Looks like North Korea is making friends again, this time sinking a South Korean warship with a torpedo fired from one of their submarines.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is talking tough, saying, “We cannot allow this attack on South Korea to go unanswered by the international community. This will not be and cannot be business as usual. There must be an international, not just a regional, but an international response.”

Somewhere, Kim Jong Il is laughing even as his ministers threaten all-out war if anyone tries to hold North Korea responsible for what they did. So why would North Korea’s leader be laughing? The truth is that Kim Jong Il knows that the international community won’t do anything about it other than talk tough. How many times has North Korea provoked anger and gotten away without any real consequences? Why would they believe that this time is likely to be any different?

The thing is, Hillary is right, even though I don’t think we’ll see any action to back up those words. North Korea essentially committed an act of war and should be held responsible for what they did, but somehow I don’t see anything meaningful being done about it. All of that means of course that North Korea will continue to push buttons and provoke until there is no other option than full fledged war. If a child never learns the consequences of misbehavior, that child will continue to misbehave. North Korea is no different.