North Korea Returns To The Table 315
EmperorKagato writes, "North Korea has agreed to rejoin the Six Party Talks on its nuclear weapons program. The sanctions placed against North Korea on October 9, 2006 will remain in place; however, financial sanctions will be addressed by the group of the six nations: North Korea, China, Japan, United States, Russia, and South Korea."
China's Trump Card (Score:3, Interesting)
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China and Russia kinda do, kinda don't, leaning towards do.
Japan and USA have decent relations.
Japan and Russia are mixed as well, tending towards not more than do.
China and USA have mixed relations, tending towards not, except for trade.
USA and Russia have mixed relations, tending towards strained.
North Korea is an island. China has the most control, but is reluctant to deal with NK mainly to keep the hordes of refugees from crossing into China. Wha
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It will in one sense:
People who are wealthy enough to live in safety and comfort will develop an aversion to violence, all else being equal. It's the guy who's got nothing to lose who is the most dangerous.
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North Korea's usual demand has been bilateral talks, just NK and the US. If there's a rational reason, something you should never take for granted with those people, the reason would be that they'd feel more pressure if all the neighbors were on one side of the tabl
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Diplomats are useful when the weather is fine. When it rains, however, they tend to drown in every raindrop.
Charles de Gaulle
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I think you mean "China would rather have an unstable failed state with nuclear weapons on its border than a collapsed failed state with nuclear weapons there."
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From what I have heard, the worst-case scenario (from the Chinese point of view) is not a failed North Korea (although the idea of having millions of Koreans pouring into China isn't a fun one for the Chinese). In fact, the last thing the Chinese want is North Korea turning into a stable democracy, united with South Korea, while continuing host 50,000 US Troops. Sort
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I won't be pretty, and it won't be nice, but it could work.
If you starve them to the point that even the soldiers begin feeling the effects, they'll eventually turn on their own government and topple it in order to get food. Especially if we bombard them with propaganda to counter the inevitable "those westerners are evil and they're the ones starving you!" propaganda.
Like I said, not pretty, and not nice, but it could work. I don't think anyone is willing to go that far though.
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Nobody wants an overnight reunification like happened in
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Presumably they have an emergency plan should he die sooner (or perhaps if they find he should need to die sooner), but they're content with the status quo. Kim pisses off the US but costs China very lit
More Reasons to Hate Us (Score:5, Interesting)
Economic sanctions aren't going to hurt him, they're just going to make the poor poorer. Kim Jong Il keeps his Generals and powerful friends happy with presents and they, in turn, keep him in power despite the stupid things he's doing and preaching. Do you hope to restrict trade so far that he can't give the top dogs presents and they take him out with a coup? Good luck.
So what effect will our sanctions have?
Oh, they'll destabilize a nation that has nuclear weapons. Great idea.
It'll give people and nations an example of us starving another nation. Another great idea.
I'm not saying the sanctions are a bad idea, I'm just saying that there's gotta be a better way to pressure this guy--and I don't mean militarily. How about we increase worthless goods like blankets & food & water and only keep out things like cognac & caviar? How about we freely distribute unbiased publications of the history of Asia and the Korean peninsula? Come on, use your imagination here, you're a freaking government!
Re:More Reasons to Hate Us (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait, they didn't...
Re:More Reasons to Hate Us (Score:4, Insightful)
And then there's the rhetorical win: "See, that country is trying to prevent you from having food and shelter! Aren't they evil!"
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I think the ultimate goal with sanctions is to make the North Korean people suffer now so that they will take control of their government through revolution. If their leadership is clearly not taking care of them the North Korean people should get pissed off.
Although the approach makes logical sense it seems as though revolution isn't really possible these days especially in a place like NK. Sanctions end up only harming the people you are ultimately trying to push to help themselves. Of course sanctions
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The NK people are already suffering more than just about any nation in the world.
If they haven't done this already, then I think it's fair to say they can't.
I don't have an answer either, but penalizing starving peasants is never the right thing.
