The Problem In N. Korea: Kim Jong Il Doesn't Care

In the space of a week, North Korea has launched a second nuclear missile, continued to fire smaller rockets, and this morning announced that they would no longer abide by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. The international community is engaged now, if they weren't before. North Korea, in response, has openly threatened South Korea.

Diplomacy is not going to work. The problem in North Korea is that Kim Jong Il doesn't care what anyone thinks. He is an autocrat isolationist, and likely suffers from delusions of grandeur bordering on personality dysphasia. When you reach the point in your political career where you have people arrested for speaking anything but praise for you, and daily conduct parades and festivals in your own honor, you have checked out of reality. Kim Jong Il believes himself to be divinely invested with power, and without flaw. And he knows he's been backed into a corner, which is why he is spitting bombs. He will push the envelope until open conflict is inevitable.

Here, President Obama, here's that test Joe Biden predicted.