Duke Nukem: North Korea

Posted by Sam Gillmer on 06.16.2009

Kim Jong Il is at it again...

Who ever thought we could take a puppet seriously? The man that I am talking about is Kim Jong Il, the puppet from Team America: World Police. While there have been gradual rumblings about North Korea's tactics, I personally have never taken it seriously, as I am sure the case is with the one person who reads this. We, as Americans, have been programmed to worry about what happens in America, and to be mildly bemused by the rest of the World's Politics that may, or may not involve us. I am here to say that now, I am more than bemused.

Recently, the United Nations, at the beckoning of the United States, put into play sanctions against North Korea. These sanctions were put into place because of nuclear testing that North Korea did, and include blocking weapons exports out of North Korea. They will block exports in the hopes that they can drain a large revenue source of North Korea, which in turn would theoretically halt production of nuclear weapons. Did I mention that China and Russia, nations that generally do not agree with the U.N. Security Council, also agreed to the sanctions? To clarify this fact, that is like Kobe wanting to play with Shaq.

I take this seriously because, lets be honest, we are dealing with nuclear weapons and live in the United States. I love the United States just as much as anybody else, but to say we aren't liked worldwide is an understatement. Plenty of nations dislike us, and Kim Jong Il even singled the United States out as a country he would wage war with if the sanctions were followed through with. I also think that we can never take a nuclear threat too lightly.

So far we have been very lucky, us being citizens of the world, to not have broken out into nuclear war. The technology is there and most of the nations in this world can produce, or at least purchase, nuclear weapons. I believe that going about these sanctions through the United Nations is a fantastic start to squashing North Korea's plans, as it is harder for a country to place blame and be angry at a world entity, as opposed to a single nation.

Either way, we need to tread lightly into this situation. If we do not play our cards right, we could end up in a post apocalyptic world very quickly. I know it seems as though movies that depict a post apocalyptic world sometimes seem ridiculous, but I don't think any of us wants to live with raspy-voiced Christian Bale and Mel Gibson.