To: epsteinbd who wrote (52786 ) 10/17/2002 9:51:56 PM From: Elsewhere Respond to so I only wanted to know if you believe that Clinton knew of what was going on and did shut up, or not? Russia, China Said to Aid N. Korea Nuclear Program story.news.yahoo.com Asked if Russia and China, whom the CIA has long considered the world's top two nuclear proliferators, were the suspected suppliers, the official said: "I wouldn't steer you off that." >Korea's Place in the Axis (May/June 2002)foreignaffairs.org These questions are of more than bureaucratic interest, for a confluence of trends suggests that the situation on the Korean Peninsula will not remain quiet for long. U.S. relations with North Korea are currently guided by the 1994 Agreed Framework, in which Washington offered heavy fuel oil and help building nuclear energy plants in exchange for Pyongyang's promise to shut down its nuclear weapons program. This agreement is about to reach its critical implementation stages, testing the intentions of both countries and sparking debates within the United States over whether it should revise or abandon the accord. >Time To Leave Korea? (March/April 2001)foreignaffairs.org Last spring, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il surprised the world by agreeing to meet with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in the first North-South summit held since the division of the Korean Peninsula in 1945. Their historic encounter in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in June 2000 has initiated a thaw in relations that could lead, in time, to a confederation of the two Koreas and eventual reunification. >The New Face of Northeast Asia (January/February 2001)foreignaffairs.org A glance at the map, and its geopolitical implications, suggests the power of the forces being unleashed by the Korean rapprochement. Korea is the strategic pivot of its region. With a hostile, communist North Korea lying between it and the rest of the Asian continent, South Korea has long been a geostrategic island. Yet peninsular cooperation could transform North Korea from a barrier into a bridge -- to Russia, China, and the world beyond. >The Second Nuclear Age (January/February 2000)foreignaffairs.org For 200 years, the world has been shaped by Western military dominance. Gunboats were replaced by battleships as agents of national power, which in turn were replaced by cruise missiles and stealth bombers. Until recently, these weapons belonged exclusively to Europeans or North Americans. But this monopoly on advanced military technologies is now ending. Ballistic missiles carrying conventional warheads or weapons of mass destruction (WMD), along with other cutting-edge technologies, are now within reach of as many as ten Asian nations from Israel to North Korea -- a major shift in the world's balance of power. >Thawing Korea's Cold War: The Path to Peace on the Korean Peninsula (May/June 1999)foreignaffairs.org In 1993 and 1994, for example, the North's menacing nuclear weapons development program posed a serious threat to stability in northeast Asia. Tension was defused only by U.S. intervention, leading to the 1994 Agreed Framework that the United States signed with North Korea. The North pledged to freeze its nuclear program in return for energy assistance and gradual improvement in political ties and trade with the United States. >Why North Korea Will Muddle Through (July/ August 1997)foreignaffairs.org The North Korean economy is in bad shape, and a famine of unknown magnitude is under way in parts of the country, but it appears that minimum survival requirements can be maintained with little or no external support. Kim Jong Il's regime appears to have been largely successful in fusing juche (self-reliance) ideology to Korean nationalism, and unlike the countries of Central Europe, North Korea has no institutions capable of channeling mass discontent into effective political action. >ace942.tripod.com
