June 9, 2009

Hate to Tell You This, America, But Hu’s Your Daddy (And That’s Not a Question)

I would get the biggest laugh out of the idea, oft-expressed in sonorous tones by varied learned observers of the international scene, that the United States needs to work with China and its Paramount Leader, Hu Jintao, to stop North Korea from mass-producing nukes. That is, if it weren’t for the fact that Pyongyang might use its new toys to bomb South Korea, Japan, a chunk of Alaska or maybe even, someday, much of Los Angeles back into the Stone Age.

President Obama is back huffing and puffing and trying to blow down the North Korean regime’s little house, built not on bricks but the sturdier stuff of ICBMs and reprocessing plants, which Kim Jong Il is using to good purpose to scare the bejeebers out of the world like a little kid playing with blowtorches in your local Shell station.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (speaking of scary) says that Uncle Sam – after provocative missile and nuclear tests, the arrest and finger-in-our-eye show trial of two American reporters, and the delivery of a plutonium reactor to those upstanding citizens in Syria – might maybe just add North Korea back to the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Ya think?

She is also going to ask for a “very strong (United Nations) resolution” that would "have consequences for the North Korean regime." The Dear Leader is quaking in his boots.

Face it. Li’l Kim will thumb his nose at the world as long as he can hide behind the very wide skirts of his Chinese patrons. Which brings us back to where I started: Tell me again what China’s real interest is in keeping its little buddy from joining the nuclear club? Yeah, yeah, I’ve read the blather about fears of North Korea imploding on their border. But the more of a thorn in the side Kimmy is for us and China’s rivals in Asia, the better for the Hu Crew.

Remember, these are the same friendly trading partners who are bombarding us with cyber-attacks, selling offensive weapons to Syria and Iran that have found their way to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, testing missile systems designed to knock out our satellites and aggressively trying to steal our military technology.

If you think that allowing Kim to stir up a little agitation and angst along the Pacific Rim isn’t part and parcel of the Sino International Insecurity Fun-Pack, think again.

And while we’re at it, tell me again what influence we have over the Chinese, who hold all the real sway over Kim? If you answered anything other than nada, nix, zip and zero, I have news for you: China owns us. Lock, stock and barrel, from Wall Street to Walla Walla, Detroit to Denver and Boston to San Bernadino. A buying spree snapping up everything from the mighty Hummer to a piece of the King of the Lane, LeBron James, symbolizes how much the Middle Kingdom’s modern-day mandarins are in the driver’s seat.

China holds $768 billion of America’s $11 trillion national debt, and before the recent recession, we were running bilateral trade imbalances of up to a staggering $28 billion a month. Treasury Secretary and bailout washout Timmy Geithner just visited Beijing on a mini beg-a-thon to beseech our foreign financiers to soak up more T-bills to finance his boss’s mega spend-a-thon. Our current and pending state of hock is why Hillary, on an earlier kowtow tour, refused to bring up Chinese misbehavin’ on human rights.

Pressure them to bring North Korea to heel? Ha.

Hu’s your daddy. That isn’t a question. It’s a fact. And it will remain that way when it comes to everything from Kimmy’s adventurism to cybersecurity to Mideast terror as long as we’re willing to sell our national birthright not for a mess of pottage, but rather to sate our unending appetite for DVD players, big-screen TVs and, soon, federally financed – read Chinese-underwritten – health care.