When Romney says that Russia is the US’s #1 geopolitical foe, he is absolutely right. If we use the words “geopolitical” and “foe” in their original meaning, then Romney’s statement is unassailable.
A geopolitical foe is somebody who has the strategy and the accompanying tactics, the resources and the ideology aimed specifically at defeating you in a fight for global dominance. Anybody who watches Russian newscasts and reads the Russian press for a couple of days will discover that this goal is discussed very openly and directly.
However, the realization that Russia is battling (not going to battle but is doing it already and has been for a while) the US for world dominance shouldn’t scare us too much. Russians are not anywhere near to being tempted to nuke the planet just to make a point. They will do a lot of nasty things in their struggle for global power (as everybody else who briefly possessed that power has) but they are not a threat to the existence of this planet.
Somebody else is.
North Korea should be on our minds all the time. North Koreans are about to get completely desperate. The whole country is a sect of religious fanatics armed with nuclear weapons. Starvation makes them light-headed and quite delusional. And when a religious sect realizes that there is really no hope of converting the rest of the world to its faith and the battle on the temporal plane is lost, then what does it do? If Jim Jones had nuclear weapons, what do you think he’d do?
We almost never hear anything in the media about North Korea save for “Ha, ha, these folks are so funny, they worship that ugly fat fellow with a weird haircut.” We forget, however, that we are only safe from a nuclear annihilation while everybody who possesses these weapons values life enough not to want to lose it.
Clarissa's Blog 
We forget, however, that we are only safe from a nuclear annihilation until everybody who possesses these weapons values life enough not to want to lose it.
The syntax of this sentence does not make sense to me. I think it means the opposite of what you intended to say(?) Did you mean that “we are not safe…until…
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While, of course, I meant while. Thank you!
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What do you mean by religious fanatics? N Korea is an atheist country and it seems that most forms of any native religion (Buddishm for example) has been stamped out. Do you mean “religious fanatic” more figuratively?
In some ways, I don’t fear N, Korea because the leaders do seem involved enough in _this_ world. Kim Jon Un loves basketball and other forms of Western pop culture. He seems to love to eat. He is certainly horrible and tyrannical but he doesn’t strike me as the sort who is focused on the “rewards of the afterlife” and eschews the pleasures of this world. So, while I am concerned about N. Korea, I just don’t see the state as one that is bent on global annihilation. I could be very wrong of course–but I hope I’m not.
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Kim worship and juche have every (bad) quality of a religion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche
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Iran is also scary. Not the very unreligious people but the religious fanatic leaders who give every indication of truly believing in the 12th Imam nonsense (former president used to lecture about it in the UN when he had a chance, unreported in most media).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_imam
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The “religion of Kim” has been around for quite a while, at least since the death in April of 1912 of Kim Il-sung, still referred to as “the Eternal President.” Whichever Kim is the current “Dear Leader” is worshiped due to his “divine” origins, having descended from Kim Il-sung who, according to his official biography,
All others have only one purpose, to serve the current Dear Leader. Those who fail to do so to his satisfaction, their relatives and associates, are humiliated and executed or, for the “lucky” ones, sent to prison camps to die slowly and painfully.
We tend to see the Kim regime as irrational. It often seems to be, but in context is not. The strategy employed for years — behave in ways that those in the West consider irrational, scare them into thinking that you may do something irrationally dangerous to make them afraid and therefore more obliging — works to the advantage of the Kim Regime. It is not intended to work to the advantage of the masses and has not lately done so; that hardly matters. After nearly seventy years of Kims, and a national religion based on the inherited divinity of the current Dear Leader, little beyond his perceived will matters.
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Minor correction. It’s Kim Jong-il who’s meant to be born on Mount Baekdu, not his father.
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Thank you for the correction. But what about Kim Chi-un?
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North Korea is not a nuclear threat to the world at large, and won’t be for years. It’s believed to have less than ten nuclear bombs, and currently doesn’t even have a rocket capable of carrying one of those bombs across its border with South Korea, let alone reach nearby countries like Japan.
If North Korea ever does fire a nuke an Asian country with whom the U.S. has a defense treaty, that will give the U.S. an excuse to blow the regime off the map.
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