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

To: FaultLine who wrote (120848)	12/2/2003 2:52:56 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

We need to do two things: 1) Get serious about talking -- drop the three ring circus approach. Talk more and talk more often. Work with China and negotiate. Any solution that defangs NK will be infinitely cheaper than war. Drop Japan from the invitation list -- no meaningful talks will ever take place with them at the table. 2) Prepare for war, because that is where we are headed now. 3) Shuffle the team -- get rid of useless baggage (i.e. Bolton).

To: FaultLine who wrote (120848)	12/2/2003 5:25:39 PM
From: Ish	Respond to of 281500

<<I think everyone here considers the NK situation as dire and, to my knowledge, no one has expressed any terrific ideas on how to handle it.>> It does make the idea of an anti ICBM system look a whole lot better.

To: FaultLine who wrote (120848)	12/4/2003 1:00:40 AM
From: frankw1900	Respond to of 281500

Regarding North Korea. The country which could "solve" the problem is China, not the US, not S. Korea, not Japan not Russia. All the Chinese have to do is open their borders and within a week the only people remaining in N Korea would be Kim and his cronies. China is unwilling to do this because they've got lots of problems already. Looking after all those refugees could be very stressful. China is the nascent super power and is the only one that really counts for the N Korean regime. As long as they do nothing that really upsets the Chinese they're in fine shape. Selling weapons to failed states 8000 miles away doesn't qualify. That upsets the US, Japan (because of oil), and Russia perhaps. Threatening S Korea and Japan doesn't really bother the Chinese for historical reasons and because they're rivals. The US has obviously been making serious efforts to get the Chinese onside. This is not going to happen soon, I think. There are issues. China is a nascent superpower and cannot yet rival the US in the Western Pacific and South to Indonesian waters. Someday it will share a condominium in the Pacific with US but in the meantime would like to lessen the US freedom there without actually having to project power. Relatedly, there is the matter of Taiwan. China might well take action on the N Korean matter if there was give by the US on Taiwan and its Pacific Ocean activity. The US has long term been committed to the freedom of the Taiwanese people but can see that someday Taiwan probably will join China when China is a lot more like Taiwan. But it's not yet clear the Chinese regime is going to continue moving in a modern direction so it's unlikely the US will give up the commitment to Taiwan and equally important its naval projection there. (Japan might well arm itself in response to N Korean threat but that's not really a Chinese problem. And it's not an issue: Japan is not going to attack China). It's likely the Chinese will continue doing little or nothing about N Korea and equally likely the US is not going to give substantively on Taiwan or its Pacific reach. In the meantime, the US will do what I suggested here a long time ago. Buy the bombs. Kim wants money. He doesn't care if it comes from US or Saudi Arabia. Eventually Chinese will become modern enough that the stink from N Korea will become sufficiently offensive and they'll do something about it.