Asymmetrical Information

Meanwhile, in less important news that Jane missed North Korea just announced they have nukes. Three cheers for the Bush administration, what a wonderful job.

Boonton-
What did the Bush administration do? Or are you upset at some lack of action?

There is a good reason for the US being very careful and measured in North Korea. It is spelled China.

Something bad is happening. Obviously we have Bush to thank for it.

Boonton - you must know North Korea's probably had nukes for quite some time: "McClellan said the intelligence community believes that North Korea has developed nuclear weapons since about 1994" (Fox News and AP bylines, here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,146950,00.html).

For an almost day-by-day discussion of 1994 intelligence leading to Scott McClellan's statement above see the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) website's North Korea nuclear profile(http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/NK/Nuclear/46_623.html).

For irony's sake, from "North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: The Declassified U.S. Record," April 25, 2003 (http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB87/): "North Korea's nuclear weapons program has moved back to the front pages with the unprecedented acknowledgement by North Korea during talks this week in Beijing that the North has developed nuclear weapons." (The first line of the report.)

That's about 10 minutes on G00g1e, including skimming the looooong results.

According to everyone in this ancient post (meaning on both sides of the raging argumetns), NK already had Nukes a long time ago. Our long-time commenter GT even cites a TV transcript.

I guess the question is, is it bad when they say they have nukes, or just bad when they do have nukes. The "say" part, at least, happened on Bush's watch.

It is clear the Bush administration has not handled this successfully. I'm not sure I can identify the more successful path they might have taken(as opposed to a successful outcome, which we all can envision), but their insistence on multilateral talks combined with bluster has not yielded a thing.

"Team America" laid to all out for us to see. The glorious leader of the DPRK is just a misunderstood, lonely man. Like Jacko.

Now dispatching the trained assault ninjas, target boonton, on charges of gross indecency to logical reasoning, attack commencement time will be --

[pause, shuffling noises in background]

WHAT do you mean 'that thing next to you is still on?'

[pause, dead silence]

Ooohhhhhh...

*click*

Mindles:

You write: "[the Bush Administration's] insistence on multilateral talks combined with bluster has not yielded a thing".

My recollection was that it was North Korea that insisted on multilateral talks, with the Bush Administration insisting on negotiations being bilateral.

In any case, Jane's caught the NYT out big time.

David,

You are incorrect -- the Bush administration insisted on multilateral talks with all the relevant powers in the region (esp. China) and NK demanded bilateral talks. The strategy behind multilateral talks was to make sure China was involved, as it is the one power in the region that can influence NK with any reasonable hope of success.

NK's nuke announcement is interesting. Don't forget we've recently heard stories about members of the NK security apparatus converting assets to cash and running for the exits. My guess is that things are looking very, very bad for Dear Leader and this is his last desperate attempt to blackmail the West into giving him the aid and assistance he needs to stay in power. I assume Bush won't fall for it. We'll see.

" The "say" part, at least, happened on Bush's watch. It is clear the Bush administration has not handled this successfully."

Is saying that they have nukes a major escalation on North Korea's part? They've been alternating between extremes for a decade, and this is one of their more moderate lows. After periods of warming up, they've previously lobbed a missile towards Japan or landed a submarine full of troops on South Korean shores. Their most recent warming up periods (one of the good times) involved confessing that they still had the Japanese that they kidnapped years ago (well, some of them - half or more had died of 'natural causes' in their 20s and 30s).

Clinton was always very friendly and non-judgmental, not insisting that deals be verifiable and offering bigger bribes each time North Korea violated the previous deal. Did that diplomatic approach get good results? I can remember how upset many Asians were at Warren Christopher, when North Korea sent a submarine into South Korean waters and managed to unload a bunch of troops, some dressed as South Korean soldiers. All South Korea did was round up the North Koreans and lodge a formal protest, and Christopher called on BOTH sides to calm down and show some restraint.

And Madeline Albright was happy to sip champagne in Pyongyang while many North Koreans would have been lucky to find a tree that still had bark on it. There were reports of special meat in the markets. But hey, why let the needless starvation of thousands get in the way of a beautiful friendship?

It's bizarre to blame Bush for any signs of unusual or extreme behavior on the part of Kim Jong Il - the guy with the poofy hair and platform shoes that kidnapped a movie star and a director as a way of building up the North Korean film industry (they escaped after a decade or so, so no harm done). What Kim has done now is surprisingly mature relative to his past actions - he didn't launch a single No-dong. Who has ever gotten this kind of moderation out of him before?

