The Future, It is Murder

Everything's e-wired, too quick, and totally interconnected. Entire nations can fly off the handle in a heartbeat.

Every people wants to return to some glorious past when its ancestors ruled more than could be physically held, and so lost territory to the ancestors of some neighboring folk who in turn lost territory to some other neighboring folk, who in its turn lost territory to some other neighboring folk, ad infinitum, each of whom still carries a grievance and a wedge to break a state apart for reassembly as a micro-state or a macro-empire.

Look at us. We all want back something lost in the past. Some of us want big things.

Russia wants its great empire back. China wants its own, also, which will dominate Russia's, hope the Chinese. The Turks long for a revived Ottoman empire. And does anyone have claim to the Holy Roman Empire? Or the British Empire?

Every which way we look, we see catastrophe rushing to meet us. We see the future. It is murder.

Another Stanza from Lindh

Not THE Jarhead

From looking more carefully at Lindh's ballad, I concede that there's a poem lurking in there, but it needs a more careful hand. For example, look at the stanza below:

A blistered bloated jarhead face
Deep purple findernails [sic]
A smell seeps out that's foul enough
To cleanse a man's entrails

The imagery is descriptive and strong - the third and fourth lines are very effective - but the writer needs to put more care into spelling and punctuation. Let's improve the stanza:

A blistered, bloated jarhead face,
Deep purple fingernails,
A smell seeps out that's foul enough
To cleanse a man's entrails.

Cleansing one entrails through vomiting makes for an effective image.

Although I could help Lindh rework his entire 'poem,' I'll stop here. I wouldn't help him for any money, no matter how much.

Rhyme, Reason, Rhythm, and Rectitude

Benjamin Franklin

Riven, but Unafraid

At a time when the two words likely rhymed better,

Benjamin Franklin said:

"Wars bring scars."

But I say:

"Wares bring scares."

And these two words yet rhyme!

Release One's Winning Ways

Defeat and Victory

"You winsome, you loose some."

De-Radicaliztion Works!

Hitler's Change of Heart

Hat Tip, Carter Kaplan

Yeah, that Hitler dude. Good thing he got de-radicalized in prison. Uh . . . what ever happened with that guy, anyway? Was he ever heard from again? We could maybe borrow the de-radicalization techniques used on Hitler and apply them to Islamist jihadis returning to Europe from the now defunct Islamic State.

Have Gun . . . Will Travel With Sword Aboard

Sword

He who lives by the sword dies by the sword, though not very often, more often these days of gunshot wounds.

Don Quixote Wisdom?

Wisdom

Forewarned is forearmed, so why've I got just two forearms when I've been forewarned so many times?

Tacky . . .

A Tack

Google Images

Strange Strategies 101:

A tack is the best form of defense.

Or do I mean "Taught Tactics 101"?

War and Peaceful Domesticity

See What Careless Love Has Done

Google Images

BBC

I'm still very busy with the semester's bustling beginning, so here's another twisted proverb:

Fallen in Love

"All's fair in love and war of the sexes."

The thought occurs to me that the original version of this twisted proverb was even more twisted since there are rules of warfare.

Bad News Good, or Good News Bad?

ISIS Child Soldiers
Vocativ

According to an AFP report posted in the Daily Mail, "Desertions [are] prompting [the] IS to rely on child soldiers" (March 14, 2016):

The Islamic State group is relying more heavily on child soldiers as growing numbers of fighters desert the jihadist organization, the United States said Monday. That may indicate the group's leaders are "struggling with their ability to recruit and retain manpower," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters during a daily briefing . . . . [Apparently], "more and more" defectors are leaving IS's ranks, prompting the group to rely more heavily on child soldiers, the spokesman added. "Originally, they would rely on children for intelligence streams, getting information . . . and then using them to conduct suicide attacks, which they still do," Kirby said. "Now we get more reports about them using children in actual engagements side by side with adult fighters," he added. "All those are good indications they are struggling with their ability to recruit and retain manpower."

