North Korea Launches a Dud

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


As the headlines are all telling us today, North Korea test-fired a bunch of missiles this morning. And the country’s much-rumored and much-hyped long-range missile was, as far as we know, a dud, plopping into the Sea of Japan with barely a whimper. The rest were short-range missiles that have been tested before and pose no threat to the United States. So Kim Jong-Il isn’t the all-powerful adversary with the ability to incinerate Los Angeles and Seattle after all.

A few points to note. Obviously North Korea’s done a bad thing here, and no one should be happy about anyone firing missiles anywhere anywhere, but all things considered, this seems to augur well. North Korea has now fumbled away one of its few bargaining chips. And the United States can no longer overinflate the threat of North Korea and still be taken seriously. So perhaps this means the two sides can now go back to the negotiating table and try to work out their differences like grown-ups.

The botched test also lays bare the foolishness of various suggestions a few weeks back that we should launch a “pre-emptive” strike against North Korea, which was always a ridiculous proposition. (As Jim Henley put it, William Perry and Ashton Carter were basically envisioning a country “so crazy it might nuke the United States without provocation but so sane it won’t retaliate with provocation “) And finally, Philip Coyle of the Center for Defense Information notes the fact that the U.S. military is, at present, apparently unable to tell whether North Korea fired six or ten missiles or what. That hardly bodes well for missile defense advocates, no? Hard to stop incoming rockets if you can’t even figure out how many have been launched…

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate