YOU DON’T SAY! (Pt. 1): “Nuke Deal Not Likely by End of Bush Term.” The interesting take away from Nicholas Kralev’s piece is that the North Korean efforts to reconstitute their plutonium program are not focused on the old 5-MW reactor, but on the fuel fabrication plant. That would be consistent with my pet theory that the North Koreans are content to retire the old 5-MW model and start up the new 50-MW reactor instead. This also provided some amusement:...

HELLO! ARE-YOU-THE-BRAIN-SPECIALIST!?   More rumors about Kim Jong Il’s health, and speculation about what might follow him, at the New York Times.  The Times doesn’t specify, but another report claims it was brain surgery. THIS TIME, I TEND TO AGREE WITH THE CONSENSUS VIEW of post-KJI North Korea, whenever that eventually should grace us all:  military junta with Dauphin figurehead to lend legitimacy to puppetmasters.  But with the regime so economically weakened and unpopular, one can’t help thinking that the...

MORE REGIME COLLAPSE PROGNOSTICATIONS from Strategy Page. What all of these articles are trying to describe is a gradual process whose pace we can’t really measure, although their high-altitude description of the process seems about right. What also seems likely is that the regime will last through the year, given the passage of the spring and summer without any significant incidents of unrest. Soon, the pre-harvested fall crops will come in, and the worst shortages may be over until next...