[bayouborne]

Because Russia and China's occasional hyperbolic rhetoric notwithstanding, one gets the sense that behind the posturing, the people with their hands on the nuclear machinery are cold-eyed professionals. North Korea doesn't appear to have a layered command structure - it just has a succession of paranoid, isolated, all-powerful individuals, and almost directly underneath them, terrified administrators who feel that if they put a foot wrong they'll be disappeared. On the nuclear stage that's a terrifying dynamic. The US plays games, same for Russia and China - in a sense they're all veterans and they've been opponents on the same pitch for forever. Pakistan and India are going to be involved in their own private drama (from a global perspective) for the foreseeable future. I agree that Israel/Iran has disturbing potential, but North Korea? They're the damaged kid who had a .22 two decades ago, then got a 9mm, and now is about to take delivery of a Kalashnikov - that's why it's different.