North Korea is a miserable relic of Stalinist dictatorship, a closed kingdom of starving citizens where military spending runs at about one quarter of gross domestic product, but its leaders have always been good at one thing: international blackmail.
Again and again, they have played on the paranoia of the international community about nuclear proliferation, pressing ahead with uranium enrichment, firing long-range missiles across the Sea of Japan in the guise of satellite launches, and now – for the second time – actually exploding a nuclear device.
Maybe this time it is partly a question of domestic politics, with the ailing President Kim Jong-il trying to bolster his position with a new bout of sabre-rattling aimed at the new US administration of President Barack Obama, not to mention the nervous governments in Japan and South Korea. But the tactics are similar to those adopted in the past – demonstrating his readiness to behave in such an outrageous manner that he exposes the inability of the great powers, and the United Nations, to restrain him.