Sergey Kommersant-Strokan

reviewer

The Taepodong missile, which is flying to no one knows where, no one knows why and will fall on someone’s head, can serve as the personification of the entire North Korean policy, impulsive, unpredictable, demonstratively opposing itself to the world and therefore representing an absolute danger to it. But the Pyongyang hermit Kim Jong Il is far from the only headless horseman in modern geopolitics. Just like the flight path of a North Korean missile, it is impossible to predict the policy of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, who these days continues to tickle the nerves of world powers with his untamed uranium. Finally, another example that everyone is hearing is the actions of the government of Palestinian radicals from Hamas.

The world's headless horsemen, however, do not consider themselves such, believing that everything is in order with their heads. In contrast to the leaders of world powers and especially President Bush, as if in mockery of whom, Kim Jong Il set off his rocket fireworks to coincide with US Independence Day. However, what did the North Korean leader, who considers himself a wise ruler, achieve with this step? Perhaps he strengthened the defense capability of the Juche country? Doubtful. Or did he obtain for the DPRK additional shipments of fuel oil and rice that are so necessary for it at all times? Also unlikely. Rather, now Pyongyang may lose even the assistance it has. In any case, Japan, scared to death, is seriously considering the possibility of introducing economic sanctions against the DPRK. In general, the only response from the world community to Pyongyang’s latest actions can only be its increased isolation. And not at all an attempt to appease him, the way one cajoles a capricious child by handing him a gingerbread (here, eat it, just don’t play war). Although Kim Jong Il is counting on this, it will not happen. Meanwhile, nothing more than isolation, when in response to its inadequate actions the North Korean regime is forced to cut off its oxygen supply, will undermine it from the inside. So does our rider still have a head on his shoulders?

Meanwhile, the flight of a North Korean missile brings us back to the topic of Moscow’s special relationship with the world’s headless horsemen, showing all the conventionality of its influence on unpredictable regimes. By launching his Taepodong, after which Russia had no choice but to throw up its hands, Kim Jong Il showed that the Russian leadership should not delude itself too much about its ability to have a serious impact on the situation on the Korean Peninsula. As a result, all of Moscow’s previous games with Kim Jong Il, whose armored train once reached the Kazan station and whom Vladimir Putin called a “modern politician,” begin to look very ambiguous in the context of such launches. In the eyes of the world community, they can no longer be counted among the achievements of Russian politics. After all, whether we like it or not, some of the responsibility for the irresponsible regimes headed by such “modern politicians” as Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad involuntarily falls on Moscow, which, when meeting a headless horseman, is always ready to extend its hand to him.

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