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North Korea Returns To The Table
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."
I really don't understand the intricacies of international diplomacy, but from what I gather (as well as what has been presented) China has almost complete control over North Korea's wellbeing in every respect. Are these six-way talks really just another way of saying China + North Korea versus Japan, USA, South Korea, and Russia?
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!
My work here is dung.
when there is no earth shattering kaboom.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
North Korea returns to the table, we (Team America) make even more powerful nukes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/10/19/AR2006101901863.html Why do we need even more powerful weapons that we never want to use? How is doing this going to encourage any other country to disarm?
We are all just people.
.... The fact that they kind of need food?
t m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6069606.s
Just a thought.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Oh my, where to begin...
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?
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
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 U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country's access to the international banking system, branding it a "criminal state" guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.
Source: Newsweek
see here
Sure, I guess that's one way to view things.
6 /10/do_you_feel_saf.html is a good recap of the situation around the DPRK's nuclear weapons program, going back to the first Bush administration.
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
Depends on your definition of "worse."
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 a "war," though. I'm not sure what term you use for wiping out another country's infrastructure and population in a fraction of a second, but 'war' seems to imply more back-and-forth than that action leaves room for.
Of course, I don't think that the U.S., or the West in general, has the stomach for that sort of action. We have tacitly accepted the idea of a nuclear North Korea -- really, a nuclear Kim Jong-Il -- in our refusal to contemplate such drastic measures, which are the only guaranteed method of preventing a budding nuclear power from joining the club for real.
Either we acknowledge them as a power, or we annihilate them before they have a chance to become a threat. If we cannot do the latter, then we have already chosen the former.
I'm not saying whether such actions would be a Good Idea or not (probably not), but it's time to admit to ourselves that the age of nonproliferation is over, if we're not going to forcibly prohibit, using whatever means are necessary, countries from acquiring nuclear weapons. If inaction is what our collective conscience dictates, then we should get used to the effects.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
How many natives of this continent has the US government killed? How about imported slaves?
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.