Maybe a Little Friendly Punching Will Move Your Tail

Some time after Sept. 11th, a friend read and recommended to me Chalmers Johnson's book Blowback: the Costs and Consequences of American Empire. One of the things that stuck with me was how part of U.S. political & military strategy was to bring on the crazy in some cases, to encourage the belief at times that the national leadership could and would behave so irrationally and unpredictably that the opposition would back down for fear of US overreaction.

Well, this example gave me to think about North Korea at the moment. It seems pretty obvious that Captain Crazy is making use of our military committments in Iraq and Afghanistan (with special attention to the success thereof). Not even Commander CuckooBananas would have been able to fight his entire Axis of Evil™ with the military that we've got, unless he dipped into our strategic military assets.

So that's what makes me wonder: we have two governments – one of which is definitely off its meds, and the other which has a history of acting like it is in order to get what it wants AND which has put itself into the situation of having used up much of its military resources at the cost of a fair amount of its street cred – working themselves up to a game of chicken. Yes, Kennedy pulled off the Cuban Missile Crisis, but (as that article I linked to suggests) the Kremlin probably wasn't as crazy as North Korea seems to be. On the other hand, Obama doesn't seem as crazy as Nixon, but the Republican'ts are crazier, and for some reason Obama seems to pay attention to them.

I suppose odds are that the situation will be resolved non-violently, but, damn, with all that rhetoric about 'rogue nations' and the behavioral parallels, it worries me that it's even a possibility.