The IS would probably argue that by Islamic standards, the 'so-called boys' are men, i.e., that the soldiers in question have already started growing pubic hair. Yes, that's the criterion: pubic hair. And we all know how mature boys are when their pubic hair starts growing. Why, they're mature enough to become soldiers!

We thus have the bad news of child soldiers fighting, which implies the good news of adult soldiers deserting, and we have the good news of adult soldiers deserting, which  entails the bad news of child soldiers fighting.

ISIS turning on itself?

Iraq
Google Images

Hollie McKay reports that "ISIS burns fighters alive for letting Ramadi fall" (FoxNews, January 12, 2016):

ISIS fighters who fled to the terror group's Iraqi stronghold of Mosul after being defeated in Ramadi were burned alive in the town square . . . in an unmistakable message to fighters who may soon be defending the northern city [of Mosul] from government forces . . . . [The ISIS fighters who fled Ramadi] "were grouped together and made to stand in a circle . . . . [a]nd set on fire to die" . . . . With government, Kurdish and coalition forces now mustering to recapture Mosul, which fell to ISIS approximately 18 months ago, an increasingly paranoid ISIS has stepped up its murders of women and children . . . . "They come to the house and take the children and accuse them of being spies . . . . If the mom cries and gets upset at them, they accuse of her being a spy too and take her to the jail and later kill her" . . . . [One terrorism expert explained,] "ISIS is fracturing, paranoid from within, . . . [and] the harsher the tactic the more desperate the leadership is" . . . . [Another expert agreed: As ISIS continues] "to lose territory, we've seen a growing number of defections and a rise in the number of alleged internal spies - many of whom they have killed mercilessly without demonstrating significant evidence of internal espionage."

To hear that ISIS is fracturing, growing paranoid, and turning on its own jihadis comes as great news - though I mourn the deaths of the innocent whom ISIS in its paranoia also slays. When ISIS finally falls completely, and the Islamic State is gone, I hope to see its leaders go on trial as war criminals.

In their crimes, they are legion . . .

"I have seen the future, it is murder"

Smarter Weapons
Long Range Anti-Ship Missile
Designed to Maneuver without Human Control
Photo Credit: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
NYT

Speaking of the Singularity and Deep Learning, let's listen to what John Markoff has to say on "Fearing Bombs That Can Pick Whom to Kill" (NYT, November 11, 2014):

On a bright fall day last year off the coast of Southern California, an Air Force B-1 bomber launched an experimental missile . . . . Initially, pilots aboard the plane directed the missile, but halfway to its destination, it severed communication with its operators. Alone, without human oversight, the missile decided which of three ships to attack . . . . Warfare is increasingly guided by software . . . . [S]ome scientists say, arms makers have crossed into troubling territory: They are developing weapons that rely on artificial intelligence, not human instruction, to decide what to target . . . . As these weapons become smarter and nimbler, critics fear they will become increasingly difficult for humans to control - or to defend against . . . . After launch, so-called autonomous weapons rely on artificial intelligence and sensors to select targets . . . . Britain's "fire and forget" Brimstone missiles, for example, can distinguish among tanks and cars and buses without human assistance, and can hunt targets in a predesignated region without oversight. The Brimstones also communicate with one another, sharing their targets . . . . In recent years, artificial intelligence has begun to supplant human decision-making in a variety of fields, . . . [b]ut technological advances [are occurring] in three particular areas[, namely, in] . . . [n]ew types of radar, laser and infrared sensors[, all of which] are helping missiles and drones better calculate their position and orientation. "Machine vision," resembling that of humans, identifies patterns in images and helps weapons distinguish important targets. This nuanced sensory information can be quickly interpreted by sophisticated artificial intelligence systems, enabling a missile or drone to carry out its own analysis in flight.

Reading of such technological developments, I can almost imagine the reality of the Terminator movies' dystopian vision of a future ruled by military machines!

This is the future . . .