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I totally agree, as I said, revolution in NK is not possible. The problem is that you have to retaliate in some form otherwise NK will spin even further out of control. So far the only solution I think that is even remotely sustainable is for China to annex NK but that brings a whole host of problems too. I'm not sure how that would pressure South Korea either.
Something needs to be done. Targeted sanctions could work but are nearly impossible to enforce.
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Neither is subsidizing their dictator.
Have they tried.... (Score:2)
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It's a stupid theory, like all collective punishment, especially one that conflicts with patriotism, especially under totalitarian regimes which keep the people misinformed about why the economics ar
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Sanctions in such a case probably wouldn't work against NK as many believe already that NK is the best country in the world and it is only the Evil third world country the USA run by an evil dictator that is stopping the rest of the world from giving NK food.
with that mindset it is doubtful they would back down because of sanctio
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If the government you're dealing with is vulnerable to sanctions, i.e. they give a shit about their populace like France, Germany, Japan, etc. they are PROBABLY already amenable to negotiation and diplomacy. Sanctions just become the 'biggest hammer in the toolbox' of diplomacy between what I'd call 'reasonable' nation/states.
But if you have rogue states, dictatorships, or thugocracies (as you state)
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We tried the military option before and failed.
Next
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Arguments for war (Score:3, Interesting)
If you believe that a nuclear North Korea really would use a weapon against a populated area (either in the U.S., or South Korea, or Japan), and that the odds of them doing this only increase with time until it becomes a near certainty, and you also believe that it is the duty of governments to protect the lives of their own citizens first, and enemy states' citizens second, then there is an argument for a first strike against North Korea.
I wouldn't necessarily call it
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In a country where radios can only tune in Government run stations, I'm sure Kim will allow foreign publications to be freely distributed. Damn unlikely.
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Basically Butterball's country is the equivalent of a nation state run by the sopranos.
Why doesnt China simply kill him, and his top echelons of leadership.
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The US must take this opportunity to show a bit of good will. Remember, the Iranians are watching...
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HAHAHAHAHA right. The countries' armies came out and seized all of the commercial oil companies and forced them at tankpoint to sell oil to Iraq for insane profits.
Nice try. BTW, American oil companies were in on it too.
One success story (Score:2)
I hope someone is making realistic calculations about how many people Mr. Kim needs to keep sweet, how much hard currency that requires, and how much hard currency would come in with trade shut off and ships getting searched for drugs, counterfeit money, and exported weapons.
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The idea that our leaders can just give the Big Fungoo to any country that's not behaving the way we like is a demonstrably stupid one, which George Bush has turned into a specialty. But that's just how he sees the world: It's US and THEM. And if you're not US, well, then you exist only at our pleasure. It's a surefire recipe to turn us into the Cylons.
I pray that at the very least, a week from now he's have a little oversight for a change.
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Every time I turn on the news, it's Team America (Score:2, Funny)
I guess that's what happens (Score:3, Funny)
Ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
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There is no going back. There is only going forward. Nukes are not going away despite the elaborate fantasies of a few.
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How's that a problem? Iran hasn't attacked another country in over one hundred years. Sounds like a defensive policy to me. Oh, that's right, they are a different religion from you and therefore are eeeeevil.
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This leaves two options: concealed or otherwise disguised weapons (eg, the oft-cited cargo-container-bomb), or "rogue states". And tell me, how, exactly, does the US building more nukes protect it from e
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The US has a long history of owning nukes and a s
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Thousands of dead people and five armed babies are the perfect reason to not have nukes.
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I'm no fan of nuclear weapons, but I saw nothing in the article you linked that said the administration was planning to build more powerful nukes. Rather, as I read it, they were planning eventually to repla
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Seriously though, anyone who thinks that EVERYONE would agree to disarm needs to send me some of what they are smoking. As another poster put it, the genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back.
As if we have the right. (Score:2, Insightful)
This whole (queue scare quotes...) "WMD" thing is just silly. Sovereign nations should be able to do whatever the hell they want in their own borders w/o the meddling of other nations. Sure, it may be an eventual problem for other nations, but any nation should realize that the retaliation they would incur should they use those weapons in this modern time would
Re:As if we have the right. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with NK is that they sell their tech to anybody who's willing to pay. That would include terrorists. And it's kind of hard to retaliate against them, as we're finding out. So it seems a wise idea to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to more countries. I believe if you looked for "non-proliferation treaty" you might find that pretty much everybody is trying to do exactly that.
