Paranoid Right-Wing Says Tiny, Isolated, Impoverished North Korea Has “Upper Hand” in Relations With U.S.
One of the strangest things about the American right’s thinking about foreign policy is it’s ability to combine sublime overconfidence in the likely efficacy of using military force with a panicky and paranoid view of America’s general position in the world. Thus we get things like Joseph Loconte, a contributor to The Weekly Standard, fretting that North Korea now has “the upper hand” in its relations with the world.
As John Boonstra points out this is nuts:
North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear plant — which persistent diplomacy succeeded in shutting down in in Bush’s second term — could not even be fully re-started for at least six to twelve months. In the meantime, the United States and Japan have put forth the names of companies to be targeted by the Security Council committee responsible for administering sanctions on North Korea. While it’s conventional to depict North Korea’s nuclear breakout as a ticking time bomb scenario, it’s really the country’s own leaders who are running out of time and credible options here.
With the climate so soured against it, any North Korean gambit to resume nuclear production seems designed to offer up bait to American hawks and split the United States off from the other six-party participants. China, not the United States, is the most important actor in this regional drama, and constructive Sino-American diplomacy here will bring far greater benefits than getting caught up in a war of rhetorical (let alone military) escalation with a feeble and desperate regime.
Iran is at least a legitimate regional military power in its part of the world. North Korea is weaker than South Korea, weaker than Japan, weaker than China, and of course also weaker than the United States. It’s poor and it’s isolated. It’s also a very frustrating situation. The DPRK leadership refuses to take a reasonable path and it does seem likely that until there’s some change at the top we’re going to see constant outbreaks of crises of one sort or another. But managing the problem is far from impossible. The DPRK doesn’t really have any cards to play beyond hoping that wild gambits will provoke wild counteractions that disrupt the coalition against it.
24 Responses to “Paranoid Right-Wing Says Tiny, Isolated, Impoverished North Korea Has “Upper Hand” in Relations With U.S.”
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April 17th, 2009 at 9:28 am
North Korea is an aggressive panhandler. We throw them some change because we have a meeting to get to, and it’s not worth brawling with a crazy homeless guy in the street. You’ll mess up your nice suit and end up late for the meeting.
Upper hand. Whatever.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:34 am
According to the rightwing, the only way to gain and/or maintain the upper hand is to drop bombs.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Me no talk good. Dee-plow-missy me make stupid look.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Well, we barely survived the threat of the Sandinisto-Russian forces driving up through Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and all of Mexico invading Harlingen, Texas, so I’m not surprised there are those ever vigilant to find out which Communist country has penetrated and taken over the State Department.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Matt-
I think you’re wrong to be so confused by conservatives reaction to N. Korea’s moves.
Clearly, when they see a nation waste its money on a stupid, aggressive, unilateral militaristic series of actions, whose only possible outcomes are the loss of international assistance and maybe a big war which the nation in question cannot possibly win, the only LOGICAL response in the mind of a conservative is “DAMN! THEY’RE WINNING!”
April 17th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Actually that’s what N.Korea is threatening, not the rightwing. And obviously it’s working.
The leftwing meanwhile has nothing to offer in opposition. Tepid statements from a moribund UN are meaningless. So N. Korea just does whatever it wants to do, just like Iran. What a joke you people are.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:14 am
wait, I thought North Korea was only aggressive as a result of Bush’s refusal to negotiate directly with them? now you’re saying it’s the nature of the regime?
April 17th, 2009 at 10:21 am
And obviously it’s working.
Oh, obviously. Now, they’re rich, the dominant regional power, at the head of a militarily-significant mutual-aid bloc…man, I wish my government was as powerful and important as North Korea’s!
April 17th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Clearly North Korea is marching from victory to victory, spreading its influence across, um, North Korea, thanks to the weak-kneed left who refuse a SURGE ™ in North Korea.
Once we get through occupying Burma, we will march triumphantly to Pyongyang, and Americans will cheer.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I blame the media, or whichever political consultants or pundits created the conventional wisdom that “winning” the 24-hour news cycle was important.
For some reason, some people seem to think something needs to change now with respect to North Korea. This is stupid. If they’re in violation of international law then sanctions or whatever the appropriate punishment is should be in place. If they restart the Korean War, the American bases in South Korea will have the intended effect of pulling us into it. This would be bad for everyone concerned, but the North Korean government far more than anyone else. If they launch an ICBM at Seattle, then we count on the Fantastic Four to intercept it, because clearly we aren’t talking about the real world anymore.
But if Kim Jong Il shakes hands with the leader of yet another country we don’t like, or if his government issues press releases about how they have the power to defend themselves, or if it experiments with some other Cold War-era technology the blueprints to which are freely available online, why can’t we as a nation just shrug our shoulders and say we have bigger problems to deal with?
