Here we go again. North Korea launched a ballistic missile of intercontinental range on Sunday (saying it was just putting up a satellite) only weeks after it carried out its fourth nuclear weapons test (which it claimed was a hydrogen bomb).The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned it, and even China, North Korea's only ally, expressed its "regret" at what the country had done.
There will certainly now be more U.N. sanctions against Kim Jong Un's isolated regime. But there have already been four rounds of U.N. military and economic sanctions since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, and Pyongyang just ignores them.
Clearly, this is something that the North Korean regime wants so badly that it is willing to endure considerable punishment in order to get it. But why is this very poor country spending vast sums in order to be able to strike its neighbors — and even the United States, for that is what the intercontinental ballistic missiles are about — with nuclear weapons?