Maybe I Missed It...Does Someone Have A Clue To What NK Is Hoping For?

Mr.Conley said:
Where did you get the idea that I wanted to reward him. I'm saying that we can't attack him without massive allied civilian casualties.
I put that badly, sorry. I think there will be no blockade, no sanctions, and never seriously thought there would be military intervention of any kind.
I blockade would be ideal in many ways, but you'd have to get China and Russia to agree to block any shipments over their border as well. That would be difficult. Things are looking a bit up though, apparently the North Koreans launched this missle despite Chinese protests earlier in the week. We could see a cooling in Chinese/North Korean relations.
The Chinese/NK relations have been not so good for quite awhile. China does not want the NK people, who try like crazy to get there, for food. Now NK has taken to keeping their train cars, which the Chinese had sent full of food.

However, Kim is communist. Whether or not he listens, respects the Chinese, doesn't really matter. Publically they will protect him. Who knows, maybe the Chinese will do him in. :dunno:
 
How many times does one do the same thing, before realizing it's not working?

http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/hottopic/?id=110008627
Pyongyang Highlight Reel
Kim Jong Il's negotiating history, and ours.

Saturday, July 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

North Korea's Kim Jong Il joined our Independence Day celebrations this week by firing several medium-range missiles and one long-range Taepodong-2 missile, the latter capable of reaching Seattle had it not blown up a few seconds into its flight. The "Dear Leader" now threatens to conduct more tests. What does he want?

The conventional view is that he wants direct talks with the U.S. leading to security guarantees, normalization of ties and an end to Pyongyang's economic isolation. And this, it is further said, is the happy state toward which North Korea and the U.S. were headed in the late 1990s until the Bush crew started talking about the "axis of evil" and pre-emption, thereby provoking Kim's current discontent. All will be well, moreover, if President Bush drops his gratuitously hostile attitude toward Kim and picks up where the Clinton Administration left off.

The amazing thing is that serious people purport to believe this after 20 years of contrary evidence. So we thought it might be instructive to recount some history, a sort of diplomatic highlight reel, of U.S. negotiations with Kim over the years. It helps to explain how Kim thinks he can fire missiles toward his adversaries with impunity.

In December 1985, North Korea signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) under pressure from the Soviet Union. Until that time, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. body charged with enforcing the NPT, was only aware of one nuclear power plant in the North, a small research reactor supplied by the Soviets in 1977. In their initial declaration to the IAEA, however, Pyongyang owned up to operating a second small reactor, a plutonium reprocessing plant, a fuel fabrication plant, as well as to building two larger reactors. The North also admitted it had separated about 100 grams of plutonium through reprocessing.

But according to a book by David Fischer (an excerpt of which is published on the IAEA's Web site), the IAEA quickly concluded that the North had probably separated more plutonium than it had declared, and that it had also disguised the existence of two additional nuclear facilities from the IAEA, facilities they refused to let the IAEA inspect. The North also demanded that the U.S. withdraw its 100 tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea as a condition to its adherence to the NPT.

In 1991, President George H. W. Bush agreed to do just that. That year, North and South Korea signed a joint declaration in which both sides promised not to "test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons," or to "possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities."

Yet in March 1993, Pyongyang reacted to an IAEA demand to visit the two suspect sites by announcing that it would withdraw from the NPT. The Clinton Administration pleaded with the North to suspend its withdrawal and accept IAEA inspections. But as Mr. Fischer recounts, "during the remainder of 1993 and the first half of 1994, [North Korea] continued to frustrate and harass IAEA inspections." Tensions between the U.S. and North Korea mounted until Jimmy Carter's intervention that June, which in turn led to the "Agreed Framework" of October 1994.

Under its terms, North Korea promised to freeze most of its existing nuclear programs, accept IAEA monitoring and comply with its denuclearization agreement with South Korea. In exchange, the U.S. would ease trade restrictions, offer security guarantees, arrange for the financing of two light-water reactors and supply oil. The U.S. met its end of the bargain: It supplied the fuel, arranged the reactor financing, eased economic sanctions and paved the way toward diplomatic recognition, culminating in a visit to Pyongyang by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in October 2000.