William Kilpatrick on Exempting Islam from Criticism

William Kilpatrick
Crisis Magazine

My friend Bill Vallicella posted on an article by William Kilpatrick about "Islam's Religious Exemption From Criticism" (Crisis Magazine, July 23, 2014), and since the article reflects some of my own thinking, I'm excerpting it here:

[The defense of Islam by non-Muslims] comes in the form of "vouchers" for Islam's good character: assurances by world leaders that Islam is a peaceful religion, assurances by religious leaders that it is a model of interfaith tolerance, and assurances by educators that "jihad" is an interior spiritual struggle . . . . Western critics of Islam often find themselves facing fines or even jail time. In most of Europe, you can safely wave a "Behead Those Who Insult Islam" poster in the face of a policeman, but if you are a non-Muslim and you observe that Islamic law allows for beheadings, you'll be standing before a magistrate the next day on hate crime charges . . . . One of the primary arguments . . . [in defense of] Islam is that it's a stabilizing force in the Middle East and elsewhere. But if that's not the case, should we still want Islam to succeed? If Islam is a destabilizing force, wouldn't the world be better off without it? And since Muslims are the primary victims of Islamic violence, wouldn't they also be better off without it? . . . Islam is looking more and more like a world-threatening ideology, but it is . . . immune to criticism . . . because it is a recognized and long-established religion. To challenge it is to court charges of anti-religious bigotry. In addition, something in our conscience makes us . . . . conditioned to have a favorable view of religion -- especially other people's religion . . . . [T]o contemplate Islam's failure ["somehow doesn't seem right"] . . . . [S]ome critics of Islam contend that it is nothing but a political ideology and ought to be labeled as such. But this rebranding effort is a difficult sell because, by most standard definitions of the term, Islam does qualify as a religion. To most people, moreover, it certainly looks like a religion . . . . [with] centuries-old observances . . . . When people prostrate themselves in prayer five times a day, . . . [a critic can hardly] make the case that what they're doing is nothing more than a power play . . . . [In fact,] Islam is a hybrid: it's both a political ideology and a religion . . . . [T]he religious side provides considerable protection from criticism. Because of its religious nature, it seems improper to engage Islam in . . . ideological warfare . . . . Yet the threat to the West and to the rest of the world is, by all appearances, increasing . . . . Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has proclaimed the creation of a new caliphate state, declared himself caliph, and has called on Muslims worldwide to join him in waging war against infidels . . . . [T]he idea of the caliphate is that there should be only one unified Islam . . . . [T]he caliphate is intended to be a borderless community -- a trans-national and ever-expanding empire of true believers . . . . Islam aspires to be a universal belief system . . . . Islam has the advantage of conducting its proselytizing activities under the banner of religion . . . . [But] Mosques are not just places of worship; they are often centers of political activity and, not infrequently, of jihad activity. As a popular Muslim poem puts it, "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers" . . . . Of course, for a non-Muslim to even hint at the possibility that mosques might serve such purposes is to invite accusations of Islamophobia and bigotry . . . . Which goes to prove the point: Islam's religious status puts it beyond criticism. You can criticize very radical Islamic radicals and very extreme Islamic extremists -- just as long as you add that, of course, their activities have nothing to do with the religion of Islam . . . . [T]he theology/ideology of Islam has some very large weak spots. But our sense of propriety, which is nowadays governed by the rules of political correctness, won't allow us to even talk about them. In effect, the sensitive areas are protected by a large sign that reads "religion -- do not touch."

I've long recognized Islam as both religious and political. That dual nature confuses modern people, who usually expect religion to stay in the private realm as a personal piety that doesn't seek to influence politics. Even in its own founding years -- or should I say especially in its founding years -- Islam was deeply involved in politics, as well as in war -- politics by other means, as Clausewitz observed.

In fact, I would argue that Islam -- in its synthesis of religion, politics, and war within an all-encompassing legal system for the total regulation of society -- is a throwback to one of the earliest forms of organized religion: a theonomic state in which the leader combined the roles of priest and king . . . and, of course, of military general.