The NTI link I posted earlier has many interesting statements from NK back in '94 (the only year I checked, since it was the year given by McClellan for when "intelligence community" believed NK first had at least the capability to develop nukes). Several times they spoke of "catastrophe" or "catastrophic consequences" if they didn't get what they wanted; elsewhere, "North Korea has 'an expedient to counter any other option of the United States. It is not the United States alone that has the expedient, and the option is not open only for a big power.'" (I didn't look past the first quarter of '94.) They may not have said, "Here's our warhead," but it's a pretty easy inference, given their dropping out of the nonproliferation treaty, pursuing fissionable material, and making all these ominous statements. So even the "say" part can't honestly be said to have happened on Bush's watch alone.

Kim is a blackmailing psycho; he'd have said the same if Kerry were in the hot seat.

So North Korea has spoken? One of my favorite L. Sprague De Camp lines comes to mind: "Interesting if true. Saying it does not make it so!". My question is a simple one...Why should we believe them? o_O

Their track record in regards to the truth hardly inspires confidence.

"In any case, Jane's caught the NYT out big time."

Ohhh yea, really big catch! I'm impressed.

Don't get all snippy with me over North Korea. I was just pointing out that after one plus terms of Bush foreign policy we appear to be in very bad shape with them. I recall Conservatives arguing when Bush was first elected he would finally 'get tough' on NK. I didn't realize that no one should have believed that because (take your pick from the bag of Bush excuses):

NK already had nukes.

China wouldn't let us do anything.

There's nothing we could have done.

We boldly insisted on bilateral rather than multilateral talks....much like how the Nixon administration boldly demanded a round table for negotiating with North Vietnam rather than a rectangle one!

Post in haste, feel stupid at leisure.
My memory actually isn't that bad, but when I'm rushing to put the kids in bed all bets are off. . . .

"Democratic" is certainly not up for debate, but given the weird brainwashing and mass adoration that every visitor to North Korea has observed, it would be presumptuous to state objectively that it is unpopular. North Korea has the worst government on the face of the Earth right now, but its citizens may have no clue what an alternative would be. Many seem to imagine that it would look like 1951, when there was both starvation and actual warfare involving American troops going on.

The only reason we can suspect differently is because... wait for it... "defectors" have said that people are starting to get restless over the food shortages. This is the only sign we have that the tyrant is unpopular.

If you consider skipping the easy "gotcha!" and trying to give the benefit of the doubt, you'll see that pairing "democratic" with "popular" in the same sentence has everything to do with the parallelism in the official name of the country and not a parallel judgment of the two qualities. Read the two paragraphs again in that light and it jumps out like neon lights.

Wow Mindles, that link really brought back memories!

:)

It would seem good ole PK was right after all. Simply pushing NK without offering anything only leads to them escalating. He predicted it and it seems to ahve happened.

Does NK saying they have nukes make any difference to intelligence assessments of whether or not they actually have nukes? I would have thought that any statement from Kim would be assumed to have zero information content without outside confirmation.

Boonton:

The point of numerous posts here is that we were *always* in bad shape with NK. Their rhetoric has varied between "We have nukes and aren't afraid to use 'em," explicitly or implicitly, and "It's about time the world recognized that we're as important as anybody else." The threats, during Clinton's terms, resulted in appeasement and plenty of unsupervised time; during Bush's term(s) they've so far resulted in a strengthening of resolve to continue to push regional talks including China. Neither course has had the slightest noticeable effect on NK's behavior.

But appeasement has a demonstrably bad track record when it comes to deterring those bent on a goal - ask any parent. (Not that I'm advocating a paternalistic view of NK or any other country. Just injecting a little personal experience into the policy debate.)

I fail to understand why those who continue to whine about our "unilateral" approach to Iraq continue to "pine" for a unilateral approach to North Korea. First, who made North Korea our problem, "Saint Bubba"? The UN / IAEA have been uncharacteristically silent on the DPRK issue. I seem to remember that the "unpleasantness" in the Koreas 50 years ago was a UN "police action".

In the short term, for all its bluster, the DPRK is far more of a danger to South Korea, Japan, etc. than it is to the US. Talks with the DPRK which did not involve those most at risk would be ludicrous. The DPRK is currently at least "17 Security Council resolutions short of a full load". Perhaps, if the IAEA and the Security Council can get their act together, the DPRK issue will be ripe sometime during the next Clinton presidency (heaven forefend).

