Iran and North Korea: Twin Global Security Challenges

Iran and North Korea: Two Sides of the Same Coin

"So the principles of warfare are:

Do not depend on the enemy not coming, but depend on our readiness against him.

Do not depend on the enemy not attacking, but depend on our position that cannot be attacked."

Sun Tzu, Chinese military thinker


Events this month have confirmed Global Security Monitor's fears about the pressing twin challenges to the current global order: Iran and North Korea.

Friday's sham election in Iran (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad' s "victory") and the effrontery of North Korea (threats of nuclear attack) since its apparently successful long-range missile test earlier this month ratchet up the possibility of spiraling crises with a potentially catastrophic endgame.

Global Security Monitor maintains intercontinental ballistic missile capability and nuclear arms in the hands of rogue regimes Iran and North Korea together make a cataclysmic cocktail.

The flaccid response by the fledgling Obama administration in Washington only encourages Tehran and Pyongyang's aggression. Blind optimism cannot temper blind ambition.

Immobilizing the enemy without war, wrote Sun Tzu, is the greatest military feat.

Every day the global community delays in confronting the twin global challenges of Iran and North Korea raises the costs of doing so and edges the world closer to a nuclear disaster.