North Korea has tested a low yield nuclear device with 4% of the destructive power of the bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan at the end of World War II. Some believe that the device was much larger but may have failed for technical reasons. We don’t know the truth, because the United States has not devoted the resources to know what is really going on. If you are surprised, don’t be. Intelligence collection is a tricky business.When Richard Nixon was President, you may remember that one of our ships, the USS Pueblo was brazenly attacked and hijacked in international waters in 1968, off the coast of North Korea. The 82 member crew was taken prisoner and tortured over an 11 month period before their release was negotiated.There is such a thing as institutional memory. The senior members of the military remember the Pueblo incident well, and it still influences our behavior towards North Korea. As an aside, President Nixon gave the order to attack North Korea in retribution for the Pueblo incident. At the time the President believed a show of force was absolutely necessary to dissuade the Koreans from further provocative acts. Nixon’s Secretary of…