Running North Korea freakout thread

This has always baffled me.

They scare us (or we pretend that they do). We talk about them. We monitor them. We toss around ideas about how to deal with them. We try to get South Korea, China and Russia involved in how to deal with them.

THEY'RE LEGITIMATE. Deal with it. Or ignore them completely. Pick one.

This whole "we don't recognize you" and "we can't give you legitimacy" nonsense is the adult version of . . .

 

From The New Yorker's Evan Osnos, who knows his stuff and presents it un-hysterically:

Three Key Questions About Donald Trump's Summit With Kim Jong-Un

One interesting point near the top:

Officially, the American objective at the summit is to secure a firm agreement that North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons. That should be understood as a notional ideal and a real-life impossibility. No serious analyst believes that Pyongyang is preparing to dismantle its nuclear arsenal anytime soon; it is the cornerstone of the propaganda that the Kim family uses to persuade its people that it deserves to rule.

For skimmers, the three questions are:

1. What is a realistic standard of success?
2. Where, what, and how?
3. What is Plan B?

Also, his (long) article on North Korea from September is definitely worth a read. He spent a significant amount of time there, which is rare for a Western journalist. The story has a lot of insight on North Korean history and current attitudes.

The Risk of Nuclear War With North Korea

 

Kim: "America does not attack nations with nuclear weapons. Regrettably, for the security of my country and to ensure its survival, we must have nuclear weapons."

Maybe that's why America avoids talking with him. There is no way to answer this.

 

Is that an actual quote from Kim? Or a paraphrase?

But yes, I think that fairly sums up Kim's view. Which is why he's not going to give up his nuke program. Which is also why I don't think the Trump admin's stated policy should be (or should have been) that we simply can't allow NK under any circumstances to finish a nuke that can reach the mainland U.S., and will use military force if necessary to prevent it. Because they will get there, and soon, and we almost certainly can't stop it except with a broad war that ends up with a new NK regime. And even if we did that, who knows what the next regime would do/be? Drawing an unrealistic red line that we can't enforce without a major war is bad policy.

Therefore, it's better IMO to bring NK out of the shadows to try to help manage them as part of the international community. Maybe that won't prove possible, but it's worth a shot. We didn't want Pakistan to get nukes, for instance, but they did as of 1998. And they haven't used them, despite having a long-standing border rival (India, which also has nukes). If you can't prevent something from happening, stop pretending you can and start working on managing the fallout while you still have some leverage to shape events.

Hopefully this summit, if indeed it happens, can be a first step on that road. We shall see.

 

I am far from an expert on international relations, but I have no idea how a country with nuclear weapons—and whose president is actively seeking to expand its already enormous nuclear arsenal—gets off on telling other countries that they can't have them.

 

One omission: The only country ever to use them against another nation is telling a nation it can't have them.

The hubris is off the charts.

 

Agreeing to something while knowing the consequences could be even worse. #JCPOA

 

Like when Canadians talk about how to deal with geopolitical aggression?

 

Our "knowing the consequences" batting average is about .042.

Take me out, coach.

 

Of course you know that this answers my question not one bit.

 

Your question is kinda silly. It's leadership. If every sovereign nation abdicated such responsibilities, things would be even more of a clusterfuck than they are. Moral relativism doesn't really come into play on that level. There are good guys and bad guys. Now you can argue the perception of who is whom is wrong (RSW), but I don't think you'd want to live in a world with libertarian geopolitics.

 

Especially when history shows that the only countries the US won't mess with are those with nukes.