All we need to remember about Kim Jong Il is that he reportedly told Madelaine Albright she was "pretty". (All we need to know about Madam Albright is that she saw fit to report the exchange, as if it were significant.)

GT -- Of course they escalated. That's the point.

It's a dangerous game that's being played here. The entire intent is *not* to offer NK anything -- not because "pushing" makes them more cooperative, but so they collapse. I don't believe for a moment that the Bush administration wants to engage in "detente" with the North Korean government. They want to destroy it. Starvation and a denial of supplies and resources resulting in internal collapse is the way they plan to do so.

NK is responding with classic brinkmanship and attempted nuclear blackmail. It's their only card and they play it all the time. In the past it's been a winner -- looks like it hasn't worked so well for them this time.

So who ultimately will win? Beats me -- but I think that time is on our side, not theirs. The longer talks fail to "progress", the longer we starve NK and offer nothing, the better the chances that Dear Leader takes the dirt nap and NK dissolves into chaos.

Risky? Absolutely. But it does have some possibility of success.

Bilateral talks about NK might be OK - if the Norks weren't invited. Just us and China.

markm, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that thought has also occurred to one or two at State.

I'm not sure that the structure of the NK talks is determinitive, so you can't really blame the Bush Administration for that.

I just read bits of a Gaddis book on the first 30 years of our Cold War strategy, and he claimed that our initial build-up of nuclear weapons was premised on the belief that we didn't have (and it was too expensive to build) a sufficiently sized conventional army to deter the the USSR. I assume that NK is pursuing a similar strategy - e.g., the world has now learned that the one guarantee of sovereignty against the US is a nuclear weapon and a delivery system that allows it to reach somewhere troubling. I don't think that not invading Iraq would have made a difference to NK - I assume they would have remained concerned about China. I do think that the Iraqi invasion has probably (a) made clearer to other states (Iran, possibly Brazil, etc.) of sufficient size that only a nuke guarantees integrity, and (b) weakened the arguments of other states (e.g., Europe) that other countries should remain non-nuclear. What worries me is the possibility that a "troubling target" (say France) realizes that the new states are picking it as a hostage only b/c they don't have the technology to reach the US, and therefore (with their own nat'l security in mind, etc.) they slip the new nuclear power technology sufficient to allow it to deliver a bomb to a major US city (say Seattle). I really, really hope this doesn't happen (though I still don't worry too much about nuclear weapons), but I'm not sure why this isn't likely to happen if the soon-to-be nuclear country is willing to brave the various sanctions we can impose. Welcome to the everyone-on-this-street-owns-a-gun brave new world, I guess.

Therefore, the key for the future is possession of a system which can destroy the nuclear payload on its way to "somewhere troubling", preferrably during the ascent phase.

The DPRK does not now, nor will it likely ever, have a nuclear arsenal which can achieve MAD with the US. The same is true of Iran. They could do some damage, but they would be destroyed as a result, assuming we didn't waste a lot of time trying to understand "why they hate us".

The USSR was never willing to experience destruction as the price of destroying the US. China will likely be equally circumspect. The DPRK is a "wild card", run by a leader who is "several cards short of a full deck".

Ed -

I agree that NK (and pretty much everyone else) is unlikely to launch a nuclear attack at the US. We're too big to kill (one of the reasons I've never feared "radical Islam," and that I think all of the terror about "Terror" is silly), and a nuclear attack is a guarantee that we'll vanish your country. Nukes are really only useful as defensive weapons - a modified MAD; we will only attack a nuclear country (I'd guess) to the extent that we believe that the likely costs(in dead from nukes, etc.) are outweighed by the benefits. I assume that is a surpassingly small set of circs.

NK's leader is crazy, and that's worrisome. But what really worries me is that (a) we've created an incentive structure for all reasonably sized states to want nukes, and (b) each new addition to the nuclear club means one more instance where someone unscrupulous and crazy may come to power down the line.

Actually Tim, I think we've created an incentive structure that says: if you don't already have nukes, you damn sight better not try to get them or the US will open up a six-pack of whoop-ass on you. After all, Saddam apparently wasn't trying to get nukes, but he still got taken out just because the US *thought* he was -- or would once sanctions were lifted. (As an aside, it is entirely possible Saddam thought he was trying to get nukes as well).

