Fat Chance!

In yet one more of his accustomed exercises in tough sounding but utterly meaningless rhetoric, President Obama punctuated his appearance at the G-8 meeting by telling reporters, "There have to be consequences for such irresponsible behavior on the international stage." The practitioners of "irresponsible behavior" to whom the always eloquent if not reality connected POTUS was referring are the North Koreans. More specifically the North Korean government.

The sinking of the South Korean corvette, Cheonan, was scarcely "irresponsible behavior." That term applies rather more fittingly to running one's pickup off a cliff while holding a half empty bottle of Jack Black in one hand. Or, being a church organist who moonlights as the piano player in the local bordello.

The sinking by torpedo of a warship falls properly in the category of calculated deliberate act. A calculated, deliberate act of war. To call it anything else is mendacious at best, purely stupid at worse.

(It might help the president clarify his thinking were he to try a little thought experiment. If one of our Navy's billion dollar guided missile cruisers were to end up underwater following an encounter with, say, a torpedo fired by an Iranian submarine, would the Man in the Oval consider it merely "irresponsible behavior?" And, if he were to do so, would his interpretation be accepted by Congress? We the People?)

The Hermit Kingdom of the North made a decision at the highest levels of government. The decision to sink the South Korean naval vessel carried some slight degree of risk, but the regime calculated (quite possibly with the advice and counsel of the Trolls of Beijing) that the benefits accruing to the act far outweighed the potential adverse consequences.

There is that word again! "Consequences." The Obama administration as well as the president personally seem to be much enamored of the word, "consequences." It comes up with nauseating regularity in remarks by the president, by the SecState, by others whenever a government--usually Iran--does something of which we disapprove or fails to do something which meets our approbation.

It's a beautiful word, sort of menacing, in a polite and vague way. It carries a delicate whiff of threat, at least implied threat. It almost seems like an ultimatum, an understated one to be sure, but it has do-this-or-else! connotation which is the heart and soul of the classic ultimatum.

The overuse of the word, "consequences" by the current administration has robbed it of all the unpleasant force it may have possessed once. Experience over the past eighteen months demonstrates that the president and his "team" use the word instead of taking real action. It is not an ultimatum, but rather a substitute for one. Through the combination of overuse and subsequent inaction, "consequences" has come to imply that the irresponsibly behaving state has one more free pass.

Pyongyang, that is to say, Dear Leader, his number three son (and probable successor) and the rest of the top echelon, know perfectly well that no one is going to take any action of substance to inflict "consequences" for the "irresponsible behavior." There is absolutely nothing which can be done, no conceivable "consequence" which can be inflicted on the Hermit Kingdom.

No rational actor, certainly not the South Korean government, would consider even for a nanosecond going to war in response to the killing of forty-six sailors and the loss of an aging small surface combatant. Beyond this, anyone and everyone who is slightly oriented in time and place realizes that no sanction regime over and above all those currently in force will have any noticeable impact on Pyongyang. For reasons which are good and sufficient in their estimate, the Trolls of Beijing will make sure of that.

The realities which govern global politics assure that the Obama statement as well as the words in the official communique issued over the signatures of the G-8 leaders exercise precisely the same impact on Pyongyang as have the now traditional G-8 riots on international policy. Ironically but accurately the rioters have the same effect on high state policy as the presidents and prime ministers of the eight largest economies on Earth wield over the Hermit Kingdom. Zero equals zero.

One has to wonder why the Great Statesmen of the Big Eight bother. They, even President Obama, must know that all the thundering denunciations, all the demands for meaningful responses by the "international community," all the invocations of "consequences," are so much vapid bloviation.

Do they blather the fine sounding nothings because at least they can agree on the softer version of tough talk? Do these heads of the largest, most wealthy, most advanced, most powerful states posture with such monolithic determination over something none can influence because they cannot agree on a way to handle real problems, real rocks and shoals upon which any or all of their ships can founder?

North Korea, Iran, and even Karzai's Afghanistan will do their own thing, in their own way, regardless of the heaving and hectoring of the POTUS or even all of the Eight Really Huge Economies. The three referenced states will continue to pursue their own national interests each in its own way for its own reasons utterly immune to the "consequences." The Eight Biggies know this, for each will do the same--chase after its own subjectively defined national and strategic interest--again without regard to the importuning or promised "consequences."

Mr Obama found this truth to his personal embarrassment with the solid rejection of his plea to borrow and spend more in the American way. Whether Mr Obama's view that deficits are less of a concern than the need for further government spending in support of the "fragile" global recovery is correct is less important to the US in its foreign relations than the simple fact that his position was ignored by the others.

The Other Seven fired a very large warning shot very, very close across the bows of America. The warning is clear. US influence on the policies and behavior of other states, in this case states which are peers of the US by definition, is waning, waning rapidly. The other leaders assembled in Canada have told the US that it is not the "go-to" power it was as recently as two years ago.

Instead of trotting out old, tired, meaningless terms like "irresponsible behavior" or making dire mutters of "consequences," Mr Obama and his Team would be better off--and so would We the People, if he and they meditated upon the implications of being rejected or ignored in his policy stance by our economic peers. They would be well-advised to consider just what the future might bring as more and more countries conclude that they can go after their own national interests without the slightest regard to the views of the US.

This advice is doomed to be fruitless. Not simply because the exalted of Team Obama would never read the Geek's blog, but for a reason far more substantial. Mr Obama and, in all probability, many of those on his "team" have full bore cases of anosognosia. This means that not only does the president not know something critical, but that he does not even know that he does not know it. He is not only ignorant of ground truths governing the game of international politics--he does not even know that he is ignorant of them.

A hopeless case.