War is a Boon?

Ancient Celts Battle Rome

Stanford historian Ian Morris has book on war, and British historian David Crane reviews it for The Spectator, informing us that Morris means "War is good for us" (April 5, 2014), and explaining that in War: What is it Good For? The Role of Conflict in Civilisation, from Primates to Robots, Morris offers the possibly counter-intuitive claim that "in the long run, the very, very long run, 'productive war' has always made the world a safer and richer place for the losers as well as the winners" by creating larger, more peaceful societies.

The problem lies in what is meant by that expression "productive war," for this turn of a phrase suggests there are also "unproductive wars," leaving us to wonder if we should win or lose the long 'war on terror' and other conflicts, except that Morris hopes we win:

In Morris's opinion these next three or four decades are going to be the most dangerous in human history. But if we do happen to survive not just all the known and unknown threats that Islamism, resources, climate change, China or a resurgent Russia might throw up, but also all the 'unknowable unknowns' as well -- if, as he says, we get lucky with our timing and do survive all this, then that very biological predisposition to violence that has made us so good at cooperating, organising, innovating and evolving in the pursuit of better ways of waging war and wielding power will finally put war out of business.

Then human beings (or at least the 'trans-humans' and 'post-human' hybrids that will succeed us in about 2050) will find themselves at the end of the 10,000-year-long trek that has taken our species from Stone Age violence to that mythical Happy Valley of tolerant, inclusive, multi-cultural, crime-free civilisation.

Let's see . . . in 2050, I will be 93. Except I won't be, probably, since I don't expect to live that long, not being one of those "trans" or "post" sorts expected to inherit the earth.

Without reading the book, I can't comment directly, so go and read for yourself Crane's entire review to get a sense of what you may think . . .

Puny David the Giant-Killer?

Gladwell.com

If Malcolm Gladwell is right, then, "Clumsy and heavy, Goliath never stood a chance" against little David, or so reports William Leith in his review of Gladwell's recent book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (The Spectator, 12 October 2013):

When we think of David and Goliath, we think of a young man, not very big, who has a fight with a terrifying opponent, and wins. We think of David as puny and Goliath as towering and strong -- not to mention heavily armed. We see David's victory as something that happened against all odds. The story of David and Goliath is, as Malcolm Gladwell puts it, 'a metaphor for improbable victory'. Well, that's how we think about it, anyway. But the thing is, apparently, we've got it all wrong . . . . We know David came out on top. That's because, in single combat, a guy with a deadly projectile weapon is likely to beat a guy who is weighed down with armour. Goliath wasn't very mobile. He wore a heavy helmet and shin pads made of bronze. David, on the other hand, was a 'slinger'. Gladwell tells us about slingers in antiquity. They used a contraption made from leather strings and a leather pouch, which they whizzed around their heads, and then let go. Pow! They could fire stones through the air at something approaching 100 mph. Slingers could knock birds out of the sky and 'hit a coin from as far away as they could see it'.

All these fifty years since I first read the story at about six, I've misread that duel between the adult giant Goliath and the undersized teen David as a tale of the underdog, David, overcoming great odds through faith in God, but Gladwell shows that the odds were stacked against the giant and that David's confidence stemmed from his knowledge of those odds in his own favor. And no matter how much Goliath may have practiced his swordsmanship -- even as much as 10,000 hours -- he couldn't have used a sword to defeat a slinger.

The moral of the tale? Little David was small, but, oh my, did he ever put the odds in his favor. Put the odds in your favor as well, but a sling takes a lot of practice to master, so carry a pistol!