NK has/might have nukes, so they'll be okay until they run out of bark to eat on the trees. Iran does not yet have nukes and is talking with the Europeans about whether it will get them or not. As it seems less and less likely that any progress will be made in the Iranian talks, the US is slowly starting to up the volume on its saber-rattling. Stay tuned...

I agree that NK (and pretty much everyone else) is unlikely to launch a nuclear attack at the US. We're too big to kill (one of the reasons I've never feared "radical Islam," and that I think all of the terror about "Terror" is silly), and a nuclear attack is a guarantee that we'll vanish your country. Nukes are really only useful as defensive weapons - a modified MAD; we will only attack a nuclear country (I'd guess) to the extent that we believe that the likely costs(in dead from nukes, etc.) are outweighed by the benefits. I assume that is a surpassingly small set of circs.

Wow. Where to begin on this one…

”Too big to kill” indicates a lack of imagination. They don’t have to kill us, in fact, it would be counterproductive to their interests (extracting wealth from us). All they have to do is influence our policies in their favor. And given all the neurotics in this country who get their panties in a bunch about getting cancer from power lines etc. (!), that wouldn’t be difficult. Look at how 9/11 influenced security in air travel. Multiply that a thousand-fold, and apply it across the board, not just to air travel. They’d have killed our way of life, and given us a mighty shove toward either craven capitulation or fascism.

Furthermore, your point about MAD presupposes any nukes would come with a return address. Only an idiot would be so obliging.

Imagine one anonymous terrorist incident involving nukes, and an anonymously made threat of more to come if we don’t a) back the Palestinians and oppose Israel, b) withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, c) never set foot in Saudi Arabia again, d) ship food and oil to North Korea, e) stop looking for Osama, f) support the ETA against Spain, g) support the IRA against Britain, h) end the isolation of Cuba, i) support “national liberation” movements in South America, j) stop despoiling the environment, k) give animals the vote, and l)) stop showing those miserable re-runs of Friends.

So…whom do we “vanish”?

Think through the "nuclear guerrilla war" scenario, and the hazard becomes apparent.

"Simply pushing NK without offering anything only leads to them escalating."

Why is there this recurring theme on this thread that North Korea has somehow escalated its threats, i.e. that there's been a fundamental shift? Kim Jong Il has consistently bounced back and forth from one extreme to the other. He's not lobbing missiles at anyone, and he's not sending submarines to land troups on anyone's shores, so why is this one remark about nukes a huge escalation? He's just back in the manic phase of his bipolar melodrama.

Although it's easy to think of Kim Jong Il as crazy (and I do), there's an article in the latest Far Eastern Economic Review (the first monthly edition) on North Korea which says that the rulers operate more like a crime family than a government. And after all these years of famine, it's not as if Kim Jong Il can afford to loosen up, since slow-motion mass murder over many, many years is the type of thing people bear grudges over. Mao needed the Cultural Revolution to keep control after the Great Leap (the Cultural Revolution was used to kill off anyone who had ever questioned Mao's policies, particularly the wisdom of destroying the economy and killing tens of millions).

On bilateral vs. multilateral talks, North Korea wanted bilateral talks so that it would be the old Clinton "Let's Make a Deal" approach, where North Korea finds out how much we'll pay this time in exchange for empty promises. The South Koreans and Japanese wanted bilateral talks because they would prefer that we solve the problem without them having to get involved, both because they're rightly afraid of what North Korea might do and because, let's face it, they're not the problem-solving type. Americans are unusual in that they place a lot of emphasis on getting things done, while the rest of the world has other priorities....

The Chinese want bilateral talks because they want to play both sides against each other, which is harder when both sides are in the same room at the same time. The official Chinese policy is still that they want to see North and South Korea reunited under the control of Kim Jong Il and the North Korean communist party.

Bush wanted multilateral talks so that it will be more like an 'intervention', where all the neighbors gather around to pressure North Korea to get help and shape up. North Korea wants the prestige of sitting down one-on-one with the US, but most of all they want to get back to business as usual and get a pay off in exchange for a non-verifiable promise.