Contrary to myth, the Bush Administration continued to honor the terms of the Framework, despite its obvious misgivings. In August 2002, Charles Pritchard, Mr. Bush's special envoy to North Korea, attended the groundbreaking of one of the reactors; State Department spokesman Philip Reedker praised the event as "tangible progress made in construction and the importance to the reactor project's ultimate success."

Pyongyang had a very different view of compliance. In 1998, it fired without warning a Taepodong-1 missile over Japan. In 1999, it delayed by five months a request to inspect a suspected underground nuclear facility. The Clinton Administration responded to the first provocation by attempting to negotiate a missile version of the Agreed Framework, and to the second by promising North Korea food aid in exchange for inspections.

In 2002, based on new intelligence, the Bush Administration accused North Korea of pursuing a secret, uranium-based nuclear-weapons program. Far from denying the accusation, the North readily admitted it and announced that it was a nuclear-weapons state. Pyongyang, it turned out, had been cheating on the Agreed Framework since at least 1997, long before the Bush Administration came to town. The standoff has continued since, punctuated by periodic threats from Kim, and now with more missile threats.

Given this history, Kim is hardly crazy to conclude that if he just threatens enough, the U.S. will deliver what he wants sooner or later. North Korea is a difficult problem, and we don't have any simple solutions. But the beginning of wisdom ought to be not to repeat the mistakes of the past. And the worst mistake would be to reward Kim once again for violating his commitments by sending him more money and more diplomatic prestige.
 
onedomino said:
Nah, the hell with it Gunny. Let's just blow NK to pieces and hope that they don't kill millions of Koreans and Japanese while they are going down. Easy to gamble with their lives, right? By the way, let's just hope they don't figure out how to get a nuke to Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, or wherever you live. Containment is the only viable response. Attacking NK would be irresponsible in the extreme. If it was not, then NK would have ceased to exist many years ago.

"Containment?" I don't call paranoia and appeasement "containment." According to you statement, you don't think we are capable of "containment." SO let's call it what it .... appeasement out of fear.

And NK only exists because Truman preferred appeasement out of fear to stopping this shit with NK and CHina when we really had an advantage.

As far as a US city being hit, that's the chance we take every day just for drawing cards in the game. Not to mention you vastly overrate NK's army.

Perhaps however, you are right. Let's wait until he figures out how to get his missiles to work.:rolleyes:
 
Mr.Conley said:
Yes, think about it, what does Kim have to gain from using a nuclear weapon, exspecially against the United States? If Kim pulls that, then the entire international community is going to condemn him, the US will invade him, and the Chinese and the Russians won't be able to drag their feet. Sure he might off a couple million people, but I doubt Kim would sacrifice his own life and position just to see Los Angeles burn.....

....True, but North Korea realizes that the attention you get from launching a nuclear missle is not the kind of attention you want.

That assumption was made about Saddam Hussein. You're expecting reason and logic from a nutcase.
 
My question is if North Korea is ONLY testing missles why do America want them to stop testing?

p.s. In case you haven't noticed I am a n00b!
 
GunnyL said:
"Containment?" I don't call paranoia and appeasement "containment." According to you statement, you don't think we are capable of "containment." SO let's call it what it .... appeasement out of fear.

And NK only exists because Truman preferred appeasement out of fear to stopping this shit with NK and CHina when we really had an advantage.

As far as a US city being hit, that's the chance we take every day just for drawing cards in the game. Not to mention you vastly overrate NK's army.

