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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (63309)	12/29/2002 4:03:58 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

No limit to the abject servility other countries display with respect to those loonies, you'd think Pyongyang was some kind of diplomatic Mecca. Yes. I think the problem is that these countries are so unimportant that governments of other countries leave just to professional diplomats the job of managing the relationship. But because (eg) N Korea is a black hole for any self respecting person with a career in mind, good folk get away from it as soon as they can and less than adequate folk, or at least people with no imagination, are left to tend the relation. I think it's a great mistake not to have embassies or other official presence in these places. The Jongs and Ghadaffies need close monitoring because they have a tendency to the lunatic, and if isolated, the tendency is worsened. ...I honestly think if it isn't Kim Jong that supplies Islamist terrorists with WMD (under the table or otherwise) it will be someone else sooner or later. Yes. But you do what you can. Doing nothing seems a bad idea in my view. Since most countries, even failed states, are mostly not run by fruitbars or psychopaths it's not a monster worry. Bush's axis of evil countries are run by such folk - and no, I'm not demonizing them, they are qualitatively different - and present a danger to everyone in some manner. N Korea is a loose canon rolling around the deck of the good ship International Relations. But it doesn't really have much in the way of friends and allies. So how do you tie it down? I don't think US policy with regard to the place shows a lot of imagination. Any place so badly run folk want to escape to China is ripe for subversion. But how are you going to get at it if you don't have people on the ground? There's a chance now to get in real close since the N Koreans think they have the US up against the wall. They want a non aggression treaty so lets have a conference, a big one, in Pyongyang even, with zillions of "diplomats", an agenda about 22 feet long, the conference to set up the conference could last a year at least, then it could have a continuation in Washington, then you could have the conference itself, with chapters in Pyongyang and Washington, and by that time you could have half the country on the payroll... they're starving. I'm getting ahead of myself but theatre is clearly needed. The above might be too simple minded but it's whacko thinking that's required. Give them what they think they want then even if they have suspicions about motive or actual behaviour they will still go with it. It's always possible to con a conman even if he knows you're likely to do it because he always thinks he's the sharpest knife in the drawer, but if in the meantime you're giving him the right strokes he comes along. The only "rational" reason they would want a non aggression pact with the US is a free pass to attack the South but if we assume some of their thinking is non-rational, then it opens all sorts of vistas, if we can describe it well.