Way to go Flowers. Now poor Dante will get a complex where he analyses every thought to see if he wants sex with disabled children.
Yeah the real problem with NK is that no one really wants the regime to collapse. China would face an enormous refugee crisis, and as Woolen Horde points out the example of Germany doesn’t exactly promise lots of happiness for a Korean unification.
Brilliant. Pretend the responses relate to the Iraq war and it gets even funnier.
South Korea and China wouldn’t let North Korea collapse, aside from any humanitarian concerns (which did actually exist - Koreans weren’t happy about Koreans starving to death), but because a massive flow of refugees that would follow would cripple the region’s economy.
Simon Bone’s is the best. It’s not up at the moment but web.archive.org has it here.
Here’s another good one.
If I were Dante, I’d be worrying a lot more about the fact that Bob Cherub agrees with him.
Obviously Kim has had a much worse effect on his country, for various awful reasons both his fault and not, but for our purposes it’s important to note the US doesn’t make foreign policy decisions based on the welfare of foreigners.
Historically it’s been clearly demonstrated, and especially reinforced as of late, that we make them based on military access and our economic interests. I’d prefer it if we made them based on welfare, but it’s completely laughable to make a moral welfare-based argument as a justification for treating him differently. We clearly don’t give a shit, so it’s just invented moral outrage in service of another goal.
For that matter, it takes some work to come up with a framework where the USSR mostly sticks to its treaties - and butchers millions more than Kim could given a dozen lifetimes - but Kim is uniquely bonkers and treacherous.
Jason, it’s not a binary issue. Our foreign policy is affected by BOTH our concern for the foreigners themselves, and our own selfish interests.
You can argue that the weightings are out of whack - I’d agree with you in some cases.
But to argue that every instance where we help foreign people is in some way an attempt to serve our own interests just seems overly cynical and mistaken.
OK, that doesn’t have a lot to do with the rest of the discussion, though. Our military and economic interests in the region mainly consist around “Hopefully North Korea won’t BLOW [Japan/South Korea] UP”. The sorry state of human rights in North Korea is never brought up in negotiations, sadly correctly so since bringing it up won’t accomplish anything save bringing them to a close quickly.
But as far as treating the DPRK differently - since there has not been any international agreement, ever, that they have complied with, down to and including simple aid agreements (they consistently remove the labels from food aid to conceal the fact that anyone is assisting them, and have an annoying tendency of keeping the trains that the Chinese sent food shipments with, just because, well, they wanted trains), that any agreement they sign is worthless without stringent verification that any other country would view as a violation of their sovereignity. Given that the North Koreans tend to see even tourism as a way to wedge in evil spies, it’s unlikely that that’ll happen. Thus, I don’t see talks as having much of a positive effect any time soon without the Chinese leaning on them heavily.
The USSR also had a hard time being pinned down on treaties, yes, and Stalin killed many more millions than even live in North Korea. But the Soviets, in the end, were usually rational. The Kim regime is not. The Soviets could be counted on, through MAD, detente, and other international agreements, to usually act in their own self interest. The Kim regime doesn’t. That’s the problem. No one knows if Kim is crazy enough to drop a nuke on South Korea if his regime starts to totter. This wasn’t a concern with the Soviets. Even at his most feral and senile Stalin managed to avoid war with the West. The Kim regime is even more unstable and irrational than 1950’s era Stalin, and that’s saying a whole hell of a lot.
Diplomacy doesn’t work when you get a regime like Kim’s that doesn’t play by the basic rules of self-interest. Really, all we can do at this point is what we are doing now - declare publicly that we have no interest in invading North Korea, try to get whatever disarmament we can verify through liberal bribery, even though it will serve to feed the machinery that keeps the Kim regime propped up, and wait them out.
That reminds me of a friend I had back in the day, who would always steal my Brio trains. I finally smacked him around with my stuffed seal enough that he never came back.
Maybe we should try that with Kim. I’ve still got the seal somewhere.
Damn, Jason, is there a single problem or bad person in the world that isn’t the fault of the U.S.?
It should be remembered, Lum, that we painted the Soviets as being just as crazy as the people we consider our enemies today. Even post-Stalin leaders. I’m not actually convinced that he is insane. That just seems too easy a conclusion to reach, and doesn’t really help us to consider how to deal with him.
He seems to be just too exactly the right amount of insane to actually be insane. If that makes no sense to you: think of it this way. As a tinpot dictator with an American unfriendly ideology, he needs to portray himself as just enough insane that we daren’t touch him, but not so insane that we can’t afford to leave him in power.
He manages to strike a surprisingly good balance for someone who is insane.
Also one of the few rational people to have met him, Mariam Albright, concluded that he “wasn’t a nut”. Certainly she believed he had some bizarre ideas, and a naive view of economics, but she also saw that he had a very astute and firm grip on the realities of international politics.
I don’t think Kim Jong Il is literally insane (although he’s been responsible for some really crazy things, like the aforementioned kidnapping of South Korean movie directors to jumpstart the North Korean action movie industry), but I do believe North Korean society as a whole is irrational and unbalanced in a way that is difficult to Westerners to fully grok. Kim Il Sung is still President, for example, despite being, um, dead.
The North Koreans are constantly hammered home the message that literally everything good in life is the personal responsible of Kim Jong Il and everything bad in life is the fault of the Americans, who are still at war with North Korea. Accounts from defectors unanimously attest that while most ordinary people don’t actually believe that Kim Jong Il is as bright as the sun and can walk on water, the constant drumbeat of the personality cult eventually infects even the most “rational” person. Even tourists to North Korea after a week start nodding along with the constant paeans to Kim’s greatness out of habit.
