North Korea has done three days of advanced missiles testing, and it is once again in the midst of a controversy over its big nuclear push. The two go together, of course. One without the other would be almost, but not quite pointless. Bahukutmbi Raman, a former member of the Indian security services and now director of a policy think tank, has written an explanatory essay in Forbes.com on how Pyongyang got to be where it is. After all, the country is possibly the most impoverished in the northern hemisphere and doesn't feed its people any better than the most desolate ones in the southern hemisphere. Yet it parades a nifty looking and goose-stepping army, rifles and rocketry aimed south and its far-reaching trajectiles (soon with atomic materials on them) anywhere it pleases.
The key to Kim Jong Il nuclear play pen was provided, according to the savvy Raman, by Pakistan and Iran, which adds to the terrors we need to calculate about both.