P.S. I think if you and your loved ones don’t live in Seoul (aka “the future site of ground zero”) you don’t get to vote on initiating military action against NK.
If only it was that simple. Alas, North Korea is already on the road toward multiple-stage intercontinental missile delivery of nuclear payloads. Maybe we should wait until they successfully test that capability before worrying about the North Korean bomb. Small comfort to Tokyo, which is well within range of NK’s crudest missile systems already. Do the Japanese get a vote on military action?
Or forget missiles, and consider how relatively simple it would be for Kim to deliver a nuclear strike against a U.S. port via oceangoing vessel. Do residents of West Coast port cities get a vote on military action? Do we get a vote the day Kim blackmails us by saying “Give me X or else I’ll hand over the red keys to the anti-American terrorist group of my choice”?
The problem with nuclear proliferation in the globalizing world – as we’ve seen with the iceberg-tip of A.Q. Khan – is that the days of red hotline-phones are over. We face a viral and uncontrollable spread of this capability, unless we act soon to make proliferation an international casus belli.
There was reasonable multilateral progress towards an agreement with North Korea that would have allowed them to give up their nuclear program in return for desperately needed aid, while still allowing them to save face. Clinton was actually quite good at this sort of thing. It looked like there was a surprising chance that it might work, that the North Koreans wanted it to work, if only they could retain some dignity.
Bush Jr. completely pissed on this process…
You have no idea what you are talking about. The Clinton administration’s record on North Korea is one of abject failure. Read some of the books by Clinton’s NK negotiators. They basically say “Yeah it was all totally fucked, but there was nothing else we could do.” Read Robert Gallucci’s book – Galluci was Clinton’s chief NK negotiator throughout the Framework process. Then tell me how much progress was made. Better yet, call him up at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown and ask to interview him. He’s not shy about saying we gained nothing from the negotiation process, except perhaps delaying this crisis by 5-6 years. I guess that’s a victory of sorts.
In the meantime - what do we do? Are there any alternatives that don’t involve either a) NK with a nuclear arsenal or b) full scale war on the peninsula?
Not to be a retarded fuckwit about it, but there’s plenty that can be done but won’t be done due to international failures of diplomacy. Let’s start with an economic embargo. Unfortunately the Chinese will nix it, fearful of refugee flows. So we’re back at square one – where it’s the U.S.'s fault that we can’t take actions short of force.
I mean we could just try outright bribery - guarantee their safety, shut up with the regime change stuff, buy their nukes. Odds of that happening under this administration are slightly below 0%.
Oh my god. We have been pursuing a strategy of “outright bribery” for 12 years now. Here we are. You are a fool.