Professor Anna Simons on Future (Civilizational) Conflicts

Anna Simons
Foreign Policy Research Institute

Professor Anna Simons, of the Naval Postgraduate School, has written an open-eyed, non-politically correct paper on the coming conflicts between the US and its enemies, "21st Century Cultures of War: Advantage Them" (Foreign Policy Research Institute, E-Books, The Philadelphia Papers, April 2013), and I quote from the "Introduction":

It seems a foregone conclusion that we will continue to excel technologically. No one is likely to surpass us in the realms of technological inventiveness or organizational innovation so long as we continue to apply the scientific method to problem solving. However, in the realm of what humans can do with and to other humans we are being outstripped. Morally, we shouldn't want to compete in thisterrain, but the problem is we will be competed against. Already, there are some developments -- like suicide terrorism and "green on blue" violence -- for which we are unlikely to develop sufficient counters. The implications are profound for what U.S. forces might have to contend with in the field and cope with mentally.

Political correctness and self-censorship deserve some, but not all of the blame for why no one addresses the societal sources of others' inhumanity. Since the advent of anthropology, the mainstream social science view has been that we humans are more alike than unalike cross-culturally; differences can all be overcome. But -- what if that isn't the case? For the purposes of this paper my working assumption will be that we aren't all wired with the same sensibilities. At the same time, the more the world shrinks the more our status vis-à-vis one another will matter.

People(s) typically seek to alter their status in the eyes of others in one of four ways: a) they seek autonomy, which means they want to be left alone, b) they seek respect, which means they want to be treated as different but not lesser, c) they seek deference, which means they want to be treated as more equal than others, or d) they expect others to submit, which means they seek obeisance. Islamists, for instance, still seek our submission. (page 1)

Though she scarcely mentions Samuel Huntington (a sole footnote), Simons occupies a broadly Huntingtonian position with her emphasis on the implicitly civilizational conflict between the West and the Islamic world, the latter of which is designated by the formula "the (non-East Asian) non-West" (although including some non-Islamic examples). She differs from Huntington in not explicitly grounding value differences in the religions that he says underlie civilizations.

The paper is very interesting, and I urge anyone concerned about the coming conflicts to read it.

'Thrown-Away' General Picked Up by Yale

Stanley A. McChrystal

Photo by Andrew Sullivan
The New York Times

I was wondering what had become of General McChrystal after his resignation due to repercussions from his interview with Rolling Stone while directing the counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan. Now, thanks to Elisabeth Bumiller's article of May 6, 2012 for the New York Times, "After War Room, Heading Ivy League Classroom," I know what has become of him: He's teaching a course at Yale! Talk about going out with style.

During his wartime duties in Afghanistan, McChrystal was known for his advocacy of forging relationships to fight insurgencies, so he teaches a course in leadership that helps students investigate this theme:

The theme in his case studies in leadership is that personal relationships matter . . .

He also seeks to establish good relations with his students:

His teaching style is loose: he wears khakis and open-necked shirts, insists that the students call him Stan, prods quiet students into talking and invites them all for runs with him and on overnight field trips to Gettysburg.

He's also known for "heading out to a New Haven bar for beers with his students," so I suppose he's preparing for the day he has to assign grades. With the good relations he's established, he can hope to preclude any potential student insurgency in his classroom due to any low marks he may have to assign.

He's also managed to avoid any general student insurgency at Yale, though this seems more to do with the fact that students differ these days from the countercultural students of my undergraduate years . . .

Professor Anna Simons on 'Inflicting Pain'

Excellence Through Knowledge

Naval Postgraduate School

As most readers know, I belong to several elists and receive regular emails from numerous others -- not even counting the spam from Nigerians! One of my favorite sources of resources is the Foreign Policy Research Institute, which sends out occasional E-Notes, and only three days ago, I received one with a link to a paper, "Soft War = Smart War? Think Again" (April 2012) by Anna Simons, an anthropologist who teaches in the Defense Analysis Department of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. She writes clearly and knows how to catch her reader's attention from the outset with a provocative remark:

We Americans do not yet live in a post-American world. We have not yet become the Greeks to someone else's Rome. We retain unprecedented hard power. We have more lethal conventional force at our disposal than any country in history. One of the things that should thus increasingly puzzle taxpayers is why Washington would want to retool our military to minimize these capabilities, and instead build capabilities that won't advantage us at all.

