Illusions of power in Obama's world

Opinion Journal:

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something."

So declared President Obama Sunday in Prague regarding North Korea's missile launch, which America's U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice added was a direct violation of U.N. resolutions. At which point, the Security Council spent hours debating its nonresponse, thus proving to nuclear proliferators everywhere that rules aren't binding, violations won't be punished, and words of warning mean nothing.

Rarely has a Presidential speech been so immediately and transparently divorced from reality as Mr. Obama's in Prague. The President delivered a stirring call to banish nuclear weapons at the very moment that North Korea and Iran are bidding to trigger the greatest proliferation breakout in the nuclear age. Mr. Obama also proposed an elaborate new arms-control regime to reduce nuclear weapons, even as both Pyongyang and Tehran are proving that the world's great powers lack the will to enforce current arms-control treaties.

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The truth is that Mr. Obama's nuclear vision has reality exactly backward. To the extent that the U.S. has maintained a large and credible nuclear arsenal, it has prevented war, defeated the Soviet Union, shored up our alliances and created an umbrella that persuaded other nations that they don't need a bomb to defend themselves.

The most dangerous proliferation in the last 50 years has come outside the U.S. umbrella on the South Asian subcontinent, where India and Pakistan want to deter each other. No treaty stopped A.Q. Khan. Meanwhile, the world's most conspicuous antiproliferation victories in recent decades were the Israeli strike against Saddam Hussein's nuclear plant at Osirak, and the U.S. toppling of Saddam and the way it impressed Libya's Moammar Ghadafi.

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The Washington Examiner editorializes:

It's foolish to keep warning North Korea's Kim Jong-il that he faces dire consequences for stepping over a line in the sand, then failing to impose those promised consequences. Empty warnings simply invite more bad behavior. At some point, the nutty dictator will go too far, and massive retaliation will become the only option. North Korea¹s defiant launch of a ballistic missile likely capable of striking targets in America suggests that we are approaching just such a terrible point with North Korea.

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The problem presented by North Korea is that it is a country unworthy of a war with the US. It is like going to war with a neighbors outhouse. There is little satisfaction in defeating it and you wish the stench would go away so it can be ignored. The trouble with Kim is he keeps releasing noxious odors to make people believe he is worthy of a fight.

He also is very effective at proving the impotence of institutions like the UN. That Obama has put his reliance in such institutions suggest Kim will win another round. It also suggest that Obama's vision of a world without nukes is grossly misplaced. If we follow the Obama plan the only people with nukes would be the rogue states.