Can anyone explain to me why China doesn't b|tch slap NK this time around?

[davebg 0]

So, I understand that China has propped up the regime in NK b/c it was in their interest to keep the status quo. A unified Korean peninsula is a threat to China's power in the region and by shipping NK the food/energy it needs the flow of NK dissidents is kept to a manageable level.

 

However, having a nuclear NK and, as a result, an arms race in their corner of the world is definitely not in their interest. For being NK's biggest ally, China is getting treated like, well...like Bill Clinton after he tried making nice nice w/Kim.

[Korben Dallas 0]

So, I understand that China has propped up the regime in NK b/c it was in their interest to keep the status quo. A unified Korean peninsula is a threat to China's power in the region and by shipping NK the food/energy it needs the flow of NK dissidents is kept to a manageable level.

 

However, having a nuclear NK and, as a result, an arms race in their corner of the world is definitely not in their interest. For being NK's biggest ally, China is getting treated like, well...like Bill Clinton after he tried making nice nice w/Kim.

 

I suppose its because China knows that all the bluster isn't aimed at them and that they've got the biggest stick.

 

But I have a side question. Your comment at the bottom about Clinton. In regards to foreign policy, Clinton's policy with NK was a pretty big success. It wasn't until he left office and we went back to a hard line approach that this all started up again. Why do you, or others feel that the engagement approach was such a mistake?

[Isotopes 1]

b|tch slapping another country costs money. They will just wait for the World Police (USA) to take care of it. Then they will offer us loans with a modest interest rate to cover the costs and little by little they will become the strongest country in the world.

[davebg 0]

I suppose its because China knows that all the bluster isn't aimed at them and that they've got the biggest stick.

 

But I have a side question. Your comment at the bottom about Clinton. In regards to foreign policy, Clinton's policy with NK was a pretty big success. It wasn't until he left office and we went back to a hard line approach that this all started up again. Why do you, or others feel that the engagement approach was such a mistake?

It's not that I feel engagement was a mistake at the time (I'm not sure we had much choice), but in retrospect you have to admit that it was a failure (imagine that...a failure on the part of our "intelligence" community.)

 

NK got the aid they wanted while secretly continuing on its path of nukes, paid for by drug smuggling and counterfeiting of US currency.

[JMaximus12 0]

I suppose its because China knows that all the bluster isn't aimed at them and that they've got the biggest stick.

 

But I have a side question. Your comment at the bottom about Clinton. In regards to foreign policy, Clinton's policy with NK was a pretty big success. It wasn't until he left office and we went back to a hard line approach that this all started up again. Why do you, or others feel that the engagement approach was such a mistake?

 

China, for all their bad rap, has actually been a long time practitioner or isolationism for thousands of years. they shut themselves off from the rest of the world centuries ago, and have only really risen up to "Fight back" and defend their turf. Whether its Mongol Hordes, Japanese, or SOuth Koreans, they've always kind of stayed out of conflict, directly, until left with "No choice" (in their eyes) to intercede.

 

that being said, their relationship with NK could quickly change if they see themselves become a potential target of NK's. KJI is so crazy, that he likely won't want to admit that they are what they are because of China's support, and KJI is definitely one who will bite the hand that feeds him. give him long enough, he'll dig his own grave. He doesn't want to be a puppet on a string, and will eventually flex his new nuclear muscle at CHina as well.

 

and THEN they'll b!tch slap NK.

 

As for the Clinton thing, i don't feel the engagement approach worked out well. I mean, Clinton allowed NK to develop nuclear technology because they "Promised" that it would be used for peaceful means. I'm sorry, but Clinton with NK is like Barry Bonds with steroids. He is either lying about them, or is the most ignorant idiot ever. SInce we know Bill is smart (Jury is out on Barry Bonds on that), and since he's shown a propensity for one over th other, we'll just assume he lied about NK. Or rather, knew that it wouldn't be used for peaceful purposes, but still tried the approach he did, for reasons known only to him. Not trying to get into a bashing session, just answering your question as best as i personally can.

[davebg 0]

b|tch slapping another country costs money.

But that's the beauty of it...China already spends millions on propping up Kim and his regime by being NK's biggest donator of food and power. Turn off the spigot and there's NO WAY Kim's NK can survive.

 

Now, that leads to how a regime change would effect China. I understand China's fear of masses of NK people trying to sneak out of their impoverished country for China and I understand China's fear of a unified Korea taking a bigger chunk of the power pie in the region, but the alternative hardly seems better.

 

If NK is left unchecked, then you will have every other country in the region in a nuclear arms race. Clearly having North and South Korea...not to mention possibly Japan (the neighbor China is least friendly with) all in posession of nuclear weapons is really going against China's best interests, no?