April 17th, 2009 at 10:30 am
So N. Korea just does whatever it wants to do
Ah, that THAT must be why they’ve reunified the Korean Peninsula under communist rule.
Thanks, shooter!
April 17th, 2009 at 10:30 am
By the way, I want to note that I feel really bad for the people of North Korea. I don’t think there is anything in particular the United States can do about their situation, certainly not unilaterally, but it is really a tragedy how they are suffering under their terrible government.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:48 am
The threat North Korea’s insane leadership presents as well as North Korea’s misery and suffering, like that of many nations, including Burma and Zimbabwe and others, presents us with real world choices, and not fantasies.
There are things that U.S. foreign policy could sanely aim to accomplish, and other things it could do but which are more likely to make threats and suffering worse.
This is the real world. Things don’t instantly yield to our leaders because they act manly, threaten violence, speak in a harshly condemning manner, or exert willpower through their magic rings. The U.S. is a powerful nation, but it is not a magical kingdom.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Well, a good conservative is a conservative that creates a list of enemies to fearmonger about. Gotta have enemies out there, no matter how real or fabcricated.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:03 am
The thing to keep in mind about the “Communist” nations is that they were dependent on the USSR for almost all of their resources. With the fall of the USSR, they really should have replaced their leadership, since their previous economic structure was now invalid.
The holdovers, primarily Cuba and North Korea, have (perhaps rightly) indoctrinated their people with the idea that the 90s were a Time of Troubles, and the people just needed to Tighten Their Belts to get through it. Arguably, Cuba has some success at replacing Soviet aid; North Korea has had none.
The thing to do was to become their patrons; Carter’s agreement with Kim, supplying them with nuclear energy, would have done just that. However, Bush’s refusal to back up our end of the bargain has resulted in a more deeply impoverished North Korean population which is ever more loyal to Kim. Furthermore, Kim has only ever gotten anything by throwing temper tantrums.
Where to go from here, I don’t know. We could maybe recreate the Anbar Awakening by bribing Kim. A nonaggression pact would probably be fruitful, too.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Actually [dropping bombs is] what N.Korea is threatening, not the rightwing. And obviously it’s working.
Yeah, well, I for one am ok with North Korea threatening to drop all the dysfunctional bombs they want to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. That only seems to be “obviously . . . working” in the sense that it drives rightwing pants-pissers crazy, but then innocuous reports from DHS do that too.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:49 am
The problem with North Korea isn’t so much them having a nuke or two; there are two separate issues:
– Keeping North Korea from selling nuke material to others (like, say, terrorists)
– Managing the eventual collapse of North Korea
Of the the two, the second is the bigger problem. There are roughly three ways that’s likely to go:
1) An “East German style” peaceful collapse, with South Korea absorbing the north and starting to repair it
2) A last ditch “better die fighting than not” attempt to invade South Korea
3) An unmanaged implosion where refugees stream north into China and south into South Korea
The second is the only one that’s really our problem, given the military guarantees we’ve given the south. No one wants that result, including the Chinese – and I’d say that our policy towards North Korea should primarily be about avoiding this particular outcome, along with a watchful eye on any shipping that might involve nuclear sales.
April 17th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Obama asks forgiveness for the actions of America, its past, present and the rest, he apologizes for everything. Relations with Russia deteriorated, lack of respect for Islam, poor relations with Iran, the bickering with Europe, the lack of adulation for Fidel Castro, while it is good to beat the breasts of America.
More importantly, it celebrates the contribution (totally nonexistent) of Islam to the rise of America, and it splits the reverence of a bloody sectarian and king of Arabia, Abdullah of hatred. It cancels the anti-missile belt located in Alaska and offers an unnecessary nuclear disarmament.
Putin, the dictator, has risen from ten years of hatred and aggression towards the West, Russian, addressing the fact to its neighbors and by all other means in the United States, not to mention . Therefore, it should be, it can only be the fault of Uncle Sam
The fault of America for 30 years if relations with Islam are degraded by American lack of respect. Nasser, dictators Syrian, Iraqi, Soviet influence, do not talk about it.
Guilty by definition. The insanity of war and hatred of the West that characterized since the forties, the Ayatollah Khomeini? The conversion of the general Iranian intelligentsia to the far left anti-imperialist? The rescue of millions of Muslims by America to the four corners of the barbarity that is Islam? The rhetoric of Bush genuflections to “Islam, a religion of peace?
Europe, frightened by his shadow, hesitant to take up arms if only a penknife (dangerous weapon of aggression), which showed millions against “Euro-” and Ronald Reagan, and even against Clinton? It still is always the fault of America. “We do not speak Russian! It’s your fault. ”
But where Obama has he learned this nonsense? Where does this accumulation of disappointments in the world, misconceptions and distorted? Where did this pruritus of you-I ask for forgiveness? It is used to Jimmycartérisme, who put on all fours before Khomeini ( “a saint”), the USSR, Cuba, the third world, Muslim terrorism. Why has qu’Obama – leader of a republic – the bent head before the king of Arabia?
