We hear talk all the time about how "it doesn't matter" that there were no WMDs in Iraq, we were justified in overthrowing their government because Saddam was a totalitarian who killed tens of thousands. Interesting. North Korea is the ONLY country in the world to experience negative population growth for the last 5 years. People are shot for trying to swim across the river into China to get away from the starvation. The principle crops in North Korea are Opium and tobacco (for counterfeit cigarettes). Yet, rather than hardball these people, the U.S. has a policy of coddling them, approaching them with diplomacy. Why? Because we don't know how they'll react, really. That, and we don't want to tick off China by attacking their buffer zone to South Korea and Japan.
This is likely the reason we don't push more strongly for an independent Taiwan, as well. Sort of a quid pro quo type situation. But I digress...
North Korea's Kim Chong-Il is one of the hardest world leaders to understand. I have no doubt that he would be willing to use a Nuclear Weapon on the Penninsula, especially if it appears he's going to lose his power and his Juche ideal. That's probably the most concrete reason we don't intervene on their regime to help the poor North Koreans who can't fight for themselves against the oppression. Still, if the U.S. has such a vested interest in human rights, wouldn't it make sense to follow through in this situation?
3 comments:
wait a minute, are you asking for u.s. foreign policy to be logical? tsk tsk. you should know better than that! ;-)
We're talking about a country that had a population of about 24 million in 1995 and has about 22 million now. That's a significant drop...
I do find North Korea the scariest country right now, because its leadership does not seem to respond to any rational norms -- and because it's got China protecting its back. I have to say that the Clinton administration didn't help things because, to the extent Korea's leadership to rationally respond to stimuli, the Clinton policy was consistently to reward Korea for rogue behavior and promise-breaking. Even crazy people understand those types of rewards.
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