North Korea: what to do?
It's time to focus (go on, just for a couple of minutes) on something called the Proliferation Security Initiative.
Why? Because it might lead to a nasty outbreak of hostilities in east Asia. And with nuclear North Korea in its current mood, that's not a pleasant thought.
This is how it goes: last Monday, North Korea carried out an underground nuclear weapons test. It was far more powerful - and, it seems, rather more successful - than the only previous one it had carried out in 2006.
South Korea, understandably enough, got another attack of the jitters, and announced that it intends to sign up to the Proliferation Security Initiative, which was launched in 2003 by President Bush to give states the right to stop ships and planes which are suspected of illicitly transporting nuclear or other weapons.
North Korea didn't much like that - the obvious implied threat was that South Korea might start trying to interdict North Korean vessels on the high seas - and it responded by announcing that it will no longer abide by the terms of the armistice agreement that ended the Korean war in 1953.
So far, you may think, little more than the usual Korean bellicose rhetoric. But when I asked one proliferation analyst last week if he thinks there is now a heightened risk of a new east Asian arms race, he responded: "No, the risk now is of a war."
Wars, as we know, sometimes start by mistake. Sometimes, one small miscalculation can lead to much bigger ones - and with the current state of the North Korean leadership in flux (Kim Jong Il is said to have suffered a serious stroke last year and did not look well in recent TV pictures), there are real fears about what decisions might be made in Pyongyang.
So, as the UN Security Council tries to find the right words for a condemnatory resolution that won't be vetoed by China, what are the options? Frankly, judging by the people I've been talking to over the past few days, not a lot.
Tougher sanctions seem to be a non-starter, both because China won't agree to them and because all the evidence suggests that sanctions don't influence the North Korean leadership. President Obama wants to engage - but it takes two to play that game, and for now, Pyongyang says it's not interested.
China has some influence, but can't dictate terms. It does not approve of Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, and its main priority seems to be to keep North Korea from total melt-down, because the last thing they want in Beijing is millions of desperate North Koreans flooding across their border.
All of which suggests that the next few months will be tense, to say the least. Much will depend on what North Korea's dysfunctional leadership hope to gain from their latest nuclear test. If they wanted to gain the world's attention, well, they've done that. If they wanted to show their own people that they are still "strong", well, who knows? The truth is that North Korea remains one of the most isolated and enigmatic places on earth.
I'll be in Poland next week preparing for a special edition of The World Tonight on Thursday, live from Gdansk, on the 20th anniversary of the elections in which the Communist party was defeated, spelling the beginning of the end of Communist rule in eastern and central Europe, and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. We'll also be remembering the massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, that same June day in 1989, and discussing the lasting significance of those events with a leading Chinese writer who was there. I do hope you'll be able to join us.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~59~RS~)
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Looks like the world is waking up to its worst nightmares. But it is a nightmare of its own making. It learned nothing from WWII. The situation in NK has gotten beyond control and it's rapidly happening in Iran. Allowing NK to develop into a nuclear power was inevitable because the world deluded itself that NK would be content to live behind its side of the DMZ forever. Will the US wait until NK actually has an ICBM capable of reaching America with a nuclear warhead? No reason to believe it won't based on America's passivity in the face of growing danger over the last 5 decades and it's delusion that it was out of danger when the USSR fell. Europe is worthless as always. No sense in even talking about it. If the US won't protect even iteslf, why should Japan think it would protect it when faced with a nuclear armed NK. Sooner or later Japan will want its own nuclear weapons arsenal. It has one of the world's largest stockpiles of plutonium and its technological knowhow is only second to America's. It could be a major nuclear power in just a few short years.
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The Korean problem is pretty much down to one man. For that reason I reckon that that one man's life is in grave danger
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#2. KennethM wrote:
"The Korean problem is pretty much down to one man. "
One of the grave mistakes of the international system is to believe that all problems relate to the leader of a country. This is almost always wrong. Leader like to think that they are in-charge and the country will do what they say. However this is invariably a half truth. This wrong idea leads to your second statement (that killing one man will solve the problem) and this is also invariably wrong too.
Your logic is I am afraid to say that of comic books and has led to various memorable remarks such as the "we don't do nation building" (by the USA of Iraq)
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Robin asked, "North Korea: what to do?"
Easy. Same treatment given Israel. USA rewarded Israel for their technological advance with an annual grant. Guess North Korea can look forward to their reward for advances in technology now. Who gives it? USA or China?
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I must disagree with the gloomy prospects for the situation in Korea painted by MarcusAurelius. Why? We have been down this path before in the recent past. In 1994, the US and N Korea almost went to war when Bill Clinton, alarmed by the prospect of nuclear development in N Korea insisted on a showdown with the father of the current leader KIm Jong-il. Kim Il Sung, the first leader of the DPRK backed down and agreed to negotiate a treaty called the Agreed Framework which provided for the shutdown of the nuclear weapon program in exchange for the construction of light water reactors in NK to relieve them of their extreme energy problems. George W Bush in his first year in office, accused the N Koreans of cheating on the AF and abruptly abolished the treaty. Several years of hostility and tension ensued without any progress. In the fall of 2006, N Korea detonated a small nuclear device in an explosion that rocked the world and ignited speculation that an arms race would rapidly worsen the security picture in N East Asia. But a few months later the six-party talks in Beijing announced a breakthrough agreement in which N Korea would dismantle their main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and stop reprocessing of weapon grade plutonium. During the rest of the year, they did pretty much everything that was promised including a return of IAEA inspectors and the blowing up of the cooling towers at the reactor. A much ballyhooed performance of the New York Philharmonic orchestra also was allowed to take place by the reclusive government. Now we appear to have regressed again to a state of hostility with a second nuclear test explosion and a ramp up of missile testing. With the history of hot and cold relations outlined here, there is no reason to despair and abandon hope. We have been here before. Most importantly, the Obama administration has staked its reputation on using diplomacy as its chief tool in conducting foreign policy. This is unlike the Bush administration with its allies, the neo-conservatives, whose hawkish approach to foreign policy scared the living daylight out of the American people, at least those who preferred peace to war as the main support of foreign policy.
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