History repeats itself: After meeting Pres. Kennedy -- a very likeable person of no particular experience, but who was very impressed with his own abilities -- Pres. Charles DeGaulle -- whose experience included familiarity with pre-WWII French politicians who believed that they could negotiate with anyone -- asked himself a simple question: "Would the US trade Washington for Paris?" By that question, Pres. DeGaulle meant, if the USSR decided to conduct a limited nuclear attack on France -- say 1 missile that destroyed Paris -- would the US honor its treaty obligations that required it to regard an attack on any NATO nation as an attack on the US and to make a full strategic response (i.e., would the US respond to the limited nuclear attack on France as if it had been a nuclear attack on a US city, and so risk a Soviet response against Washington and other US cities?).

Pres. DeGaulle concluded that the answer was "No."

Based on that conclusion, he withdrew France from certain of NATO's military structures -- those requiring unanimous concurrence of all NATO nations (including the US) in order to free French military forces, and in particular the French Foreign Legion, so that they could be deployed as France saw fit, and ordered the development of a French strategic nuclear force (air, ICBM and submarine) as a deterrent to any threat of a limited nuclear strike by the USSR.

By, again, proving that the US is not a trustworthy ally, Pres. Obama will prompt more nations to ask the same question. However, in the last almost 50 years, the technology for developing a strategic WMD force is much more wide spread. There are commercial firms building rockets capable of sub-orbital flight. Japan, among others, has launched satellites. Getting a payload to space is the difficult part—bringing it down isn’t that hard unless you’re concerned with pinpoint accuracy. Quite a few nations have the resources and engineering capability of purifying uranium to weapons grade (and, recall that the original trigger for an Atomic warhead was a breach assembly from a 5-inch Naval gun – so, it isn’t that hard to build a working detonator, if you don’t mind a relatively dirty detonation). Further, for nations that don’t have the ability to develop nukes, chemical weapons are called “the poor man’s nuke.”

Not only has Pres. Obama essentially told Japan, South Korea, and other nations that may be threatened by North Korea (and China) that they are on their own, he has also told the former Warsaw Pact and former Soviet Republics that they cannot look to the US for protection. The eastern European nations will be forced to seek that from the EU – France already having a nuclear deterrent capability. However, the EU is not merely a military and political organization, as NATO is. Rather, it is also an economic organization. Accordingly, eastern European nations that turn to the EU will also be required to abide by EU economic policies that will restrict, and in some cases close, their markets to the US. Who Japan, South Korea and other Asian nations will turn to isn’t as clear. However, given that China could probably force North Korea to disarm, captive markets that exclude US competition might be of interest to China. Although Japan and South Korea have the ability to develop their own nuclear forces, they may choose to avoid the costs of that and become economic vassels of China in return for its protection, especially since China hasn't been too high handed in its treatment of Hong Kong.

You really have to wonder if anyone advising Pres. Obama has thought about more than tomorrow’s NYT headlines?