I also believe that when push comes to shove the North Korean leadership (which is the North Korean army, literally) will choose personal self-interest over national self-interest and start a destructive war rather than submit to regime change when the inevitable collapse happens.
The North Koreans are masters at negotiating from a position of weakness, agreed. “Do what we say or we’ll hurt ourselves a lot!”
I think Lum hits the problem on the head.
I’m inclined to think that for most of it’s history, the Soviet leadership really did think that what they were doing was best for their people. Like all politicians, they had selfish interests as well, but I doubt they would have risked national obliteration to save their own skins (Stalin may be an exception to this).
Oh, bullshit. Provide a noteworthy example you couldn’t just as easily argue the other way; it’s harder than you think. By contrast, there’s plenty of interventions (half hte of the South American ones, Hawaii) that have no conceivable interpretation except money.
The only reason we touched South Korea in the first place was that we didn’t want the communist sphere of influence expanding. Now we’re in South Korea to …what, protect them from North Korean invasion? By said starving populace?
I’m just kind of looking at this sentence blinking. Clearly they’re untrustworthy, you’ve convinced me. Seriously, your definition of “insane” or “functionally irrational” seems to be remarkable equivalent to “says and looks funny.” By contrast, what have they done that’s such a bad idea from a definition of self-interest? Their policies have kept them in power so far, and they keep getting versions of what they want.
They’re playing dirty and they act funny. One possibility is to conclude they’re insane and dismiss them, the other is to realize that buried in all that propaganda is some very savvy political operators who consistently beat the US at the diplomatic game.
This is the entirety of your argument, and I see no rational way to support it. I don’t want to have it again, but I think you’re flat out wrong.
Really? What problem did I say was the fault of the US?
Okay, I’m kidding, but you do seem to have an anti-US slant to your posts Jason. Maybe you just hold your own country to higher standards.
Yes. (The military is somewhat less starved than the populace in general.)
Maybe I should have provided more context, such as their entire state ideology being based on self reliance (“juche”) and thus they go to great lengths to deny that any food aid comes to them through the west, who are constantly vilified in propaganda as the cause of all of North Korea’s woes.
But since you’re hellbent on agreeing with them, why should I bother? North Korea’s a wonderful place to live. Very safe. Nothing like that horrible US.
Most people would agree that starving the entire population of your country to fuel a military devoted to the maintenance of your continued rule and nothing else would be outside the national self-interest. Clearly you are not most people.
And how would you do it differently? Should we bribe them more? Maybe we should just withdraw from South Korea, that’d show them! No chance (or historical precedent for that matter) they’d be emboldened to suicidally attack then, nosiree!
I’m tempted to recommend you the writings of Bruce Cumings, because he is literally the only analyst of North Korea outside the Worker’s Party who agrees with you. Just as an example of his rhetoric, he minimizes the North Korean gulags by saying that since they imprison the inmate’s entire family along with him, it’s actually quite congenial. Oh, and the US also imprisons blacks, so we have no right to complain.
You’d like him.
Hey, finally, people are starting to catch onto his theme.
So the allowable logical positions are:
- One is that North Korea is insane and will invade South Korea at the drop of a hat.
- The other is that anyone who disagrees that North Korea is insane loves the Kim regime, thinks they’re just fine, doesn’t mind torture and executions, and also thinks the world can replace all of its guns with flower pots in an orgy of non-violent hippie love.
Did you learn anything from the Iraq debate? There’s not a single-dimensional axis for this.
I have no idea, but then, I’m not a diplomat. They haven’t invaded South Korea or even acted like they’re going to in a long, long time, though, so maybe you don’t need to bomb them or flip out about their incorrigable evil threat.
Not every international problem is Iraq. In fact, my position on North Korea is what yours may well have been on Iraq: isolate them and wait for the leader to go away. (Oddly that was also my position on Iraq, but feel free to keep implying I’m a necon.)
Wrong. North Korea specifically states “We will invade and liberate South Korea. We think Korea should be unified under our rule. We are still at war with the United States and South Korea.” Actually they usually use more florid jargon - they’re quite fond of the word “flunkey” for example. Now, most people blow off NK rhetoric as charming throwbacks to the Cold War or maybe Goebbels, but it’s not like they portray themselves as rational peace lovers. They want the world to see them as a threat because they see that fear as in their interest.
They also in the recent past have tested nuclear weapons and shot missiles over Japan. These are not the actions of people who are exuding hearts and flowers. And since concurrent to all this bellicose military posturing and alienating the rest of the planet, their people are out of food and literally (not figuratively - literally) starving to death, it’s somewhat – what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yes. Insane.
Now, will they actually invade South Korea? At the moment, no. If their society deteriorates to the point where the regime sees its control over their people slipping? Who knows. Kim has been quoted by many high level defectors as being obsessed by the fate of Romania’s Ceausescu (who was lined up against the wall and shot when the revolution came) and won’t let that happen under any circumstance. The question is, is he rational enough to move to a happy bungalow outside Shanghai? Or to go out in a blaze of military glory on the chance he might be able to win a military victory against South Korea? Few outside North Korea believe that’s possible, but given the documented self-delusion of dictatorships, it’s not something we want to bet the lives of everyone in Seoul over.
Kindly point out where I called for the bombing of North Korea. It may be difficult to find amidst all the places where I pointed out that military action was suicidal and diplomatic negotiation was the only means of dealing with them that we have. But if you can find where I flipped out like that, sure!
But calling them evil? Well, yes. They are. I don’t think Iran is, or the Soviet Union post Stalin. But North Korea? Absolutely.