UPDATE: Washington Will Do Something (or other)!

Update 1: How much do you want to bet that North Korea actually means its threat to take 'strong action' should the UN dare to sanction it.

As predicted here and elsewhere, when N. Korea fired off an ICBM test disguised as a satellite launch over the weekend, we and Japan demanded that the UN security conference do something. Just as predictably, China and Russia flipped us the bird. It really doesn't even matter if this launch was an actual failure, if there really was a satellite in the nose cone, or if Kim Jong Il had succeeded in playing revolutionary songs from space. The UN will do nothing, and the words of these agreements mean nothing without action to back them up. President Obama can give 'strong' speeches all he wants - it changes nothing. If our only response to proliferation is to say that we need to cut our weapons (a laudable goal to be sure, but irrelevant to N. Korea), and that we won't really do anything, than N. Korea has no incentives to change its behavior.