cover image Rogue State: How a Nuclear North Korea Threatens America

Rogue State: How a Nuclear North Korea Threatens America

William C. Triplett II. Regnery Publishing, $27.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-89526-068-0

The bill of particulars in this informative if sometimes overwrought indictment is a long one. According to Triplett, North Korea is a""gulag nation"" where millions starve under the cult of""Dear Leader"" Kim Jong-Il, whose fantastic powers are said to have included double rainbows announcing his birth and five holes-in-one during his very first round of golf. Abroad, Triplett says, North Korea functions as Kim's""family-run criminal enterprise,"" with his henchmen (and -women) responsible for terrorist attacks and assassinations, as well as sidelines in narcotics trafficking, counterfeiting and kidnapping. Worst of all, North Korea has, or will soon have, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles capable of reaching the United States, Triplett writes. The co-author of Red Dragon Rising and Year of the Rat and former chief Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Triplett brings together a thoroughly researched update on North Korea's threat in the new age of terror and WMDs. But his analysis of the problem rarely moves beyond dated anti-Communist polemics. Much of the book is devoted to demonstrating North Korea's subservience to what Triplett identifies as the international communist conspiracy, circa 1949 (""all of them--Stalin, Mao, Kim, Ho, Burgess, Maclean, Philby and the others--had blood on their hands""), and to a rehash of old Cold War confrontations from the Korean War to the Pueblo incident. Even today, Triplett suggests, the real culprit is not so much the Kim dictatorship but Communist China, described as North Korea's""master"" and""'enabler,' if not co-conspirator and participant"" in crime. Triplett contends, not unreasonably, that the solution to the North Korea problem is for China to bring pressure to bear on its client, but provides no satisfying rationale for how or why that will come about.