No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

And Now, For North Korea.

The talks in Bejing with North Korea have ended most unsatisfactorialy. The Asia Times has a description today. Here are some excerpts:

The North Koreans stated "...that they were in fact in possession of atomic bombs, were ready to test and even sell them, and had already reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to extract weapons-grade plutonium (enough for six to eight nukes). "

Colin Powell told reporters " The North Koreans should not leave the meetings in Beijing, now that they have come to a conclusion ... with the slightest impression that the United States and its partners will be intimidated by bellicose statements or by threats." He added that the US was looking for ways to "eliminate" the threat posed by any North Korean nuclear weapons program and had "not taken any options off the table" - diplomatese for not ruling out military action.

From the Chinese we get: "A Friday People's Daily commentary titled "The DPRK is not Iraq" [which] read: "With the conclusion of the Iraq war, people have begun to worry that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would become the US's next target of 'preemptive strike'. But if the United States launched [a] 'preemptive' military attack on [the] DPRK, it would not have the moral support from the international community, and militarily it [would] take great risks." Obviously, a commentary like that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense if China didn't believe that the possibility of military confrontation was quite acute."

North Korea is a really strange country. It is the last of the "half-nations" to have resulted from WW II, and the last hard-line Communist nation in the world. The reference to Communism, however, is based on the source of the nation. The actual ideology practiced there a Korean concept called "Juche" which can be translated roughly as "self-reliance". One element that is taught is that civilization originated in Korea and spread from there to the rest of the world.

There is a good recent book called "The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History" by Don Oberdorfer which describes the last 50 years of history since the Korean War rather well, but doesn't seem to me to explain what is going on. It is a one-man dictatorship run until July 7, 1994 by Kim Il Sung, and since by his son, Kim Jong Il. Each has maintained his power in part by a cult of personality (another element of the Juche) in which Kim Il Sung was known as the "Great Leader" (a term otherwise used only for Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung) and Kim Jong Il is known as "Dear Leader". Travel too and from North Korea is extremely limited with a 2002 net migration rate of 0 per 1000 population CIA World Factbook, 2002, so that it is known as the Hermit Kingdom. Its economy was maintained by trade financed by the USSR until the collapse of the USSR, and most of its oil comes from China. Since the collapse of the USSR the economy of North Korea has not been able to feed its own population adequately. It is dependent on international aid for food for its population of 22,000,000 people, yet maintains a 1,000,000 army, a strong missile technology, and has successfully imported nuclear technology, probably from Pakistan.

Even if the North Koreans don't actually have nukes, this does not seem to be a situation that can be dealt with militarily. At the same time, diplomacy isn't a strong point of the Bush administration. Yet there is no third alternative.


posted by Richard at 5:18 AM