Kim Jong Un: I'm glad you're still with us

North Korea fires two 'ballistic missiles' into Sea of Japan/East ...

As I noted yesterday, one of many matters that worry me when I put on my "geopolitical strategist" cap is that the passing of Kim will leave a power vacuum that the Kim family itself can not fill, and that there will be a grab for power by some of the officers in North Korea's military. A junta seeking to secure its power could well do desperate things, like (say for example) lob a nuclear missile in the direction of Seoul, or Tokyo, or (depending on how confident they are in their technology) Honolulu.

By the way: that geopol strategists' cap? It is metaphorical, but if it were real it would probably look a lot like a traditional dunce's cap. I have no knowledge in these matters. But, on the specific questions that bother me, neither it seems does anyone else.

Imagine this simple scenario. Junta fires missile in the direction of Hawaii. The missile, it transpires, is poorly made and falls harmlessly into the Pacific without detonating. Rather optimistic a notion that: but let's go with it. Latenight television is full of jokes about North Korea incompetence: can't even handle 1940s tech. Doesn't take a country of rocket scientists....

But two things immediately follow if this happens. First, it will show the world that the US "Star Wars" system has always been a big bluff. (I'm assuming it is in fact a bluff but that some decision makers somewhere on the globe are as yet unsure on that point.) The uncertainties are removed. There has now been a real-world experiment in which such a system would have been applied if it had existed: it was not applied. No laser zapped the missile in its path. Thus (all would conclude) the system does not exist.

More important: the child in the Oval Office will feel a need for massive retaliation. In his own "fire and fury." I don't want to imagine any further -- the follow-ups cannot possibly be non-disastrous.

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