Next up - China. They're not exactly "pursuing" nuke tech - they have it for quite some time. They just have less than we do. I'm sure you meant India & *Pakistan*. We're not happy about either, but neither is run by somebody who's completely insane. As a result, their economy is healthy enough that we simply can't pressure them. Hence, less efforts. (Plus, we need Pakistan for the War On Terror - of course we're making deals when it's in our best interests. Or at least, when we think so)
Let's go to the "who would trust us with nukes" bs. The rest of the world pretty much does, because we've so far shown a remarkable constraint when using them. Yes, we used them at the end of WW2 - to spare a couple of hundred thousand lives a traditional invasion would've cost. Was it a nice thing to do? No, but war is never nice. We haven't done so since then, and up until a few years ago we had fairly sane leaders. That, I think, makes the US a bit more trustworthy than NK. If this was really a US problem only, why do you think China and Russia are in the negotiations?
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Ignore the BS of sparing a couple hundred thousand lives at the expense of a couple hundred thousand lives argument and stick with the reality that the world including the U.S. did not know the horror dropping such a weapon would cause and how long it's effects would linger. Yes, you can argue they knew a little about radiation but at the time radiation poisoning will still a new condition and they didn't know much about it. Now they know it will affect the children and their children's children.
I agree t
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Musharraf is a warlord. He is an ally the way Saddam was an ally in the 70s. Saddam wasn't 'insane' either.
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Like Sudan [wikipedia.org]?
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Do you think we would have looked kindly about other countries telling us how to handle internal issues such as those above?
I'm certainly not playing down the massive attrocities that people in *many* countries endure at present. But the US is no shining beacon of morality, be it now or 200 years ago.
I tend to think we (the international community) should proceed *very* carefully when meddling with another cul
Re:As if we have the right. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you look back far enough into any nations history, I can almost promise you that one group of people was beating the piss out of another group of people. The point of looking into the past isn't to remove all moral authority from everyone. I am Jesus, the fucking Norwegians who are easily one of the most peaceful people in this world sent Viking raiders against England, that doesn't make Norwegians blood thirsty savages. The Germans committed horrible acts of genocide a scant 65 years ago, and they too qualify as one of the most peaceful nations on this world. Everyone has done something "bad", get over it.
The point is that you can try and prevent such horrible mistakes from happening again. Yes, the US used to import slaves and slaughter its natives. The US now actively seeks to shut down the remaining slave trade in this world and was one of the many nations instrumental in helping the racist South African out of power. That is a *good* thing. If anything, the US with its sullied past on racial equality was a shinning example of how you can reverse the tied in a relativity short period of time.
This whole historical relativism crap is the bane of peace in this world. Every group in the world points to some historical injustice that explains why it is okay for them to commit atrocities they now seek to commit. The Israelis and Palestinians will probably both cease to exist as nations with their fingers still securely wrapped around each other's throats, all the while screaming that the other one started it.
Fuck the past.
I'll happily trust Germans to broker peace deals and safe guard the peace even though they were once raced armies around the world dishing out genocide. I'll merrily trust that a Japanese navy has only peaceful intentions, despite the fact that Japanese ships used to once terrorized the entire pacific. I will also happily trust the Americans to not use their pile of nukes as they did throughout the entire Cold War, even though they once nuked another nation at the height of a genocidal war over 60 years ago. North Korea on the other hand I do not trust with a fucking pocket knife, much less a nuke. I don't have a lack of trust in North Korea because of some ancient wrong they did, but because RIGHT NOW, they are a brutal totalitarian dictatorship that visits unimaginable suffering upon its own people. This is a nation that tests fucking chemical weapons on its own people. This is a nation that steals food from its own starving populace to maintain a massive military. This is nation that, regardless of past deeds or misdeeds, is completely unworthy of our trust RIGHT NOW.
