NK Rocket Engines

The press lemmings have a way of repeating any story that comes through the wire services but adds a few things to its own version.  The story today is the rocket engines that North Korea used on its latest tests were not developed by North Korea (an important point that is worth noting) but may have come from Russian designs, supplied by the Ukraine.  CNN says the North may have purchased them on the black market.  The Ukraine says the Russians did it too cover up their support for NK. I'm sure the intelligence services of the world are smart enough to know where the engines came from, so this would not be news to them.  Some of the folks in that business can tell where a rocket design came from.  What they cannot necessarily say, is how it got to where it is today.  The arms businesses is not that simple.

As I said in a post yesterday, Gordon Chang said the missiles the North Koreans used came from China.  That is not necessarily inconsistent with them coming from the Russians who have sold off large stocks of arms to make money.  In my second edition of the Chinese Information War, which comes out later this year, I talk about buying a missile from a place that you would never think would sell.  As it turns out, that was not even uncommon.  Every day, people sell military arms - specifically sophisticated arms, for money.  Yes, we have agreements to limit missile technology, but they don't work very well as both Iran and North Korea prove.  Diplomats must not know very much about this because they always seem surprised when Iran tests a new missile or develops a bomb.  But, arms dealers would not be surprised.  Anyone who saw the movie Lord of War saw a fictionalized version of how that works.

I do agree with one story that said the Russians would like for us to believe those missiles came from the Ukraine because they don't want the Ukrainians to get anti-tank missiles from the US.  This makes far more sense   If we believe the Ukraine can't control the technologies it has, nobody should be giving them anti-tank weapons which might fall into terrorist's hands.  That is the logic that allows the Russians to lie about almost anything if it serves their purpose.  The problem with that, of course, is it is difficult to tell when the Russians are telling the truth.  We, as do the Russian populace, do not believe Russian news sources, when they do occasionally tell the truth.  We just don't know when.

It has consistently been Chinese companies, some still controlled by military and former military, who do what they want to regardless of sanctions.  It may be a difficult time to go after them, but it looks like some attempts are being made.  It is a gigantic game of whack-a-mole, abetted by the central government.  Even the UN knows that part is true.  In politics, like arms sales, we should believe that the ones getting benefit from the missiles is likely the one who gave them the engines, whether they built them or not.   What we learned from this is that the North Koreans are not as smart as we thought they were.