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

To: greenspirit who wrote (65416)	1/11/2003 11:40:29 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Things need to change in NK Yeah, but we can't do it, Michael. If I ever saw a containment situation this is it. They are very obviously raising the stakes day by day to get us to pay them off. We may end up doing so.

To: greenspirit who wrote (65416)	1/11/2003 2:57:25 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

thus far in Bush's first two years he's hammered out a severe reduction in nuclear arms with Russia, settled a tricky Chinese airspace problem, formed a coalition and successfully invaded Afghanistan, and intelligently rid us of a ridiculous Kyota Protocol, which no Senator on either side of the aisle would vote for anyway. the nuclear arms treaty with Russia is decent, but it's not exactly a major accomplishment. it doesn't call on either side to do anything they weren't already doing and the limits don't kick in for a long time. The treaty thus reflects reality rather than changing it. As for the Chinese airspace problem, to the extent that the president "settled" it, it was by walking back from the bellicose, truculent rhetoric that he and his people had been spouting beforehand. He gets real points for that in my book, to be sure, but it's definitely one of those "growth in office" kinds of things that drives right-wingers crazy. As for Afghanistan, he certainly gets high points for that, I agree--but I'm not sure that the Bush administration's policy there was significantly different from what any other administration's would have been under the same circumstances. And as for Kyoto, finally, as you yourself say, it was effectively dead anyway, so it's not clear why we needed to be "rid" of it. He could have made a significant contribution by setting negotiations over what to do about climate change onto a new and more productive course; unfortunately, he seems beholden, intellectually and politically, to those who doubt that any such negotiations are necessary, and thus the net result of his intervention in this area is likely to be only resentment (thanks to the crudity with which he handled the situation) and lost time. And as for North Korea, if you can find "a diplomatic way to reunite the country and end the barbaric fascism which exists," you're a better man than most, since a hell of a lot of impressive people have been trying to do that for half a century without much progress. Some kind of tough-minded engagement seemed to be making some headway in recent years, although I never expected all that much from it except to lower the tension a bit. We'll see if this team can pull off a miracle. As Lindy likes to say, TWT. tb@IneversaidIthoughtGorewouldhavedonebetter,btw.com