US looking at giving security assurances for North Korea

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030905214619.te6s9mdl.html

The United States is looking at how it can give North Korea the security assurances it has demanded, as it prepares for a planned next round of talks in a nuclear crisis mediation effort, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday.

Powell told reporters that the issue was the only price Pyongyang had so far formally asked of the US side.

"The only thing that North Korea has said to us that they would like to see from the United States is a security assurance that we are not planning to attack them or invade them," Powell said after meeting Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez.

"We have said that and they wish to see this assurance provided in some form that they would have confidence in.

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[FatbackSlim]

1. Assurances

This would be a terrible mistake on our part.

[NNN0LHI]

2. You wouldn't say that if you lived in Seoul, South Korea I betcha n/t

[FatbackSlim]

3. I'm not sure it matters where I live...

Nuclear blackmail is pretty bad wherever you are. There's not a chance North Korea is going to give up its weapons program if we back down in the face of it. If they get their security assurance, it'll just be a couple of years before their next demand...perhaps trade agreements, or diplomatic recognition, or whatever.

We certainly don't need to attack them, but we should be trying to squeeze the life out of the regime.

[htuttle]

4. There used to be a phrase for what you call 'nuclear blackmail'

"Mutually Assured Destruction"

[FatbackSlim]

5. Not quite...

Neither we nor the Soviets (nor the other declared nuclear powers) went around saying "Do this or I'll nuke you", which is what we'll get from North Korea. How many times have they threatened to 'unleash a sea of fire' or whatever because someone didn't call Kim Jong Il both handsome *and* charming in the same sentence?

[htuttle]

6. You man not be old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis

But there were several times that demands were made from both sides (well...all 3 sides, really) during the Cold War. These were backed up with an implicit 'Or Else'.

[FatbackSlim]

7. Good point

I had forgotten the Cuban Missile Crisis...and yes, it was well before my time.

Even so, implicit 'or else' wasn't so bad, given that it was also generally understood among the nuclear powers that MAD was a kind of framework for stability. With North Korea, there's no such understanding, and I'm not at all confident there *can* be such an understanding; they are, to put it mildly, nuts.

I also don't believe that propping up and protecting North Korea serves any good purpose; all that will do is extend the misery and death of its people for years into the future.

[htuttle]

8. For one thing, Kim Jong Il might be weird...

...but according to anyone who's interviewed him in person, he's not crazy.

Two, you need to understand the nature of fascist/dictatorial regimes and the way they control their people. Threatening them with invasion generally only strengthens their control over their own people (case in point: The Republican party in the US).

Left to their own devices (such as the diplomatic track they were on prior to Bush's selection), they would gradually open to the South. Increased communication with their own former countrymen in the ROK is what will lead to Kim Jong Il's downfall -- not threatening them with war (explicitly or implicitly).

[NNN0LHI]

9. Nuts? I sure hope to hell you don't consider the USA building enough...

...nuclear weapons, and the means to deploy them at a moments notice which could destroy the world many times over is the act of a country that is sane then. That sounds suicidal to me. But what do I know?

Don