Analysts warn against threatening North Korea with sanctions

Experts are asking why the North Koreans chose to detonate a nuclear device at this time.  MIT nuclear analyst and Ploughshares Fund grantee Jim Walsh says there are two theories. "One says they are doing this for bargaining - that by creating a crisis, it improves their position when they enter negotiations," he explained. "And then a second thread of thought suggests that it has nothing to do with external foreign policy or external affairs - but rather it is driven by internal political dynamics; that North Korea, like many countries in [a leadership transition], takes dramatic action to sort of reassert themselves and to give it an expression of strength at a time of uncertainty," he said.  David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security says the new U.S. administration must send a high-level mission to that country. "Not to offer incentives. Not to offer threats either. But to go there and try to have a meeting with Kim Jong-il and say look, what's going on? Do you want this confrontation to escalate?"