THE Korean Peninsula is closer to military conflict than at any time since 1994. Beyond his wild rhetoric threatening nuclear war, the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, has taken two of the most extreme actions open to him. He has decided to re-start his five megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.
And he has banned South Koreans from entering the joint industrial zone in Kaesong which is responsible for much of the hard currency Pyongyang gets.
Meanwhile, he is provoking tough reactions in Washington and Seoul. US Secretary of State John Kerry declared the US will not accept a nuclear-armed North Korea. Washington has also sent missile defence ships, strategic bombers and stealth fighters to support South Korea.
The new South Korean President, Park Geun-hye, has ordered her military to strike back against any North Korean military attack "without any political considerations". Her government also plans to attack pre-emptively if there are signs of an impending missile or nuclear attack. The South Koreans further say they will attack not only artillery or missile sites in North Korea, but command and control targets as well. This means attacking North Korea's leadership personally.
The world little knew how near conflict was in 1994. The Clinton administration (that redoubt of neo-conservative militarism) was very close to a pre-emptive air campaign to destroy the Yongbyon reactor. Jimmy Carter, without authorisation from the White House, travelled to Pyongyang and secured a deal.
Talk about the ghostly ifs of history. The North Koreans, naturally, didn't honour the deal and went on to develop nuclear weapons. Who knows what would have happened had Bill Clinton struck? But North Korea and Pakistan are the two locomotives for nuclear proliferation today, especially in the Middle East.
Right now, we still cannot fathom Kim Jong-un's intentions. Kim is the third generation dictator in his family. Dictator's sons tend to be psychopaths - look at Saddam Hussein's boys. In some respects we know more about Kim's personality than we knew about his father and grandfather, for he spent time at a Swiss high school. Western intelligence has interviewed virtually everyone he ever spoke to in Switzerland.
The picture that emerges is confusingly normal. He was a quiet kid. He loved basketball and made a number of Swiss friends. A chef who for a time worked for the Kim family remembers the young Kim as assertive but no more. His actions in power have been wildly contradictory and impossible to follow. He recently sacked some of the most senior and powerful military figures in the North and took away two lucrative businesses from the military. Yet he has promoted other military hardliners and is now pursuing a path of confrontation right out of the military playbook. In speeches he has re-emphasised the dominance of the military.
Yet in other speeches he lambasts corruption in North Korean society, condemns the decrepit state of various facilities, and promises a new focus on economic development. He appointed a noted technocrat with a career in conventional economic development as Prime Minister.
Taken altogether, it doesn't make sense.
His father, Kim Jong-i1, and grandfather, Kim Il-sung, were bellicose but they were at least predictable. They either threatened actions which their neighbours and the US knew were beyond Pyongyang's capabilities. Or they took provocative actions, such as killing American or South Korean soldiers in the Demilitarised Zone, which were violent and deadly but well below the threshhold that would provoke major military retaliation.
Then, in order to get them to desist from this, Washington would offer some aid and the North would engage in negotiations about their nuclear program. Sometimes they even offered to abolish their program. They sold the same horse to the US over and over again. 1994 was probably the very last chance the US had to actually prevent Pyongyang getting nuclear weapons.
Kim Jong-un seems to see himself as a military daredevil and heroic leader. In 2010, although he had not yet taken full control of his nation (his father was still alive, though ailing), Kim oversaw the sinking of the South Korean ship, the Cheonan, and the shelling of the South Korean island of Yeongpeong.
Demonstrating great forbearance, Seoul did not retaliate. But no country can put up with such attacks indefinitely. The South's then president, Lee Myung-bak, swore he would retaliate if the North struck again and the US pledged support. I think Lee and the Americans were effective in deterring further military action from the North.
But Kim Jong-un is now building up such a momentum of conflict it's hard to see how he can stand down without massive loss of face. Moreover, he is not offering a status quo option. Restarting the Yongbyon reactor means the North will be producing more weapons-grade plutonium which it can use to manufacture more weapons, or which it can sell. It will also recommence a uranium-enrichment program which also would supply fuel for nuclear weapons, although it is believed already to have a clandestine enrichment program. Similarly, it is only a matter of a couple of years before it perfects its intercontinental ballistic missiles and its ability to miniaturise nuclear weapons.
But where does Kim expect this to lead? If he is doing this only as a bargaining tool in future negotiations, then shutting the Kaesong industrial zone is baffling as this is one of the few things that brings him much money.
It is clear the Chinese do not control North Korea but they continue to be crucial to its survival. Trade between the two communist neighbours is increasing, which is technically consistent with the targeted sanctions the North suffers. This is an ancient relationship, not even handled by China's foreign ministry, but managed as a relationship between the countries' communist parties. But it is right for the world to ask Beijing to do more. Julia Gillard and Bob Carr should certainly make this central to their talks in China next week.
