North Korea Yells "BOO!," U.S. Jumps

U.S. Secretary of War "Chuck" Hagel just announced that the U.S. is cancelling the last phase of its vaunted (and no doubt ineffective) missile defense system in Europe, which was ostensibly intended to block an Iranian nuclear missile attack on Europe, and instead the U.S. is rushing to add interceptors (that don't work anyway) in Alaska. Why? North Korea is huffing and puffing and making bellicose noises, even threatening to nuke the U.S. 

Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, no missiles capable of delivering them (but apparently is developing missiles, which Israel and the U.S. are doing their best to sabotage), has been the target of U.S. economic and cyber warfare, covert ops and raids (and Israeli assassinations and bombings) for years over their uranium enrichment program. Iran has been treated as the great threat. An actual threat, North Korea, produces a much more muted response from the U.S., plus constant attempts at negotiation. (No it doesn't attempt to negotiate with Iran. It issues ultimatums and calls that "negotiating.") Of course it helps that NK has a big brother on its side, China.

While pulling the plug on the European project, the U.S. assures that the partial deployment is just as good as it would have been. (Which makes no sense at all- unless you mean there really isn't any Iranian threat. Oh, by the way, Britain and France have nuclear weapons arsenals. The Iranian mullahs are not suicidal. So the entire enterprise was apparently a multi-billion dollar exercise in signal-sending. Don't you love paying taxes?)

North Korea has also revoked the armistice agreement in place since the end of the Korean War.

The U.S. is real tough dealing with the helpless. Not so tough dealing with those that might potentially hurt it. Otherwise it would just announce that if North Korea ever attacks it or its allies with nuclear weapons, it will wipe it off the face of the earth, and if China doesn't like it, it can lump it.