[Korben Dallas 0]

It's not that I feel engagement was a mistake at the time (I'm not sure we had much choice), but in retrospect you have to admit that it was a failure (imagine that...a failure on the part of our "intelligence" community.)

 

NK got the aid they wanted while secretly continuing on its path of nukes, paid for by drug smuggling and counterfeiting of US currency.

 

Maybe I just didn't pay enough attention about Pan-Asian politics. Help me understand the failure part. 93' NK pull out of the Non-Prolif treaty. Clinton gets them to the table and through fuel incentives they stop their nuclear development until 2000, when they start playing around with Uranium. Clinton is now out of the picture. Where is the failure part? Was their something I'm missing.

 

I'm going to go look around at my FP sites. But I'd like to know.

[Isotopes 1]

But that's the beauty of it...China already spends millions on propping up Kim and his regime by being NK's biggest donator of food and power. Turn off the spigot and there's NO WAY Kim's NK can survive.

 

Now, that leads to how a regime change would effect China. I understand China's fear of masses of NK people trying to sneak out of their impoverished country for China and I understand China's fear of a unified Korea taking a bigger chunk of the power pie in the region, but the alternative hardly seems better.

 

If NK is left unchecked, then you will have every other country in the region in a nuclear arms race. Clearly having North and South Korea...not to mention possibly Japan (the neighbor China is least friendly with) all in posession of nuclear weapons is really going against China's best interests, no?

 

I agree that is in their best interest to step in. I was just being a smart ass.

 

Countries like NK or Iran getting nuclear weapons is scary for many reasons. It is unpredictable what they would do with them and who else they would sell the information/weapons to.

[Korben Dallas 0]

It's not that I feel engagement was a mistake at the time (I'm not sure we had much choice), but in retrospect you have to admit that it was a failure (imagine that...a failure on the part of our "intelligence" community.)

 

NK got the aid they wanted while secretly continuing on its path of nukes, paid for by drug smuggling and counterfeiting of US currency.

 

Maybe I just didn't pay enough attention about Pan-Asian politics. Help me understand the failure part. 93' NK pull out of the Non-Prolif treaty. Clinton gets them to the table and through fuel incentives they stop their nuclear development until 2000, when they start playing around with Uranium. Clinton is now out of the picture. Where is the failure part? Was their something I'm missing.

 

I'm going to go look around at my FP sites. But I'd like to know.

[davebg 0]

Maybe I just didn't pay enough attention about Pan-Asian politics. Help me understand the failure part. 93' NK pull out of the Non-Prolif treaty. Clinton gets them to the table and through fuel incentives they stop their nuclear development until 2000, when they start playing around with Uranium. Clinton is now out of the picture. Where is the failure part? Was their something I'm missing.

 

I'm going to go look around at my FP sites. But I'd like to know.

The failure part is how we gave in to their blackmail demands and then they continued to smuggle drugs and counterfeit US dollars to prop up their army while their people starved. Then, Kim turns around and backs out of the deal...and for all we know, he never came through on his end and may have continued to develop nuclear weapons the whole time.

[Korben Dallas 0]

The failure part is how we gave in to their blackmail demands and then they continued to smuggle drugs and counterfeit US dollars to prop up their army while their people starved. Then, Kim turns around and backs out of the deal...and for all we know, he never came through on his end and may have continued to develop nuclear weapons the whole time.

 

You are probably right on the blackmail part. Unfortunately, they had a card and they got to play it. None of that has to do with any of the other crap they do. But my understanding after doing a little reading is that he actually honored the deal until 2000, when he brought his only card to the new table (Bush). Bush refused to let him sit down at all and things have degenerated since. I'm glad I went and looked around, I had a lot of misunderstandings about the Clinton-deal.

 

Here is the clearest article I found, without any assumptions or "maybe they did it secretly the whole time" stuff you get at places like news max.

 

Negotiating With Nuclear North Korea

 

By Anthony Lake and Robert Gallucci

 

Wednesday, November 6, 2002; Page A21

 

 

Why did North Korea make its bald admission that it has a secret nuclear weapons program? The experts don't know -- or understand well enough for us to place our policy bets on only one theory.

 

But while the North Korean regime is as inscrutable as it is unpredictable, there is no reason that we should also misunderstand the history of American policy on North Korea -- as a number of recent commentators writing on these pages have done. They have promoted myths about the Agreed Framework negotiated by the Clinton administration in 1994.

