Another silver lining?

We could do a whole musical. We could call it, “The Sound of Armageddon”. Can’t you just imagine a couple of Generals singing to the tune of “What are we going to do about Maria?” “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-Il could sing, “The hills are afire, with the sound of A-Bombs!”

Anyway …

The Security Council, very significantly including China and Russia, voted to impose even more punishing sanctions against North Korea and they responded by coming completely out of the closet and admitting openly that, yes, not only did they have an active weapons program, but they had weaponized about a third of their reactor plutonium already and they were going for the rest. And then they set off another bomb in a cave somewhere to prove it.

To celebrate, Dear Leader Kim sang, “Payloads on missles and bright orange fireballs. These are a few of my favorite things!”

A few months ago, I wrote about how the scourge of pirates in the Indian Ocean “might” be enough to make the rest of the world realize that we all have to give up on this idea that individual nations are “sovereign” and each one can do whatever they like. The Earth – as in “all of us” – is on the brink of total destruction. And not just because Dear Leader Kim is going to start World War III. There are simply too many ways that total destruction could happen – in our lifetimes – to count right now.

That didn’t work out. Frequent contributor “RP” said they would never do it and he was right. <… sigh! …> It seems that the “sovereign” nations of Earth would rather put up with having their ships hijacked than take over one “sovereign” fourth-rate pus-pocket on the coast of Africa.

But the Security Council … which is as close to a “World Executive” as we have right now … has agreed to some precedent setting measures to do something about North Korea. China and Russia, who both share a border with them, have agreed to stopping and searching their ships at sea. Traditionally, an “embargo” is considered to be a legal “act of war”. This isn’t exactly an embargo, but it’s close. If China and Russia also prevent the North Koreans from shipping their contraband, then North Korea will well and truly be “in a box”. At a minimum, they just might be made to realize that global blackmail won’t work this time. (The price to the West is that North Korea may become as much a part of China as Tibet is now. Nothing is free and the Chinese play for keeps.)

The silver lining is that this is a serious admission that individual “sovereign” nations really are accountable to the world as a whole at some point.

Now, when is the US going to join the International Criminal Court so they can prosecute Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for war crimes?