So cram all your historical finger pointing. The simple fact of the matter is that RIGHT NOW, North Korea is roughly the last nation in the world that should be playing with nukes, and it is a damn fine thing that the rest of the world is trying to keep them from doing so.
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Yeah, and white people owned slaves. We should be ashamed of ourselves (if we're white) for being slave owners even though no one who will read this has ever owned a slave (legally).
The argument of the US being the ones who used the bomb is old. The guys who had the power to make that decision have been worm food for longer than most posters here have been alive.
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Perhaps because only two nuclear weapons have ever been used at a time of war and none have been used since then? Despite the Cold War and Russia threatening to park nuclear weapons off our souther coast, we managed to keep the finger off the trigger and wiping the Soviet Union off the face of the map. Imagine that. Perhaps the U.S.,of all countries, is in the best position to make that choice BECAUSE we have made the decis
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1 name, Hitler
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Why? Because they are uncool? Let's see which nation is the most successful in the next 50 years; Libya, North Korea, or Iran. I know who my money is on. Kadafi did the smart thing, dropping his program in return for every other nation dropping whatever international beef it had with Libya. It's good for the people, and its good for stability in the government. Having nukes or a nuke program sim
Could it have something to do with.... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6069606.s
Just a thought.
And for a slightly different angle on all this, (Score:3, Interesting)
Please mod up (Score:2)
Excellent article, with a lot of historical detail. Good find.
Keeping NK talking is the only real option (Score:2)
As much as I'd like to see KJI push up the daisies, I'm afraid the options of all major players are limited.
Economic sanctions are the only real cards left worth playing, and they're still dicey. Let's assume they actually work. You have a number of scenarios to deal with afterward:
Back at the table with dice in hand..... (Score:2)
Sanctions are going the wrong way (Score:2)
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Uh, yeah, which they promptly shut down as soon as we upheld our part. Fact is, the former administration got screwed by NK who did not uphold any of our agreements. Now this is not the fault of the previous admin, they get an A for effort, but it would be a completely boneheaded move if our current admin were to trust NK again.
Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice..
We have that saying in Texas, too! (Score:3, Funny)
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Actually, the current administration has a lot to do with the recent escalation:
On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would "respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations."
Four days later, the
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North Korea has never bargained in good faith and it's way past time they were held accountable for this.
William
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You mean you don't think that the real criminal here is the cop, who did the reprehensible thing of identifying the reckless driver?
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Oh my. (Score:2)
No wonder Reagan won in a landslide.
Since leaving offive, Jimma's showed himself to be a typical small-town Southern politician: small-minded, and with a mean streak a mile wide.
Jimm
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The hole in the wall over your head behind you.... (Score:2)
Go look up what happened when Marge was sent to jail.
Re:The hole in the wall over your head behind you. (Score:2)
OK. OK. I get it. (Score:2)
Gotcha. Thanks. I'll go flagellate myself immediately.
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In the current tax plan, the rich (as a group) pay the lion's share of taxes. Individually, the rich pay a higher percentage of their income (and also, of course, a higher amount of real dollars. The rich are already taxed quite adequately.
"That is the result if the rich are made to pay less tax than the poor."
That is an imaginary situation that has nothing to do with anything. There's not even a propos
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Because... (Score:2)
If you don't like that explanation, nuclear weapons are a technical issue.
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Because it's "Stuff that Matters"?
Because even nerds care about geopolitics?
Because
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Every aspect of our lives has been politicized like crazy over the past 12 years, why should Slashdot be any different?
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Among their worst crazy ideas are the ongoing occupation of Tibet, and the quite open "We will do it just because we want to. Muahahah!" threat to cross yet another international boundary and trash Taiwan. Has either of these crazy ideas been restrained?
No, they make tables their own way in NK (Score:2)
Re:Thank God for GWB! (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, for those of us who prefer some sanity, there's the other description: When Clinton was in power, negotiations successfully stopped Korea's plutonium refinement process, and no weapons were produced. Bush, on the other hand, abandoned that agreement, resulting in Korea restarting their plutonium refinement program, producing several nuclear weapons, and testing one of them successfully.
So why exactly are we thanking him again?
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/200
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