 

In 1993, as since, it was the judgment of our intelligence agencies that North Korea likely had one or possibly two nuclear weapons, manufactured from plutonium produced some years earlier. President Clinton therefore decided that it was vital not to allow the North to produce more plutonium. This we did. The Agreed Framework we negotiated secured the spent fuel they held in storage (enough plutonium for five nuclear weapons), and all other plutonium-producing facilities were frozen under inspection. Had these facilities been allowed to become operational, North Korea would by now be producing enough plutonium for 30 nuclear weapons each year, a capacity far greater than, by most estimates, those of India, Pakistan and Israel combined. This has been greatly in our interest.

 

In return, the Clinton and Bush administrations and other governments have been supplying North Korea with heavy fuel oil. We also promised, but have not yet been bound to deliver, light-water nuclear reactors.

 

Now Pyongyang has revealed that it more recently initiated a dangerous, secret uranium enrichment program. It is true that the Agreed Framework did not create a new, comprehensive inspection regime that could have prevented this. We would have to rely on our own intelligence in this regard. But this would have been the case without the agreement. And the deal did at least give us new leverage. In 1999 we used the agreement to gain access to a suspicious site identified by intelligence.

 

Simply put, the Agreed Framework was not based on trust. It was designed to leave us in a better position no matter what the North did. And so we are.

 

Since the agreement was violated by the North Koreans, critics argue that it was the product of a capitulation by the Clinton administration, that we offered Pyongyang only carrots while brandishing no sticks. James A. Baker III, writing in The Post on Oct. 23 [op-ed], claimed that Washington folded after North Korea threatened to turn the capital of South Korea into "a sea of fire." This simply is not true. In fact, the "sea of fire" threat came in March 1994 as a reaction to our deadly serious plans for sanctioning the regime over its nuclear facilities and as we were stationing Patriot missiles in the South. As the crisis became more heated, we built up our military forces in the region and reviewed in great detail the Pentagon's plans for a winnable but tremendously destructive war.

 

Thereafter, a number of books and articles argued that the agreement was reached despite, rather than because of, the pressure of threatened sanctions and American military preparations. Their prescription of only carrots was as wrong as those who now argue for all sticks and no negotiations.

 

It is time to step back, take a deep collective breath and design a strategy that is built around both. The choices in 1994 were the same four we have today: We could launch a military strike against the identified nuclear facilities; we could refuse negotiations and go to the United Nations for sanctions to isolate and contain the North's nuclear program; we could essentially accept the new nuclear weapons status of North Korea and try to contain the damage to international nonproliferation efforts, as well as to our alliances with South Korea and Japan; or we could negotiate with the North to stop the nuclear weapons program that creates the crisis.

 

The consequences for South Korea of the first option, a preemptive strike, make it, for almost all commentators, and apparently for the Bush administration, at best an option of last resort. The second, sanctions alone and no talks, the one favored by former secretary Baker, would be tantamount, in practice, to the third: acceptance of the North Korean program. Nobody in 1994, and probably few today, expect international sanctions alone to stop a North Korean nuclear weapons program. The Chinese, and perhaps others, would provide enough aid to prevent sanctions from starving the North into submission.

 

Using the threat of sanctions and isolation can, however, force the North to see the wisdom of a negotiated halt. That was the course chosen by President Clinton, and it may well be the one President Bush is settling on as well. For this course of action to be most effective, though, a powerful military reaction to any North Korean provocation should be on the table, too, as was the case in 1994, while also reserving the possibility of a preemptive military strike.

 

In short, we should be prepared to go to the table with the North, as we were in 1994, to use a combination of sanctions and rewards to stop its new nuclear weapons program. We must recognize that we can neither move the North Koreans nor build support from South Korea, China and Japan if we refuse ever to talk, directly or indirectly, with Pyongyang. Instead, we should, first, persuade our allies to suspend economic and political engagement with the North, except for vital food aid. Second, we should suspend our own performance under the Agreed Framework until the North shows us the destruction of its uranium enrichment facilities. Third, some changes to the agreement are needed in light of the North's clandestine activities: immediate initiation of full-scope inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency; prompt shipment of the stored spent fuel out of North Korea; and agreement by the North to accept any future requests from the IAEA for special inspections.

 

An ideological disdain for negotiating with our adversaries seldom serves our interests, and in this case could be highly dangerous. The Bush administration faces a difficult and dangerous challenge in dealing with a regime that is drawn to a negotiating style of clumsy brinkmanship. The president deserves support as he engages the North Koreans. And he deserves better counsel than that of those who consider carrots sufficient or those who favor only sticks. Successful diplomacy is wedded to power -- and our global power depends also on our successful diplomacy.

