With the North Koreans detonating a nuclear device, the world is trying to understand the motives and goals of what is the world’s most inscrutable regime. Hints might be found in the official news releases, in what is said and what is not said.
My take on it? The North Koreans are looking to deal, and are willing to give up the nukes for the right deal. I hope I’m right.
How about…instead of negotiating with terrorists (be they nations, individuals, or organizations) we begin dropping hints (aka 500 pounders) on their homes, places of work, factories etc. It seemed to be an excellent way of “negotiating” with Libya.
Giving legitamacy to these clowns is tantamount to giving in to a 5 yr old bawling his eyes out to get a chocolate bar at the grocery store. The only negotiation that should occur is AFTER a legitimate democracy has taken control of the country.
They’ve been looking to deal all along. They’ve been engaged in a protracted game of blackmail on this issue for over 15 years now.
North Korean tea leaves?
That is all that is left after they’ve detonated one of their darling ‘creations’.
That would be nice, but i sincerely doubt it. I hope you’re right though, steve.
Wheres the jerks at GREENPEACE to object to this wheres HANOI JANE,JIMMY CARTER,BILL CLINTON,HILLARY CLINTON,AL GORE,and the NUCULAR WEAPONS FREE ZONE wackos running around in their sandals in the sissy pink bicycles?
Ultra-uber-left Guardian says: Put up or bomb NK. …-
Extract:
If this relaxed view is not viable in North Korea’s case (as opposed to Iran’s), there is only one sensible alternative. It is not to drag out a conflict through economic sanctions to eventual war, but to curb North Korea’s ambition in the simplest possible way. Sophisticated air power, useless in counter-insurgency, has a role in the “coercive diplomacy” of non-proliferation. Israel used it effectively against Iraq’s nuclear plant in 1981 and the US repeated the exercise with Operation Desert Fox in 1998 (though Bush and Blair later refused to believe it had worked). If Kim is the unstable menace he appears, his bomb-making capacity and missile sites should be removed at once with Tomahawk missiles. Fewer people would die that way than with any other pre-emptive response. …-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1892453,00.html
Mostly a normal situation and making any “deal” will only prolong it. The biggest change is that unlike the father, who was a soviet puppet, the son is a mentally unbalanced lunatic (a good example, look up the debriefings of the old film actress Chai Un Hui after her escape). By appearances even the Chinese (who assumed control of the Dear Leader when the Russians phased out of it) have no tight control anymore. There is the possibility that the Chinese are still quietly in control and simply playing at the “great game” though.
The only real palatable deal is to simple rachet up the tension until they break. I say this while having family members living in Seoul (in fact my wife is visiting there for another 10 tens yet). I do take comfort that all those I hold dear at least are south of the FEBA C line and mostly south of the Han river. Still within the danger zone of FFR and 152-180 mm artillery but relatively safe otherwise.
I haven’t kept up well since retirement but to my knowledge the USARMY currently has approximately one bde of soldiers north of Seoul. There are some attached to the UN armistice group but most others and almost all Airforce assets are south of Soul and the Han river. Any engagement would be mostly between indeginous forces.
It is a balancing act militarily. For decades we’ve had the ability to easily shut down N. Korea except for the massive artillery units along the DMZ. Those units hold large segments of the S. Korean population as hostage. If those guns were not immediately silenced the civilian casualties would number in the tens of thousands, minimum. If you doubt this I invite you to study the history of the Korean war. Pay special attention to how they treated S. Korean peasants. That was only after 5 years of the Great Leaders’ indoctrination. The N. Korean population has had an additional three generations of that and worse. If ordered, those units will place hundred of tons of HE and probablly chemical munitions into densely populated towns and cities. To give some prespective even smaller village population density means there would be upwards of 50 people housed within the bursting radius of a simple 122mm artillery rocket.
The reverse though is also true. If the NK’s initiate hostilities then we immediately have the option and the obligation to save as many of those civilians as we can. I leave it to your imagination what weapons would have to be used to eradicate hundreds of heavily fortified artillery positions stretched over many miles.
This is a long running nightmare that should never have been allowed to develope. Anyone advocating that the North should be placated is guilty of continueing this nightmare.
steve – aren’t you assuming that the military buildup in Korea is not based on an ideology of a powerful N.Korea but was instead created to use as only as a bargaining chip?
I find that difficult to believe. N.Korea could have gone the way of S. Korea and established a vibrant modern economy, etc, etc. Instead, it chose to install a socialist centralized economy – a proven tactic for economic failure; it chose to reject democracy and individual entrepreneurship, and it chose to use a great proportion of its income on the military rather than on developing a strong economic infrastructure.