Fred Kaplin has a good article on NK over on http://www.slate.com/id/2113389/

A little history to explain what's going on. In 1993-94, the North Koreans threatened to reprocess their nuclear reactor's spent fuel rods into plutonium—the fastest way to get nuclear weapons. After a tense standoff, Kim Jong-il and President Bill Clinton signed an "Agreed Framework." The rods were locked in a pool and placed under continuous monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In exchange, the United States promised to furnish North Korea with two light-water reactors for fuel and, eventually, to establish full diplomatic relations. By the end of the decade, the deal was collapsing. The United States never came through with the reactors or the relations; Kim secretly pursued nukes through enriched uranium. But those fuel rods, which could have processed enough plutonium for more than 50 bombs by the time Clinton left office, stayed locked up.

In October 2002, the CIA caught on to the enriched-uranium ploy, and the North Koreans, once presented with the evidence, confessed (though they later retracted the admission). In December, the North Koreans tried to replay the crisis of 1993, threatening to unlock the fuel rods, kick out the IAEA's monitors, and reprocess plutonium unless President George W. Bush supplied fuel aid and promised not to invade. Bush didn't go along, saying that even sitting down with North Koreans would reward "bad behavior." Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to topple Kim's horrible regime. To negotiate with the regime would legitimize and perpetuate it.

So in January 2003, the North Koreans carried out their threat. U.S. spy satellites spotted a convoy of trucks moving from the reactor to the reprocessing facility. Bush did nothing in response. Despite urgings from Secretary of State Colin Powell, he refused to negotiate. Briefings from his military advisers indicated the attack options were too risky. Intelligence agencies didn't—and still don't—know where all the nuclear targets are. And the North Korean army has thousands of artillery rockets—some loaded with chemical munitions—deployed near the South Korean border, a five-minute flight from the capital, Seoul. A U.S. attack would miss some of those rockets; a North Korean retaliation could kill hundreds of thousands of South Koreans. Every U.S. ally in the region has said a military option is out of the question.

He concludes we should just negotiate with him one-on-one because at this point it is too late:

In short, President Bush may well have blown it. If there is still time to strike a deal, he has to strike one very soon and not just ask the Chinese to persuade Kim to back down. As is, Bush has waited so long to get serious that an accord—if one were reached—will cost us a lot more than it would have a year or two ago. There are only three alternatives to diplomacy, though, and they are grimmer still. One is to launch a war that nobody in the region would tolerate and that we lack the resources to wage. Another is to apply sanctions in order to isolate North Korea, a country that is already, by its leader's choice, the most isolated on earth. The third is to live with the fact that the world's last totalitarian has joined the league of nuclear powers.

I note the latest stories appearing on Yahoo News, which indicate that the Bush administration appears to have chosen one of Kaplan's "grimmer options": the isolation of North Korea in the hopes of causing internal collapse.

The difference between Kaplan and the Bush administration is that Kaplan wants to find a way to live with the North Korean government while Bush wants to destroy it. This necessarily results in different views on the best course of action to take.

Boonton,

Maybe Fred is right. Or maybe he isn't. We could have cut a deal and Kim would go ahead and violate it anyway. He would then demand more and we do it again. Hasn't that been the pattern? At what point is the bilateral approach to be discarded? Is there a point in your mind? I am not saying you are wrong, but only that there is no obvious right answer. Bush is trying a different approach, if it fails then he is as successful as Clinton.

Those fuel rods in my opinion were only going to stay locked up as long as the enrichment program was secret (or at least unacknowledged.) Once it wasn't and he realized no aid was coming unless he actually dismantled his program, which he is not going to do, you are left with him only getting what he wants by having (or pretending to have) as opposed to pretending not to have, nuclear weapons.

To rephrase, I suspect that as soon as the clandestine program was exposed the fuel rods were fair game in Kim's mind. If I am correct then the only other alternative was to not expose the enrichment program and hope for something good to happen while everyone pretended NK was complying. I suspect Kaplan was wrong. No amount of bribing would have kept those fuel rods locked up as long as we made an actual effort to disrupt the enrichment program.

I don't think one can actually blame either Bush or Clinton for NK's nuclear status. After all, they've been chasing nuclear weapons for a couple of decades, now:

The North Korean nuclear weapons program dates back to the 1980s. In the 1980s, focusing on practical uses of nuclear energy and the completion of a nuclear weapon development system, North Korea began to operate facilities for uranium fabrication and conversion. It began construction of a 200 MWe nuclear reactor and nuclear reprocessing facilities in Taechon and Yongbyon, respectively, and conducted high-explosive detonation tests. In 1985 US officials announced for the first time that they had intelligence data proving that a secret nuclear reactor was being built 90 km north of Pyongyang near the small town of Yongbyon. The installation at Yongbyon had been known for eight years from official IAEA reports. In 1985, under international pressure, Pyongyang acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). However, the DPRK refused to sign a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an obligation it had as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The difference between Kaplan and the Bush administration is that Kaplan wants to find a way to live with the North Korean government while Bush wants to destroy it.