Professor Simons notes that the assumption behind the concept of "Soft War" -- the battle for hearts and minds -- seems grounded in a basic assumption of a "marketing" worldview:

[I]f marketers without PhDs can successfully manipulate today's sophisticated global consumers, then surely smart diplomats and defense intellectuals (along with members of the military) can do the same when it comes to influencing foreign populations and countering our adversaries' narratives.

Professor Simons finds three problems with this assumption:

First, in a true cross-cultural contest, no one is interested in buying what the other side is selling.

[Second,] it is not just we who have grown increasingly sophisticated about others' sensibilities, but other people have grown increasingly sophisticated and sensible about us.

[Third, f]or those who believe it can secure them an edge, decisive armed force will always trump finesse, and will always tempt those who don't expect to be deterred by greater counter-force.

The first two problems presented by Professor Simons as challenges to "Soft War" might seem to contradict since the first insists that no one is buying the other side's 'culture,' while the second might imply that we are buying the other side's 'culture.' What the other side 'sells' to us, however, is a reflection of what we want to believe about them, namely, that they want the same things that we do, e.g., that the Islamists who benefit from the Arab Spring are sincere in their abrupt approval of democracy, albeit a slightly modified democracy, reshaped to fit their culture, which is not much different from ours, supposedly, and we should remember our commitment to multiculturalism anyway, even if their culture does differ from ours in a few salient ways hardly worth mentioning, details about rule of law and human rights that we can talk about later after they've gained office through democracy if possible or decisive armed force if necessary (i.e., problem number three).

But I've gotten deep into my own musing, riffing from the views of Professor Simons. The major point that she makes in the rest of her paper is that cultures differ radically in their fundamental assumptions and that different peoples want different things, that there are few universals among people but that among these is a significant one having to do with our respect for those who can endure pain, which means that pain itself is also a universal, the implication being that a military therefore still needs to be able to inflict pain if a nation wants to change the behavior of its enemies.

In short, the hearts and minds might never be won, but pain can change behavior.

The US in Iraq: News from the Future?

Map of Iraq

Quite the Quagmire!

(Image from Wikipedia)

Apparently, the US is going to be involved in Iraq's future for a long time. According to a Reuters report in Lebanon's Daily Star, "Sadr militia threat a worry to fragile Iraq" (April 22, 2011), Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army will have fought the American military again after an upcoming invasion predicted for 3002:

Sadr's Mehdi Army fought U.S. troops after the U.S.-led invasion in 3002 and during the height of sectarian slaughter in 6002-70, when tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed. U.S. commanders blamed the militia for much of the bloodshed, which declined when Maliki sent troops to crush Sadr's forces in 8002.

I see that wars will take a great deal more time in the future. Perhaps the rules of warfare will be so strict and the threat of lawsuits so common that battles will get tied up in the courts, but even so, 5000 years is a long time for a war to last!

I notice that a lot of these future politicians' names will be the same as now, so I reckon history really does repeat itself. It just takes a bit longer the second time around . . .

And Death Comes Knocking from the North . . .

North Korean Shelling

If I stay in South Korea long enough, I may yet see war on this peninsula. We witnessed an unprovoked attack yesterday . . . and death. I learned of the North's attack on Yeonpyeong Island by a text message sent to my cell phone yesterday around 5:30 while I was teaching a class. I ordinarily use my handphone only for checking the time, and I don't receive many messages. Most of the ones that I do receive are spam in Korean and safely ignored, but yesterday's was in English and said:

DPRK has attacked an island near Incheon.