For 20 years, Wright was his mentor, who lodged in the circles of the Black Theology in Chicago who initiated the ideas of the black version of “liberation theology”.
And what did Wright say ? “Not ‘God Bless America,’ but ‘God damn America’. “God does not bless, but it overwhelms America! That America is slavery, that AIDS was “invented” by the U.S. government to exterminate blacks, and so on.
Wright hates America with all his being, even if it gets any dividends imaginable … The theology of “liberation” black is the American equivalent of the worst perversions Castro, Guevara, Fanon: America is satanic, and all other victims of America, are angelic.
Twenty years, and it gets sermons. It is Wright who is a graduate of Harvard who is now a stirrer local (community organizer), for a politician in Chicago. Do not forget that the local political career Obama has been launched by the fanatical hatred of America, the extreme left of the Weathermen terrorist in Chicago who repeat and confirm the same ideological antiphon. All aquariums where the tadpole swam had the same water.
Obama is the manicured Wright: he went to Harvard. It he does not drool, it does not show his fist. He does not swear words continuous jet as his guru. Elegant, it is honey – but the pills, even covered with sugar, are no less pepper. The background is the same. Wright insult America, Obama asks forgiveness: in both cases, it is guilty. Wright is pastor, Obama is president.
Moreover, this deplorable America has sown disorder and evil everywhere. Instead of working multilaterally with all work well together with Putin, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, Bashir al-Assad, et Cie, the unbearable Bush has made enemies.
What a shame! We must redress the wrongs committed. America will find his redemption in the withdrawal, penitence, contrition, and a form of extinction. Submerged in multilateral and international organizations covered by the unanimous UN harmonized with Europe, leaving its own sovereignty in favor of an “international law”, which judges do not worry democracy and are accountable to people – as the European Union that abolished democracy and replaced it by government lawyers and commissioners. Jeremy Wright wants apocalypses; Obama wants to change everything in soft version by avocasserie.
That is why his administration is full of lawyers who look with condescension and disdain the U.S. Constitution, voters, elected officials, their peers are the international jet-set of multinational lawyers, legal NGOs, judges of international courts.
They want not so much the rule of law and international law as the rule of lawyers. They want to put a soldier behind every lawyer and bring the war – which is ultima ratio regis, the ultimate argument of the king, as it was written on the canons of Frederick II – outlaws.
Only they do, while gangs of killers roam the streets and alleys of the megalopolis. They look absolutely the smallest acts of soldiers, men of intelligence, government, and not only submit to censorship, but also punishment, self-disarmament by means of utopia, while the other sides, with no have cure, continue their depredations.
This is what one learns in law school at Harvard, where Obama graduated. Any action should be regulated by the dictatorship of the short paragraphs of Unitholders and sub-interpreters, lawyers.
We must at all costs, find common ground with everyone. It should go far, far away, in the concessions: the other side eventually understand. Kim Jong-Il, Hugo Chavez, Ayatollah Khamenei, Assad, Hamas, there are compromises necessary for a deal with the lawyers for the opposing party.
Without agreement, it falls into the bad habits of American honnie. America, what horror is allowed to go to defend its allies against their enemies. We fought in Vietnam and Korea against the communist aggressor. We fought against Soviet Communism. What do you think of the Obama campaign has served in Berlin, saying, with delusions that the world had won the Cold War “joining” as if there was a camp alone in this war!
America needs to be reduced in its pretensions and its power. The world must be reduced to one side, the makers of peace, with which the agreement is always found.
April 17th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
That was an idiotic summation of the neo-con worldview. Great, at least you guys aren’t currently in power.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Apparently Hollywood is remaking “Red Dawn”, with the Chinese as villains this time. I saw a review of the new script the other day, in which the reviewer said that making the Chinese the bad guys wasn’t plausible, since China hadn’t been openly belligerent to the U.S. lately. Therefore, he thought that having the North Koreans invade America would be “more realistic”. This is the level of thinking we have to deal with.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
You made it through that, Courtney? Brave lad.
MaximusNYC,
I thought there were a billion Chinese.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
What the fuck was that Fleur Delacour shit mainlining before he copied & pasted that?
Dude, you better lay off that shit. You’ll have a heart attack or something.
April 17th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Uh…all your base are belong to us? Watch as amazing walk ball begin move across room as ghost magic machine?
April 20th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Sorry for my english, but at least I try. What I meant is that president Obama the Appeaser said that “the world” won the Cold War. It is a myth. There was no such thing as “united” nations. As today regarding islamo-terrorism, the world was divided, there was us (the free world) ans there was them. But Obama the Appeaser does not separate the white or black, or the friend of the enemy.