amoy
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Why Do We Laugh at North Korea But Fear Iran? - Julian Hattem - The Atlantic
It's also partly matter of geography. Despite claims by the North Korean regime, most experts agree that their rockets probably cannot reach the American mainland. And even if they could, there's a lot of space and time over the Pacific Ocean for the military to shoot it down. Other countries, especially our allies in the region, don't treat the regime so lightly. South Korean and Japanese citizens tend to view the North as an existential threat, as we might if the Kims were sitting in Mexico City or Ottawa.
As for Iran, on the other hand, there's the Israel factor. We might not be directly in Iran's neighborhood, but Israel is, and the particular dynamics of the US-Israel relationship and Israel's oft-stated willingness to preemptively strike Iranian nuclear sites makes that tension seem more urgent. In Jerusalem, Obama reiterated the United States' "unshakeable support" for Israel, and U.S. foreign policy typically regards Israel as the bastion of Western influence in the Middle East.
We got used to the North Koreans being awful, but just not awful enough to merit a major military response. We're tired of it.
There's also the fear that Iranian development of a nuclear weapon would inspire Saudi Arabia and other countries in the neighborhood to seek one of their own. South Korea and Japan accept the United States' umbrella of protection as a safeguard against the North; countries in the Middle East are less willing to rely on us to protect them from Iran. Western powers worry about an Iranian nuclear weapon turning into a Middle Eastern arms race.
Meanwhile, North Korea has been a constant threat. When most tyrants die, their legacy dies with them. Usually the people revolt or a new leader is put in power or a war unsettles the regime to push it this way or that. In North Korea, the son carries on just as the father did, and we've come to expect more or less the same behavior. Though the North recently claimed to abandon the armistice treaty, troops on the Korean Peninsula haven't seemed to notice much of a difference. There are still Americans lined up along the Demilitarized Zone- thousands of them. A Defense Department official explained to Foreign Policy, "We are always ready to go to war on the Korean Peninsula within a matter of hours," and the New York Times' David Sanger explained on Face the Nation, "The armistice was signed 60 years ago and it's been an on and off thing ever since with violations and so forth." The constant threat makes the highs and lows much more muted. Unlike Iran, which has lively internal politics and saw massive protests just a few years ago, North Korea is committed to the same track for the foreseeable future. In that context, each new inflammatory remark or island bombardment seems more or less in line with the long-standing behavior. It's just more of the same.
Also, because they've been doing this for a long time, we expect them to know not to cross the ultimate line, for fear of their own survival. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Council on Foreign Relations that it was a matter of rationality: "Iran has this patina, at least, of this super-religious extreme folks that might actually not care if they were wiped out in response to one of their attacks. There are some folks in Iran who ... might actually care less ... than the North Koreans do, because the North Koreans care only about regime-serving." Unlike Iran, where leaders value religion more than the state, North Korea cares too much about its own survival to ever actually use its bomb.