... we all realise, but... of Epiphany or Apocalypse... is the confusion!

North Korea has timed it to perfection. A classic espionage fiction clincher of a climax it was - their Nuke Test. When the world is too busy concerning itself with the appointment of Ban Ki-Moon, the South Korean for the UN Secy General post, the charge comes.

I am fresh out of an analytical reading of "Brandenburg" by Henry Porter and I am convinced I have perhaps read one of the landmark fictions of all time. It rekindled in me the sights and experiences of the building and atmosphere in Leipzig, Magdeburg, Halle and other erstwhile GDR towns and of my hearsay of their past. I have often heard the old men of the good old commie faith in GDR's socialist system quatsch over their sausages and bier around the hangout kiosks about how the young have become lazy etc etc; I have sometimes wondered when I saw those apparatchik looking women if they were the Büro workers of the past Germany was desperately trying to bury just as they still are trying to dissociate themselves with anything that happened between 1927 and 1945. And the book also showed me a broader spectrum of what it must have been in a socialist state. How many malnourished... how many skeletal lives... how much depression resulting from suppression... well, my manys and muches haven't ceased to exist and they make quite a beeline in the roster! But the point is not that.

Couple with this my media-followings and readings in newspapers and magazines of the new Latin American Left combine, I read a lot more into the fallouts of this Nuke thingie. Let's take a quick check of what has happened and what was observed, shown, commented upon by media and leaders from The Capitol to our own Pranabji and one Mr. Hamid Gul. What does this mean and what does this portend?

First of all, I am all in awe and appreciation of the gumption, the guts and perseverance of North Korea even if I may not be a supporter of a world full of Nuclear Warheads (does not matter who holds them). It just goes out to show if you can have it, so can I. It also points, if you don't use it, I won't. More than that, this has come as a timely shot in arm for Iran's own nuclear ambitions. It has also probably emboldened the stance taken by states (such as Venezuela, Chile, Cuba... ) with legitimate anti-American feelings.
And poor China is only caught in the middle. They can't overnight step out of North Korean relationship, they can't fully tow the UNSC and Big 5's "anti-NKorea, impose sanction outright" line of argument. As for Pakistan, well, Mush in now between Bush and the Fire because somewhere at the substrata level Pak has been supporting NKorean enrichment programs and suddenly they have to wake up to the reality that it wasn't a case of patronising a malnourished commie state to feel "we can also be benefactors", but it is a case of their own Angel and Venture Capitalist US casting an apprehensive eye. Especially when all the western world are clearly and categorically saying "India cannot be compared with North Korea" and "India's case is different". Well, it is turning out to be quite a fun ride.
Hope NK doesn't suddenly retract and apologise and tank up. Else this happenstance would merely appear a serendipitous freak of an errant anamoly. And smaller meeker but righteous nations would have to continue to seek morsels of pitiful dole from the self-righteous US.