Perhaps however, you are right. Let's wait until he figures out how to get his missiles to work.:rolleyes:
Thank God you are not running the show. If one does not fear chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, then he is not playing with a full deck, to say the least. Your disregard for the saftey civilians in America, SK, and Japan is bizarre. In case you have forgotten, or never knew, protecting civilians is the principal function of our armed forces. That is why we will build a robust ABM system to contain NK. You want to shoot at a WMD armed nutcase and hope that he cannot counterpunch to the point that you glow in the dark. Great strategy. Containment is a viable option. It has worked for the last 50 years.
 
onedomino said:
Thank God you are not running the show. If one does not fear chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, then he is not playing with a full deck, to say the least. Your disregard for the saftey civilians in America, SK, and Japan is bizarre. In case you have forgotten, or never knew, protecting civilians is the principal function of our armed forces. That is why we will build a robust ABM system to contain NK. You want to shoot at a WMD armed nutcase and hope that he cannot counterpunch to the point that you glow in the dark. Great strategy. Containment is a viable option. It has worked for the last 50 years.

Containment has NEVER been a viable option amigo.

Containment is, "I give up", please don't hurt me.

containment is, I'm not in this for the long haul, I just want it to be over, over.

Containment is, don't mess up my sand box, what's it going to take so you don't fuck with me?

Containment is, if I've ever pissed you off, I'm sorry, how many millions can I give you to leave me alone?

Containment is, We are cowards, PLEASE don't make us stand up for our rights.

Containment is, YOU stay on your side of the fence, and I'll stay on mind.

Containment is, a fucking joke...................:bs1:
 
trobinett said:
Containment has NEVER been a viable option amigo.

Containment is, "I give up", please don't hurt me.

containment is, I'm not in this for the long haul, I just want it to be over, over.

Containment is, don't mess up my sand box, what's it going to take so you don't fuck with me?

Containment is, if I've ever pissed you off, I'm sorry, how many millions can I give you to leave me alone?

Containment is, We are cowards, PLEASE don't make us stand up for our rights.

Containment is, YOU stay on your side of the fence, and I'll stay on mind.

Containment is, a fucking joke...................:bs1:
So containment of the Soviet Union did not work? I would hardly describe America's spending of trillions of dollars to contain the Soviets as "giving up." Containment of the Soviet Union lead to the dissolution of the Evil Empire, and it will continue to work against NK. Only those with a disregard for SK civilian lives would avocate an attack on NK. If you lived in Seoul, you would not want a rain of NK chemical and biological weapons on your head. When the enemy has WMD then the only sane option is containment.
 
onedomino said:
So containment of the Soviet Union did not work? I would hardly describe America's spending of trillions of dollars to contain the Soviets as "giving up." Containment of the Soviet Union lead to the dissolution of the Evil Empire, and it will continue to work against NK. Only those with a disregard for SK civilian lives would avocate an attack on NK. If you lived in Seoul, you would not want a rain of NK chemical and biological weapons on your head. When the enemy has WMD then the only sane option is containment.

I think part of the problem comes in 'fighting the last war'. I knew I'd come across something that related here. There is a link or two:

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/27985.html
POTUS

Alonzo Hamby
American liberalism, the Cold War, and the Lessons of History

Mr. Hamby, Distinguished Professor of History, Ohio University, is the author of For the Survival of Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s (New York: Free Press, January, 2004).

Everybody seems to like good old Harry Truman these days. Most of the celebration seems to center on his foreign policies and is distinctly bipartisan. A good many conservatives see HST as the policy maker who defined the Cold War far more than such conceptual types as George Kennan and praise his gut anti-Soviet instincts. (See Elizabeth Edwards Spalding’s provocative new book, The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism.)

Centrist liberal Democrats, fighting what increasingly seems a losing battle to save their party from the clutches of Michael Moore, the Kos blogosphere, and Howard Dean, have moved in the same direction, albeit with a wider reach. Peter Beinart’s The Good Fight and Will Marshall’s edited collection With All Our Might have attracted a lot of attention recently. They both laud the Cold War liberalism characterized not simply by Truman but by liberals who joined together in the Americans for Democratic Action to fight Henry Wallace’s pro-Soviet Progressive party insurgency. As some reviewers have pointed out, however, that was then; this is now.

