North Korean leader Kim Jong Il decided long ago that nuclear weapons were his best protection against an external threat of regime change. In ill health and preparing his youngest son, "Brilliant Comrade" Kim Jong Un, to succeed him, Kim seems to have decided that the bomb also is crucial to staving off an internal threat to the family dynasty that has ruled the hermit state since its founding. His powerful military wants a nuclear deterrent, and Kim wants to deliver it by 2012. That explains the urgency in his nuclear and missile tests, and makes the prospect of nuclear disarmament doubly difficult. The pending succession adds a layer of uncertainty and risk to North Korea's standoff with the West.
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