The conundrum of North Korea
Sometimes there are problems without solutions. For example, North Korea.
To those outside its borders, the behavior of North Korea seems driven by madness. Its actions make no sense; they seem random and incoherent, carried out with no apparent long-term in mind.
But that’s probably wrong. Those actions — testing nuclear weapons, firing missiles — probably do make some kind of sense when viewed from the only perspective that matters in North Korea, from inside the government. It’s a schizophrenic state, listening only to the voices inside its own head and not at all to those of the outside world.
That makes it a problem to be managed, not solved. The first President Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all took different approaches, but with equally little or no progress. The same will likely be true of Barack Obama. Again, what’s going on inside North Korea is far more determinative than anything that happens outside.
So, we have to be ready for military action should that come; we have to contain North Korea’s nuclear weaponry, technology and material, so the problem doesn’t spread. And we have to be prepared for the day when it all falls apart.
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212 comments Add your comment
DB, Gwinnettian
May 27th, 2009
2:56 pm
I hope you do not feel I was trying to be rude in my earlier post
Nah. I have some issues with some of the posters here, but you’re generally pretty civilized, and if I ever fail to respond with a modicum of civility in kind just call me “A-hole.”
it’ll be our safe word.
Normal
May 27th, 2009
2:59 pm
A-hole?! That’s what my wife calls me! I thought it was a term of endearment! OMG!!
jewcowboy
May 27th, 2009
3:02 pm
georgian by birth floridian because I’m lucky,
“What do you think they’re going to do, threaten the S. Koreans and Japanese for some silk shirts and radios?…”
Ummm…Japan has the 3rd largest economy in the world and S. Korea has the 15th largest, hardly silk shirts and radios.
“Who says or actually believes that they are making them for themselves?”
I would say most world leaders believe that based on the statements they’ve made. Let’s see, what would N. Korea gain by selling thier 4 – 5 nuclear weapons…a few million dollars and world military retaliation, especially from China. What do they gain if they keep them; respect and deterrence from invasion by the U.S.
“however are you willing to say that if they could have got their hands on something more powerful they would not have.”
Absolutely not. There is huge difference in setting off a bomb at 3am in front of a coffee shop you know will be deserted and incinerating millions of people, leaving many more millions maimed and trillions in property damage. I know this may be hard to understand, but there are degrees of criminality. Just because you lose your temper and punch someone does not necessarily mean you’re a serial killer.
“I know you care more for the Jewish people than that.”
I care for all people, regardless of faith, and sometimes despite of it.
“Also you do know the goal of the bombers who were stopped was to KILL as many Jewish people as they could?”
There is a lot of hate in the world. These people also bought a fake goo-like substance supplied by a FBI chemist thinking it was C-4. Mental giants, not so much.
jewcowboy
May 27th, 2009
3:06 pm
Of course the funny thing about this is the U.S. itself has still not ratified the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Talk about hypocrisy.
TnGelding
May 27th, 2009
3:17 pm
TUESDAY VANDY GIRL
May 27th, 2009
2:26 pm
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
RW-(the original)
May 27th, 2009
4:36 pm
DB,
Paul and I have had this difference about campaign finance for a while now. His position is basically 100% public funding (if I’m mischaracterizing that position this thread is probably sufficiently dead where he won’t notice) and mine is (or was) that there should be no limits to private funding but 100% disclosure before the candidate could cash the check or process the credit card and that would the same whether the donation was a dollar or a million dollars and so on.
However a flaw in my idea is coming to light lately. I don’t think that car dealer thing I linked to is the full reason for certain closures, although the one where the Clinton guy and the BET guy kept all their dealerships but had their competition all shut down is pretty suspicious. The real problem is what happened to low end financial backers of Prop 8. There aren’t a lot of people that want to deal with harassment by organized community rabble rousers with nothing but time on their hands, so they’ll just drop out of the system.
I also can’t see JUST hiding the names of smaller donors because that is WAY too easy to exploit. I can’t stand the thought of public financing and a whole new can of worms is opened there by figuring out at what level you allow a candidate to take financing, but it almost seems like the way things are going that might be the only thing that works unless we want to have some panel of judges that clears private donations as being within the law and allow the donors to remain anonymous for donations up to the current limits and full immediate disclosure for those above it.
Anyway I was just kidding with the no elections bit. Even Saddam still put himself up for election from time to time.
RW-(the original)
May 27th, 2009
4:44 pm
Well I guess my lengthy and quite clean diatribe about campaign finance had a magic word.
N.J,
May 27th, 2009
4:58 pm
Amazing what eight years can produce. In 2000, North Korea had two nuclear reactors. One was not working but could be brought to functionality by rebuilding half of it, its core. The other was completely useless and had to be rebuilt completely. The funniest thing was the Bush claims. In June 2008 the North Koreans, in accordance with the six nation talks blew up the key elements of its main reactor. Its less useful reactor was forgotten.
Shortly after Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech in 2002, N.K withdrew from the non proliferation treaty. Prior to this, the N.K. reactors were under constant observation by video and by IEAE inspectors. Between 1996 and 2002, to all accounts the North Koreans might have been able to have produced enough plutonium for two bombs but their recent reopening of their plutonium reprocessing reactor seems to indicate that they didnt actually get any plutonium to from them. The two recent bombs appear to have been uranium bombs, too big to fit onto a missile. But once they get the techology for a Uranium bomb down, a much smaller and lighter plutonium bomb is simple.
Bush walked away from the 1996 agreement, and the North Koreans walked away from the table. Giving them time, six years, to produce one inefficient bomb in 2006, and a much more efficient one, this year.
N.J,
May 27th, 2009
5:09 pm
No. The fact that they have a bomb now doesnt indicate they had anything BEFORE 2000. America developed the first bomb in just a few yeas and once the basic design is known, the North Koreans could have done so in about 18 months max. Once a reactor is opperational, they can produce enough fissionable material for ten bombs in a single year, and the design of a “canon” type bomb is simple enough, Simply fire a small chunk of fissile material into a larger but still subcritical mass so the smaller mass strikes the larger at at least 1/1000th of a second. Its more than obvious that the N.K.s first bomb was following the designs left behind by the Japanese, which only compressed the fissile masses at 1/100 the of a second, which would result in only ten percent of the mass going critical. You would either have to have ten times as much uranium or have a ten times greater compression of the fissile core to get the recent bomb results. One or the other, they either got faster compression or a physically bigger bomb. Explains their reopening of their plutonium reactor. By next year they can have enough plutonium for ten weapons small enough to fit on top of their missiles.
They did not have to start until five years ago to have their first bomb in 2006.
N.J,
May 27th, 2009
5:12 pm
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
we may hold this, but it does not neccessarily translate to other nations agreeing with it, nor gives us a right to ram it down the throats of other nations.
That was the mistake about Vietnam. Ask the Vietnamese peasant about liberty and he would have looked at you like you were crazy. Its a complete abstraction to this ancient culture, totally devoid of any reality.
TnGelding
May 27th, 2009
11:31 pm
N.J.
May 27th, 2009
10:25 pm
True, but the people are equal to us, and their lives and cultures should be valued. As you state, it’s their decision on what kind of government they wish to live under.
ray mc fadden
June 16th, 2009
12:32 am
without china’s support we are dead locked what to you do to stop them when china supports the north we need to cut off the money to all of them the last time i was in south korea they don’t realy like us that much???