That's a huge stretch. Bush wants to destroy it in the sense that if a metor wiped it off the Earth tomorrow (with no side effects on S Korea or Japan) Bush probably would be relieved....or if a democratic revolution happened and NK became as friendly as Ireland Bush would be happy about it. But isolation is unlikely to work...NK appears to be one of those hardened regimes, like Cuba to a degree, that will resist any attempt to sanction it into good behavior.

But looking at it rationally, NK's dictator is behaving quite rationally. What better way to be immune from US invasion despite being #2 or 3 on the 'Axis of Evil' list than to have some nukes? Bush might have been willing to sacrifice a few thousand soldiers to liberate Iraq but he isn't going to be wiling to sacrifice Alaska or Japan to liberate North Korea.

A sensible common ground might be along the lines of where North Korea gets its diplomatic recognition & some food aid & a promise not to invade (which no one really wants to do anyway) in return for giving up the fuel rods. A North Korea with 4 or 5 nukes doesn't have any to spare to give to a terrorist or try to set off in an anonymous manner, with 40 or 50 nukes it has plenty to spare.

Boonton, Bush does want to destroy the North Korean government and not in a "I hope they get hit by a meteor" kind of way. That's why his administration keeps describing it as part of the axis of evil, as an outpost of tyranny, etc. These are not words you use when describing a government that you hope to get along with. You do not use these words when you are trying in good faith to negotiate with a government. Despite the left's belief that the administration is staffed with fools, I don't believe Bush's team is making these statements "accidentally" or because they screwed up their messaging. They are saying these things intentionally and pitilessly.

For numerous reasons, the most prominent being South Korea and China, the Bush administration does not want to use military force to destroy the North Korean government. But unlike Cuba, North Korea appears to be very nearly on its last legs. Foreign assistance is the only thing keeping the Dear Leader in power -- i.e. "food aid" is not being distributed to the people, it is being given to the military to help Dear Leader control the people. Access to foreign assistance, fuel and food aid is what keep Kim in office.

The Bush administration doesn't have the slightest intention of helping Kim retain power. Your "sensible middle ground" would allow him to do just that while still pursuing his nuclear ambitions.

A better alternative would be to starve his country until it collapses into anarchy, then let the Chinese and South Koreans pick up the pieces and rebuild. I believe this is exactly the course the Bush administration is pursuing, and as I said in a previous post, recent news articles suggest that is the case. It is, admittedly, a risky strategy -- but it's the only one that I see having any probability of success. YMMV.

DRB, the irony is that even though NK's economy is not very efficient starvation simply makes the gov't more efficient at repression. Even NK's poor economy can produce enough food to keep the military and gov't well fed. Tossing everyone else to the wolves simply ensures that the general population will remain too weak to mount a rebellion.

It's interesting to note that the sanctions regime against Iraq in the 90's had the perverse effect of making Saddam's hold stronger even though it weakened the country as a whole.

Boonton, I take your point but I think NK is progressing to the point that there wouldn't be enough food and other supplies to maintain the military if foreign assistance was cut off. I imagine the likeliest "chaos" scenario would be a revolt by various military units who in the process of overthrowing Kim would also look to outside powers (China or SK) for assistance during and after the revolution.

I acknowledge that you can draw some parallels between NK and Cuba or NK and Iraq during sanctions -- but I think it would be a mistake to draw them too far. NK appears to be in much worse shape then either Cuba or Iraq during sanctions. It will be interesting to see how the situation develops.

"It's interesting to note that the sanctions regime against Iraq in the 90's had the perverse effect of making Saddam's hold stronger even though it weakened the country as a whole."

Sanctions helped Iraq largely because the UN was so strongly on Iraq's side and had Saddam swimming in money by 1996.

North Korea's primary income sources are: aid; illegal drug sales; and weapons sales. I don't know how they're doing the drug sales, but perhaps we could cut off those and the military sales. It would require a lot of cooperation from China.

