Two takes on North Korea....
Charles Krauthammer on NKorea...
Last night I predicted that the administration would do exactly the wrong thing and call ... for a return to the Six-Party talks. Well sure enough, our envoy to North Korea, who's now in Beijing, last night called for, yes, a return to the talks.
This is after he had a meeting with the Chinese and he announced that it was extremely successful, that we and the Chinese had agreed ... on the need for -- strong measures? Retaliation? Sanctions? No. On the need for multilateralism. ...
To return to the talks is exactly the wrong thing because it's exactly why -- if there's any logic at all to what's happened -- that's why Pyongyang has been doing this: (a) the attack with the artillery, and (b) the revelation earlier this last week of this vast, advanced facility for uranium enrichment.
The point is this is a regime in transition, a regime in a succession crisis, that is in economic disaster. The people are starving. It needs [outside] aid because we and the South Koreans and the Japanese have correctly cut it off years ago, and this is the way it [North Korea] beckons us into negotiations where, again, it will offer a phony agreement on some kind of halting of perhaps the uranium or plutonium program, and we will once again subsidize them. ...
I think everybody understands that the only outcome of this eventually that will be considered a success is if the regime eventually implodes and collapses of its own inefficiency and irrationality -- in fact lunacy in the way it governs itself.
And one way to do that is not to continue what we have been doing for 16 years -- [which] is negotiating and periodically caving in to threats like this, or attacks like this, with carrots, meaning keeping the economy of that state, which is really teetering on the edge of collapse, keeping it going...
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Mike Walker on China and NKorea...
All,
Here is a report from the AP:
BEIJING – When North Korea tested a nuclear device last year, China issued bland criticism and urged Pyongyang to resume diplomacy. After a South Korean navy ship was sunk, most likely by a NorthKorean torpedo, Beijing sent its sympathies but called the evidence inconclusive.
Now that North Korea has unleashed an artillery barrage on a South Korean island that killed four people — including two civilians — and raised tensions in the heavily armed region, Beijing again appears unwilling to rein in its neighbor.
For all China's growing international might, its tolerance of North Korea's wayward behavior shows how differently Beijing sees the world — or at least its corner of it.
"There is zero chance of China, either in open or in private, putting major substantive pressure on North Korea," said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Beijing's Renmin University.
If major damage is inflicted on South Korea from the irrational and deadly actions of North Korea, either literally or economically, the long-term damage will ultimately fall on China.
North Korea only exists state because China makes it so.
While most of the world is working to build a better future, such as the emerging powers in India and Brazil, China looks foolishly backwards. Its relationship to North Korea is neither progressive nor enlightened, it is a throw back to a failed "kowtow" relationship going back to the days of decadent Chinese emperors and ever subservient Korean kings.
What China seems incapable of seeing is that it cannot sponsor, however covertly, a horrific war in East Asia without severe consequences any more than the Japanese militarist could exploit their power a century ago. Both courses were and are doomed to tragic failure.
China is at a crossroad. It either advances the world forward in peace or helps to plunge it once more in to darkness and relentless warfare. The sad reality is that China is an immature power. It has no history of treating other nations as equals and is struggling, too often unsuccessfully, with the concept of equality of nations and races in East Asia. To paraphrase Churchill, it seems that if you live in East Asia then the Chinese must either be at your feet or at your throat.
It does not have to be that way but only the Chinese can make that choice.
Mike
