Arlos wrote:Oh, and the UN could never demand that the US give up it's nukes, because the US (along with France, England, Russia and China) has veto power in the security council.
I understand that, and you could be damn sure if France, England, Russia and China demanded it, we most certainly wouldn't go along. The point I was trying to make is the NK does not have that power in the UN so their only real choice is to simply ignore the UN and do what they feel they need to.
I do think that flying the rocket over Japan was certainly done intentionally in part to see what action it provoked from Japan, the US and the UN in general. Any action to intercept the rocket could have been seen as a provocation of war by NK. We have good enough surveillance to know that this was not a nuke and that it did not pose a direct threat to anyone that couldn't be removed in short order. Had we simply intercepted it, and NK choose to view this as a provocation of war, who knows where China would have sat. I am not blind to the fact that NK is far from an innocent and I do have concerns in regard to their actions, however at the same time, they are a nation in this world and should be allowed to decide for themselves how they are going to act. No superpower should be telling them what they can and can not learn and produce especially when said superpower has already done it.