Thinking of the rulers of North Korea as a crime family really is a good analogy in many ways. Most of the population are treated as serfs, given just enough to survive so that they can support the crime lords at the top. The 'leaders' don't care if massive numbers die, and they'd sooner take out their own country plus one or two neighbors, rather than loosen control and risk being rounded up by the people.

There aren't many good options here, which is precisely why Bush was smart to act on Iraq when he did. Yes, I know, it turned out that Iraq wasn't as far along as we thought. But we always knew that there was uncertainty, and that the Hussein regime might have either more or less than we thought. The problems we face with North Korea now illustrate how risky and foolish it is to wait until we're sure that we can't respond before we try to resond to a threat. It was pretty much too late on North Korea before Bush took office.

The people of North Korea have had more than half a decade of starvation, with no end in sight. As bad as all of our options are now, at least we're not being subjected to the debasement of watching our own Secretary of State sipping champagne and giggling about how charming Kim Jong Il is, while people just a short distance away are eating dirt and gnawing on leather belts and shoes to try to trick their stomachs into thinking they're full.

Sanctions helped Iraq largely because the UN was so strongly on Iraq's side and had Saddam swimming in money by 1996.

It is true that there was a lot of cheating on the sanctions with UN help (or at least looking the other way), however that is not the point. Iraq was largely hurt by the sanctions. The Iraqi army of 2003 was a lot less than it was after the Gulf War. This was the result of the sanctions (although the brief bombing under the Clinton administration also hurt the Iraqi army as well).

But while the sanctions did work on the international scale they failed on the domestic one. Inside Iraq Saddam became more powerful because domestic opposition was cut off from the rest of the world and did not have access to what little resources came into the country. In other words, the sanctions literally gave Saddam a monopoly on essentials and he used that monopoly to enhance his own power and that of his friends.

Right now if you were in North Korea that surest path to good food is not to rebel against Kim but to support him...to suck up enough to be promoted to the highest ranks of the army. The surest path to starvation is to be perceived to be likely to oppose the dictatorship.

I cannot think of one repressive governmet that was 'starved' out of existence. BTW, where does Bush say he is going to starve the dictatorship anyway? I bet you that 'humanitarian aid' is not going to be subject to the sanctions. What will be will be luxories and non-essential industrial products. Again the same problem presents itself. There's no easy way to stop the black market from working...even with China's full cooperation.

The reasons the sanctions on Iraq failed had less to do with a corrupt UN (do not read that as saying the UN isn't a problem in itself) but with the inherent flaws of sanctions themselves as a policy.

can remember how upset many Asians were at Warren Christopher, when North Korea sent a submarine into South Korean waters and managed to unload a bunch of troops, some dressed as South Korean soldiers. All South Korea did was round up the North Koreans and lodge a formal protest, and Christopher called on BOTH sides to calm down and show some restraint.

Actually, South Korea killed most of the infiltrators, except for those who weren't killed by their own colleagues and one who escaped, but why let facts get in the way of a good Clinton bash?

"South Korea killed most of the infiltrators" - you make it sound like they beheaded them (and videotaped it?). Of the 26, 11 were killed by their comrades, one was captured and one escaped. The other 13 North Koreans refused to surrender and were fighting back. They were killed in shootouts that also killed 11 South Korean military personnel and civilians, and wounded 5 others.

What exactly was South Korea supposed to do - let the infiltrators run around shooting people? What was Warren Christopher saying that they should do?

If the argument against sanctions is that they weaken everyone else and hence strengthen the rulers, I don't see how that applies to North Korea. Besides aid, North Korea gets money through drugs (heroin and methamphetamines), counterfeiting and selling weapons. All of the money goes to the people in power - the serfs are at or below subsistence level. They're slowly starving to death and have been underfed, malnourished and gradually dying off for nearly a decade. How much weaker can the people get?

OK so the plan is that Bush is going to stop buying herion from North Korea?

The Bush administration has announced that they've already been working to shut down bank accounts and smuggling routes that North Korea has used to sell narcotics and counterfeit currency, as well as missiles. The US is trying to get cooperation from other countries. If sanctions are imposed, the main goal would be to shut down the smuggling, while still providing food aid.

Wait a second, sanctions are being imposed on smuggled herion? If the sanctions are rejected will it be legal to smuggle herion? Is it legal now? You're telling me the Bush administration's plan is to get drug smugglers to abide by international law????

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