Kim Jong Il knows what it takes to retain the loyalty of his military leaders and to keep rivals at bay for years on end. He knows whom to antagonize and whom to placate. He certainly understands that he couldn’t defeat a concerted effort by the United States or South Korean governments to overrun North Korea and overthrow his government. But he also understands that he could raise the price of an invasion sufficiently that such an effort would be too costly to consider. In that case, by building a nuclear weapons capability he diminishes or even eliminates the most significant foreign threat
...more
