N. Korea: Kim Jong Il's bombshell (NPT regime under threat)

Economist ^ | 05/28/09

[TigerLikesRooster]

Kim Jong Il's bombshell

May 28th 2009

From The Economist print edition

Isolated it may be, but North Korea’s antics do damage far beyond its own reach

Reuters/AlamyHE HAS been coaxed, cajoled, censured and sanctioned. Yet whenever it suits North Korea’s boss, Kim Jong Il, he spews out new threats. For years he has managed to extort cash, oil and other goodies for then quietening down, only to behave even more threateningly next time. Can nothing be done to make this serial rule-breaker blink?

With his second nuclear test and multiple missile launchings (see article), North Korea’s Dear Leader has ignored the hand that President Barack Obama has said he is ready to extend to America’s erstwhile enemies. He has also delivered a nuclear-powered slap in the face to China, his semi-backer and the chief proponent for the past six years of a strategy of come-what-may patience, negotiation and perks in an effort to humour Mr Kim out of the bomb business. But patience is not always a virtue in dealing with a regime as practised at blackmail as Mr Kim’s. For unless he now pays a seriously high price for his defiance, the message heard by others, particularly Iran, still mulling how far they should push their own nuclear plans is that they too can have a bomb—if they are prepared to be belligerent enough, for long enough.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[TigerLikesRooster]

[TigerLikesRooster]

[AmericanInTokyo]

EXCELLENT program just ended on the national public Japanese television network, NHK Broadcast Satellite-1, about 15 minutes ago here in Tokyo (and aired nationwide) called 土曜解説 .

The special segment was on North Korea.

Very good analysis, particularly by two analysts who were on the show. (Even if one was a bit in the appeasement camp).

The stark conclusion they came to at the end of this program:

Obama Administration, already four months old, essentially has NO NORTH KOREA POLICY WORKED OUT YET AND THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING, AND IMPORTANT OFFICIALS TO HANDLE THESE MATTERS HAVE NOT EVEN BEEN CONFIRMED BY SENATE OR OTHERWISE PUT IN PLACE.The inference was that North Korea knows this and of course with their own accelerated schedule...Kim Jong il could kick the bucket, the power vacuum struggle, the stated objective of becoming a "major military power" by 2012, have all fast tracked North Korea and is the explanation and interpretation for all the activity we are seeing.

In essence, the unspoken concept was that Obama is weak, at the very least, they are unprepared and uncoordinated in one big clusterf.... This has been the general interpretation here at FR for days.

[Always Right]

Now is not the time to have such a pussy in the White House.

[Bon mots]

Now is not the time to have such a pussy in the White House.

[luvbach1]

Is this a rude awakening for the community organizer in chief?

[Dixie Yooper]

Let’s try giving him GM stock!

[monocle]

When your foreign policy is talk nice and apologize for Bush’s farts, what can one expect?

[djf]

Honestly, I don’t think the Chinese will stand for destabilization in the region.

UNLESS

Unless they can somehow parlay it into a play for Taiwan.

[mkjessup]

Good Morning (coming up on 0600 Eastern Time) AiT.

Good points and insight as always, and it bears repeating once again that the reason we are dealing with Comrade Chia Pet and North Korea at this point is because of the abysmal failure of George W. Dumbazz who chose the route of diplomacy, the good-for-nothing ‘Six Party Talks’, and failing to take out Kim Jong Ill when he had the chance.

GWB early on announced that Iraq, Iran and North Korea were an ‘Axis of Evil’, but after evening the score with Saddam, those other two legs of that ‘Axis’ seemed to take on less importance, the appeasers and surrendercrats at the State Department took over, put THEIR teleprompter in front of GWB and told him what to say, and he said it.

The result?

BOTH North Korea and Iran are crossing that nuclear threshold from which there is no return that doesn’t end up with a mushroom cloud over SOMEbody’s city, and thanks to GWB not taking action when he was in a position to do so, those potential mushroom clouds are liable to be over Seoul, perhaps Tokyo, and when Iran gets their operational nuke, Tel Aviv.

So while it is absolutely true that TKU (aka ‘The Kenyan Usurper’) is an ignorant phuckwit, his predecessor who KNEW BETTER, was an equal and equivalent phuckwit because he not only knew what the threat was, he FAILED TO ACT.

Let the BushBots weep, wail and whine, they can’t handle the truth anyway.

[saganite]

Bush’s fault. Nice analysis. /s/

[Recovering_Democrat]

Wow, “The Economist” is promoting a strong reaction to NK?

Seems like the media changes their tune whenever a lib gets into office.

Idiots.

[Petronski]

Bush’s fault. Nice analysis.

Seriously.

How does the world get by without the half-assed analysis of such under-informed armchair CinCs?

[when the time is right]

Well since we are turning the clock back lets go back to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton...remember how Jimmy went over there HIMSELF and solved the “North Korea” problem for Bill by giving them a nuclear power plant? That's Jimmy for you. Rush off and fix the world's problems and get yourself a Nobel prize.

[Jim Noble]

Two points:

1) We are not in charge of who runs barbarian satrapys halfway around the world, and most of us don't care.

2) While you are worrying about something that's none of our business, a communist is in the White House and Liberty is being strangled in her cradle.

Forget Korea. The war is here.

[lt.america]

Let's go back to Ford if we want to lay blame. NK should have been taken out after they butchered Bonifas.

I have said it before and had everyone freak out, but NK does not worry me as much as Iran does and the fact of the matter is we are really impotent to do anything because of China.

Bush played the hand he was dealt from the previous admins. Whether it does not agree with your foreign policy view, we really had one shot at Korea without any interference and Ford decided to cut down a tree instead.

[mkjessup]

Bush’s fault. Nice analysis. /s/

The truth hurts doesn't it?

It was under the Bush Administration that it was determined that North Korea was not adhering to the agreements signed off on by the Clinton Administration. That was impacted by GWB clearly identifying North Korea as a rogue state on a par with Iraq and Iran, engaging in behavior which would in past times be considered an act of war.

If Bush had done more than run his yap about North Korea, we wouldn't be watching the slow motion train wreck we are right now.

[mkjessup]

Well since we are turning the clock back lets go back to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton...remember how Jimmy went over there HIMSELF and solved the “North Korea” problem for Bill by giving them a nuclear power plant? That's Jimmy for you. Rush off and fix the world's problems and get yourself a Nobel prize.

Those are points well taken and worth stating. However the problem of North Korea's nuclear weapons program was identified and made the focus of GWB's Administration, when they realized Pyongyang was not keeping the agreements made by the Clinton team (and Jimmah), they called them out and made North Korea's violations a critical issue and rightly so.

Unfortunately, those so-called 'Six Party Talks' were a flaccid response and we are now witnessing how inadequate an approach that was.