North Korea has used another American war-themed holiday to demonstrate its growing war-making capabilities. After testing its first nuclear bomb on Independence Day three years ago, and then detonating its second nuclear bomb this past Memorial Day, North Korea chose this July 4 to launch seven missiles eastward into the Sea of Japan. Reuters reports,

The North appears to have fired two mid-range Rodong missiles, which can hit all of South Korea and most of Japan, and five Scud missiles, which can strike most of South Korea, Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean official as saying. …”We found five of the seven missiles fell near the same spot in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), which indicates that their accuracy has improved,” another official told Yonhap.

According to the Washington Post, some independent experts say the reason North Korea launched multiple missiles may have been to demonstrate its ability to overwhelm the missile shields of its enemies. “The chief challenge with missile defense is coping with large numbers of missiles, and the firing of seven has a saturation quality to it,” said Dennis M. Gormley, a former member of numerous military and intelligence advisory boards and a senior fellow at the Monterey Institute’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington. “It at least raises the specter of these kinds of attacks.”

North Korea is clearly thumbing its nose at the United States, proving for the whole world to see that the U.S. will countenance just about any provocation without taking any meaningful action.

Washington obliged Kim Jong Il by responding with a whisper.

“This type of North Korean behavior is not helpful,” said State Department spokesman Karl Duckworth. “What North Korea needs to do is fulfill its international obligations and commitments.”

Such weak, non-committal statements have been typical of the Obama administration’s reaction to a range of developments on the world scene, further reinforcing the international perception of America as being weak. (Click here and scroll down to “To Whom It May Concern” to see where James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal documents instances where the U.S. president has expressed “concern” over international incidents and domestic problems.)

The Post continued:

A senior administration official predicted the tests will lead to the further isolation of North Korea, which was hit with new UN Security Council sanctions last month after its May 25 nuclear test. “It’s not going to change anything, and we’re going to continue to implement these sanctions in the resolution,” said the official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified.

Sanctions are clearly accomplishing nothing, however, against a regime that prioritizes its nuclear program over preventing its people from starving. As the Post commented, the sanctions have only infuriated the government of Kim Jong Il, which responded by vowing last month to never give up nuclear weapons but rather to start making more with enriched uranium.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much the evidence proves that mere words and economic incentives do nothing to change the behavior of regimes like North Korea. The U.S. seems to take every failure as evidence that it needs to try the same strategy yet again.

To see how these events are hurting America’s global standing, read our article “Happy Memorial Day. I Have a Nuclear Bomb.”