generalspeaking

Standing Up To North Korea

How? Sanctions have not worked. North Koreans have been taught that the world is against them, and they are fearful and patriotic to a fault. Kim Jong-il may appear to the world of the West like a lunatic yet risible figure, but to North Koreans, kept on the edge of survival by a leader more concerned with allocating scarce national resources to nuclear attainment and rocketry than feeding his people, he is a truly malevolent dictator with few parallels. South Korea's previous 'sunshine' policy toward North Korea failed to produce a relaxation of hostilities between the two countries.

The very man whose reign exemplified that sincerely hopeful but ill-starred government policy, former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun felt mortally disgraced by revelations that his wife and relatives illegally benefited from a bribery scandal. His successor laid to rest his efforts to pacify North Korea through brotherly empathy. Neither kindness nor condemnation has made a dent in North Korea's trajectory toward nuclear enablement. Convinced that North Korea is in the cross-hairs of the U.S. military, Kim Jong-il refuses to set aside his nuclear agenda.

This is where the current UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon comes into the picture, as a South Korean diplomat well versed in the intransigent belligerence that continually emanates from North Korea, threatening the stability of his country, along with that of Japan and U.S. interests in the region. As China's protege-country presenting as a separation-barrier between democratic South Korea and China, North Korea has been immune from criticism from its mentor, up until now.

And since China is not anxious to witness the failure of the current North Korean regime which could very well herald an outbreak of civil war of ascension on Jong-il's death, with the potential of millions of desperate North Koreans flooding the Chinese border, it finds itself in a very hard place indeed. Still, China too, like Russia, another erstwhile-supporter of North Korea, finds itself sufficiently alarmed by North Korea's underground nuclear test and the succeeding missile launches after its satellite rocket blasted into space, to ally itself with UN and U.S. concerns.

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi did not enjoy the strict sanctions imposed on Libya as a result of his country's support of terror groups, its own terrorist attacks against the West, and its commitment to arming itself with nuclear warheads. The strictures wounded his country, its global social standing, its economy, its ability to educate its privileged youth abroad. Its pariah status grated on the leader's and the country's sensibilities, leading him to agree to surrender all nuclear ambitions, to sunder all terror connections.

Mr. Gaddafi was once thought of as being completely mad. He regained his sanity, it would appear, once 66 American jets launched an attack on Tripoli and the Benghazi area. Although the strikes purportedly were meant to hit key military sites they also hit a populated suburb of the capital, killing 100 people, among them Moammar Gaddafi's
adopted baby daughter. That event could well be said to have been a sobering experience. Mr. Gaddafi was prepared to talk about the bombing of Pam Am flight 103, where 270 died in the Lockerbie tragedy, and admit responsibility and arrange for reparations.

North Korea currently has two American reporters in their custody, charged with espionage, spying on the country. The United States, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan are all engaged in hand-wringing over North Korea's intransigent passage toward achieving nuclear warheads that can be fixed to their increasingly-successful long-range rockets, propelling them toward a world unready for nuclear annihilation. Russia has declared the nuclear explosion just undertaken to be comparable in size and explosive value to those that hit Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The U.S. could plan a pre-emptive attack on the country. To do so would be to effectively sacrifice their two nationals cleverly held as insurance by North Korea. Clearly, North Korea remains undaunted by the general condemnation it has earned with its latest assaults on world sensibilities. Despite the ongoing censure, it will not be contrite, for it feels it has nothing to regret or apologize for. It is protecting its sovereignty. And aiding world peace by ensuring that it has the capability to 'protect' itself from the evil intent of other countries.

Rationality has no power of persuasion over unhinged minds.

Labels: Technology, Troublespots, World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, May 26, 2009