I am usually a pretty serious guy and I try to treat my nuclear security threats fairly soberly. North Korea does terrible things to its people and uses threats of annihilation to extract aid from potential victims—sort of like the mafia—but big time.
But the metaphor that has worked for me for years to understand North Korea is the 1955 novel and 1959 movie, The Mouse that Roared. In it, the tiny European Grand Duchy of Fenwick decides to escape from dire economic straits by declaring war on the United States, hoping for speedy defeat and with it the benefits of a new Marshall Plan. The Grand Duchess Gloriana (played by Peter Sellers) dispatches Field Marshall Tully Bascombe (also played by remarkably look-alike Peter Sellers) and 23 men bearing medieval armor and bows and arrows to attack New York City.
In a twist of fate, they find New York’s streets deserted during a public security drill. They stumble into an unguarded weapons lab and discover and take a new secret weapon of mass destruction, the Q Bomb. Their armor persuades civil guards to believe they are from Mars and therefore dangerous.
With the Q Bomb safely back in Fenwick, the Grand Duchess, advised by her Prime Minster Count Rupert Mountjoy (also resembling close relation Peter Sellers), decides to set terms for peace. All nuclear nations must be subjected to international inspection of their nuclear arsenal and a group of the “Tiny Twenty” nations must be formed to balance the big powers. When the Duchess proceeds to marry Tully, the bomb is discovered by its creator to be a dud, but the secret is maintained to preserve world peace.
With North Korea, you have the makings of another enduring comedy. There is the whacko family with some obvious hints of inbreeding. There is an unreliable weapon of mass destruction that nonetheless inspires prudent fear. The country is undoubtedly impoverished and has recently experienced a much witnessed “failure to launch.” Yet it harbors grand expectations to be well rewarded—or else.
Roll ‘em.
Comments(2)
I am an U.S. Army Officer and watched this movie during my three-year in South Korea. However, rather than focusing on the little guy with the big bomb, I took from this movie a completely different but equally terrifying concept. As you stated, the initial reason that Fenwick invaded the United States was to immediately surrender and demand their own Marshal Plan to salvage their economy. Consider a rogue North Korean junta driving south across the DMZ with the intention to surrender to the South Koreans shortly after the invasion. The best future most North Koreans could face would be reconstruction funded by South Korea, the United States and the United Nations. This is unlikely, however, as long as the Kim regime keeps self serving polititions and military leaders and their families surrounded by luxury. A coup led by altruistic Koreans could lead to a situation where the Mouse Roars.
Apparently not many people today remember the movie, as there's only one posted comment in the last two years, but I remember it well which is how I found this little essay. It is in my opinion a perfect metaphor for what's going on on the Korean peninsula. It is now September of 2017 and nothing has changed except Kim's development of even more threatening weapons and the capability of delivering them to the United States. For the clearly unhinged Kim to embark on a path of holding the region hostage with his WMDs and expecting the United States to sit idly by, discussing only rational sanctions, while he openly threatens war, is beyond comprehension. Kim clearly can't be moved by sanctions or slaps on the wrist. It is equally obvious that he could care less if his people starve while he builds his military machine. He said as much only days ago when he said he would rather his people eat grass then to end his nuclear program. He appears hell bent on a suicide mission. We must not allow history to repeat itself. We did nothing for years while Hitler did the same thing - we just refused to believe the "civilized" Germans would do what sources were reporting. It was too late for six million Jews and 26 million Russians before we woke up to the Nazi threat and decided to do something about it. How far will we allow Kim to go before we swat this brazen pest? Must an American city be sacrificed in the interest of a diplomacy in which Kim clearly has no intention of engaging?
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