If it had developed the economic infrastructure, it wouldn’t need the military as a bargaining chip for economic aid.
Jimmy Carter, interview with CNN (upon his return from North Korea), June 22, 1994
JUDY WOODRUFF: …. Are you absolutely persuaded that the North Koreans are going to honor this agreement, that while the talks are going on that it’s not just a matter of buying time on the part of the North Koreans, that they will not secretly pursue the program they were pursuing earlier, nuclear program?
JIMMY CARTER: Judy, I’m convinced. But I said this when I got back from North Korea, and people said that I was naive or gullible and so forth. I don’t think I was. In my opinion, this was one of those perfect agreements where both sides won and got what they wanted and there were no-nobody blinked, nobody had to yield…. I think the most important lesson is that we should not ever avoid direct talks, direct conversations, direct discussions and negotiations with the main person in a despised or misunderstood or condemned society who could actually resolve the issue. And we went through this for ten years when nobody in our government would meet or talk to Yasir Arafat. The Norwegians did, and they were the ones that brought the peace agreement last summer….
Read the whole thing here:
tinyurl.com/gbogs
Persian Hands
NY Sun ^ | 10/10/2006 | John Batchelor
Why did the North Koreans detonate a nuclear weapon now? Who benefits from a clear defiance of the United Nations Security Council? What possible gain could North Korea’s utilitarian despot achieve by humiliating his protector, Beijing, by baiting his enabler, Seoul, and by threatening his adversary, America, in defense of its ally Japan?
Answer this question and you can begin to answer the scale of the threat posed by the North Korean test. Answer this question and you begin to see that the Bush administration faces an enemy that is well prepared to beggar commerce, wreck security, and blackmail the Security Council unless it gets what it wants. Answer this question and you will see that the hands on the nuke weapons test are not Korean but Persian.
Recall three months ago, when North Korea raised an intercontinental ballistic missile on the launch pad and taunted Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo for weeks before firing the weapon into the Japan Sea. At the time, Washington was accused of provoking North Korea by refusing to negotiate face-to-face and by spurning North Korea’s demand for an American guarantee not to attack. Madeleine Albright recently called President Bush’s foreign policy a “mess” and said he should have used Bill Clinton as a special negotiator with Pyongyang to defuse the confrontation. Horsefeathers. On July 4, North Korea launched at least seven missiles within a short time span, one of which was a Taepodong-2 missile capable of carrying a miniaturized nuclear warhead, not because Mr. Bush wouldn’t telephone Kim Jong Il’s bunker but because the test was paid for by, and staged for, Tehran. …-
More:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1717218/posts
Uber-uber-ultra-ultra British leftist rag, The Herald, foams, froths, farticulates.
Headline:
One butt big-talking Bush just can’t kick
The Herald – 29 minutes ago
We should surely invade North Korea without delay.
It possesses the technology to detonate a nuclear device but hasn’t yet developed a delivery system. …-
google news
While we are on the subject of North Korea, this is one of the funniest political videos I’ve ever seen. I wish the Republicans had the guts to run it on tv:
http://www.drudgereport.com/flashma.htm
Negotiations may work,but then again,remember the first gulf war.Saddam agreed to weapons inspectors in return for not being bombed back a couple centuries to the stone age. How did that work out? We are not dealing with honourable people here.
Do we believe they actually detonated a nuke? It’s not looking good for the PRK on that front. Not even a kiloton yield. Fizzle!
They can’t fly a missle, and they can’t detonate nukes… Let’s find out what else they can’t do.
Sure, Steve, the NK’s are looking to deal. And then promptly renege, like they’ve been doing for 30 years.
So what’s the answer?
Unfortunately, the toughest sanctions that can be done, (in the hopes that the NK economy collapses completely, and the existing dictatorship is deposed), will likely not work.
Taking out his nuclear facilities with surgical strikes would likely heat up the Korean war all over again, but may be the only realistic option. The only “good” side of that is the the fact that an army travels on its belly and the NK bellies are empty, giving us a modicum of hope for a short war with the West and the S.Korean economic powerhouse. If the west waits until he has a large functional nuclear arsenal, the cost will be inestimably higher.
I don’t think anyone on the planet is going to come up with an easy way out. WWIV is heating up, and we better face that horrid reality.
Dammit. I do not want to risk my life in some dirty war in a foreign land, but the option is eventually losing it here.
“May you be born in interesting times”…The ultimate curse, indeed!
The USA will never invade North Korea. They have a powerful military and can incinerate Seoul and Japan. They also have a powerful friend, China. This is not Saddam Hussein’s 4th grade army and the usa know that. The USA will only invade and occupy weak countries.