 

Here's a timeline through 2003

 

Chronology of nuclear weapons development in North Korea:

 

1993: North Korea says it has quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty amid suspicions that it is developing nuclear weapons. It later reverses that decision.

 

1994: North Korea and U.S. sign an agreement. North Korea pledges to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for international aid to build two power-producing nuclear reactors.

 

Aug. 31, 1998: North Korea fires a multistage over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean, proving it can strike any part of Japan's territory.

 

May 25-28, 1999: Former Defense Secretary William Perry visits North Korea and delivers a U.S. disarmament proposal.

 

Sept. 13: North Korea pledges to freeze long-range missile tests.

 

Sept. 17: U.S. President Bill Clinton eases economic sanctions against North Korea.

 

December: A U.S.-led consortium signs a US$4.6 billion contract for two safer, Western-developed light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea.

 

July 2000: North Korea again threatens to restart its nuclear program if Washington doesn't compensate for the loss of electricity caused by delays in building nuclear power plants.

 

June 2001: North Korea warns it will reconsider its moratorium on missile tests if the Bush administration doesn't resume contacts aimed at normalizing relations.

 

July: State Department reports North Korea is going ahead with development of its long-range missile. A Bush administration official says North Korea conducts an engine test of the Taepodong-1 missile.

 

December: President Bush warns Iraq and North Korea that they would be "held accountable" if they developed weapons of mass destruction "that will be used to terrorize nations."

 

Jan. 29, 2002: Bush labels North Korea, Iran and Iraq an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address. "By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger," he says.

 

Oct. 4: A visiting U.S. delegation says North Korean officials revealed that the country has a second covert nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1994 agreement -- a program using enriched uranium. North Korea later denies this.

 

Oct. 16: U.S. officials say they have discovered evidence of a nuclear weapons program in North Korea.

 

Oct. 26: Bush, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung meet at an Asian-Pacific regional summit in Mexico and agree to seek a peaceful end to the North's nuclear problem.

 

Nov. 11: The United States, Japan and South Korea halt oil supplies to North Korea promised under the 1994 deal.

 

Dec. 12: North Korea reactivates nuclear facilities at Yongbyon that were frozen under the 1994 deal with the United States.

 

Dec. 13: North Korea asks the U.N. nuclear watchdog to remove monitoring seals and cameras from its nuclear facilities.

 

Dec. 14: The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency urges North Korea to retract its decision to reactivate its nuclear facilities and abide by its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

 

Dec. 21: North Korea removes monitoring seals and cameras from its nuclear facilities

 

Jan. 10, 2003: North Korea withdraws from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

 

Jan. 28: South Korean envoy Lim Dong-won meets North Korea's number two leader Kim Yong Nam. Lim says North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has received the letter from President Kim Dae-jung that suggests Pyongyang should reverse its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

 

Feb. 3: The U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signs a "prepare to deploy" order that will send 24 bombers to the Pacific region.

 

Feb 4: Pyongyang describes the U.S. move as an attempt "to crush us to death."

 

Feb. 5: North Korea's official news agency says the nation has reactivated its nuclear power facilities.

 

Feb. 12: The 35-member IAEA board of governors declares North Korea in breach of atomic safeguards and refers the case to the U.N. Security Council.

 

Feb. 18: The (North) Korean People's Army threatens it will abandon the 1953 Korean War armistice if the United States continues its military buildup in the region.

 

Feb. 24: North Korea test fires a land-to-ship missile into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

 

Feb. 26: The United States says North Korea has reactivated its five-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

 

March 10: North Korea test fires another surface-to-vessel anti-ship missile into the Sea of Japan, or East Sea as it is known in South Korea.

 

March 29: Pyongyang says it will resist all international demands to allow nuclear inspections.

 

April 5: North Korea says it won't recognize any ruling made by the U.N. Security Council.

 

April 12: In a dramatic shift, North Korea backtracks on its calls for direct 'face-to- face' talks with Washington, saying it will consider any format for dialogue if the United States is prepared to make a "bold switchover."

 

June 2: Group of Eight world leaders meeting in France accuses North Korea of undermining non-proliferation agreements.

 

June 9: North Korea lifts its war of words with the United States to a new level, saying it may now need nuclear weapons to combat what it describes as a hostile threat from Washington.

 

July 12: A senior U.S. official says North Korea has begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods, suggesting the communist country intends to produce nuclear weapons.

[Recliner Pilot 61]

But my understanding after doing a little reading is that he actually honored the deal until 2000, when he brought his only card to the new table (Bush). Bush refused to let him sit down at all and things have degenerated since.

 

WTF was Kim Jung Il doing negotiating nuclear arms with the Gov. of Texas?

 

Idiot.