Whether the Truman administration “started” the Cold War is far less significant than the enlightened hand it played in waging it. Protection to Greece, Turkey, and Iran displayed resolve. The Marshall Plan greatly assisted in the economic rehabilitation of a devastated Western Europe. The North Atlantic Treaty and NATO provided guarantees for democracy. The Korean War demonstrated a will to fight naked aggression.

Dynamic young thinkers such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., defined a “vital center” between the extremes of fascism and communism. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr persuasively demonstrated the impossibility of perfect morality in an immoral world—and the consequent necessity of choosing between imperfect options. A younger generation of liberal politicians, most memorably exemplified by Hubert Humphrey, attached themselves to the battle against Stalinism. This retelling is more than a bit simplified; still, the story is a great one, worth remembering today. But the differences give one pause.

The world of 1947-49 was far different than the world of today. The Soviet Union, whatever its inner weaknesses looked like a super-power to almost every observer. No one doubted that Stalin had the divisions to menace a Western Europe that was far too weak to function as an independent force in world politics. We tend to forget that NATO came about because the Europeans wanted it, not because the US insisted on it. The United States controlled a solid majority of the votes in the much smaller United Nations General Assembly and could essentially count on the UN as an instrument of American foreign policy. The “Third World” of former colonial nations had not yet emerged. The United States had the self-confidence that came from victory in a righteous World War II.

All the same, much of the celebration of “vital center liberalism” seems to underplay the real divisions that existed on the American left at the time. The arguments were real and intense; the triumph of the ADA liberals was by no means assured. Moreover, Noemie Emery argues in the Weekly Standard that Beinhart, et al., have a way of mischaracterizing the arguments of their protagonists. Yes, Reinhold Niebuhr warned that American foreign policy had to resist the dangers of hubris, but he also believed that Soviet utopianism was a far greater evil. Maybe Harry Truman had a soft side, but he was a hard-nosed realist who had seen combat in World War I and knew that wars were never clean and antiseptic. (Ms. Emery is at her best when she imagines John Kerry slashing into HST for all his real and imagined blunders in Korea.)

Can we learn from the Cold War liberals? You bet. But let’s get the lessons right. And let’s understand that the Cold War was messy and ambiguous, even if one side possessed more virtue and a better cause than the other.

And, above all, let’s understand that the Cold War possessed a structure and coherence that we can never expect in the “War on Terrorism”—so-called because it would be impolitic to declare a war against Islamic fascism. Who in 1947 could have imagined a war in which one dared not name a deadly enemy?

Beinart, Marshall, and their friends are on the right track. They have something to say to us. But are they really prepared to fight the kind of war that Truman and the ADA liberals committed to in the years after World War II? You decide.

Posted on Monday, July 10, 2006
 
onedomino said:
Thank God you are not running the show. If one does not fear chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, then he is not playing with a full deck, to say the least. Your disregard for the saftey civilians in America, SK, and Japan is bizarre. In case you have forgotten, or never knew, protecting civilians is the principal function of our armed forces. That is why we will build a robust ABM system to contain NK. You want to shoot at a WMD armed nutcase and hope that he cannot counterpunch to the point that you glow in the dark. Great strategy. Containment is a viable option. It has worked for the last 50 years.

Again, you overreact. Nowhere have I stated a disregard for the safety of civilians, nor a disreagard for nuclear, chemcial and/or biological weapons.

I will not be held hostage by either. In case you haven't been paying attention, what is going on now is a result of appeasing the sorry bastard in the 90s. Yet, out of your petty little fear for your personal safety, you'd continue to appease him.

Containment has worked for the past 50 years? That's why he's currently launching ICBMs into the ocean, right? Hardly what I would call "containment."

The principle function of our armed forces is global force projection and warfare, not protecting civilians. Protecting civilians is secondary to those two things, and anything they might entail.

You don't know a damned thing about strategy ... just a lot about rolling over.
 

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