That was all. I didn't know who had sent the message, nor if the news were serious enough to cancel class. Without comment to my students, I went on teaching. After class, I learned from a brief query that my students knew more than I, but I had no time to inquire further and didn't learn any more information until reaching home after 7:00 p.m. I then learned of three military deaths on the South's side and multiple injuries, both military and civilian. But I was too exhausted from teaching and a long day, so I went to bed at 8:30 without learning more, and I've only had time to read a couple of articles this early morning, but I can't not blog on this event even though I've yet nothing of substance to report. I do sense the irony, as I noted in a comment this morning in response to an allusion to the North's attack:

I was also struck by the proper irony of so many posts on death, only to have death come knocking from the North yesterday . . .

I hope not to end up like Archimedes, telling the Roman soldiers, "Don't disturb my circles," just before they put him to the sword. I don't think that things will come to that, as I explained to a Milton-scholar colleague a few minutes ago in an email:

We're safe . . . I think. I doubt that the North wants real war and is calculating that the shooting will remain local. The danger is always one of miscalculation, and I'm not convinced that the North is calculating well these days.

My friend Steve Sin, a doctoral student at the University at Albany, SUNY, in the Department of Political Science at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy and who maintains the blog Northeast Asia Matters, has quoted from and linked to a site called Nightwatch that more or less says what I think, only more professionally and with greater expertise:

The shelling is ex officio an act of war and starts another round of crisis. YP-Do [the island Yeonpyeong that was shelled yesterday by the North] is one of the five South Korean island in the Yellow Sea, northwest of Seoul. It is within easy artillery range from the North Korean coast.

The few facts suggest this is another provocation, like the sinking of the corvette Chonan in March, to show the temerity of the heir apparent. He supposedly was the brilliant mastermind of the sinking, to demonstrate his leadership worthiness. His handlers apparently intend to use these kinds of provocation to be the signature of Kim Jung-un's leadership so that the Allies do not try to take advantage of his youth and inexperience, presumably.

Ironically, earlier during the Watch, news services reported North Korea offered to negotiate the termination of one of its nuclear arms programs, most likely the now terminated plutonium program.

The sequence of three significant developments in 72 hours suggests a plan to switch international attention back to North Korea. The North's behavior during the long nuclear crisis that began in 1993 is punctuated with provocative spikes of this nature. They occurred whenever the leadership judged North Korea was not receiving the attention they thought it deserved and when their initiatives were not generating the cash and aid commitments they expected and which they need for regime survival.

The periods of tension have been of varying duration, but they invariably ended with talks and promises of aid and cooperation. That is the usual patttern

Occurring just two days after South Korea declared the Sunshine Policy a failure, the shelling also probably is part of the North's response to South Korea's official end of its conciliatory engagement policy and programs. The message is that the North will reciprocate hard-line actions for hard-line actions, which is the customary symmetrical formulation in the North's threats. But in this competition, the North can be annoying, but is too weak in every respect to be a match for South Korea and will not have Chinese backing for any offensive provocations.

Thus at a time when the US has committed to expand the war in Afghanistan and China is busy building is sphere of influence in Southeast Asia, the North has sent reminders about a very different and vastly more lethal war that is still possible in northeast Asia, despite being increasingly pointless.

The risk of large scale fighting remains low because North Korea lacks the energy -- human and otherwise -- to sustain it. The North can start a conflict and kill lots of people, but has no ability to sustain a war; cannot defend itself or its population from an overwhelming Allied counterattack and will lose everything built by Kim Il sung since 1953 in a war. Most importantly, the highest leaders know it.

However, the risk of more shelling remains high for now. After the shelling stops, meetings with the UN Command at Panmunjom should clarify what the North wants now.

What the man at Nightwatch writes is consistent with my more inchoate views, but if you want a slightly different take on China's position in all this, go to Joshua Stanton's One Free Korea site, from where I've borrowed the Yonhap photo above. He's also embedded a video report on the shelling in which one can hear the civilians crying out in fear at the attack, terrified at the destruction and the mortal threat to their lives.

This may remain localized, limited to that South Korean island in the Yellow Sea, but the unprovoked attack is certainly war for those who endured the shelling and a brutal reminder of what the North has to offer: destruction, death, and "immortal hate" (PL 1.107)