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February 13, 2007
The North Korean Nuclear Deal
Today we discover that a tentative deal has been reached with the DPRK regarding it's nuclear weapons program
In a landmark international accord, North Korea promised Tuesday to close down and seal its main nuclear reactor within 60 days in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil as a first step in abandoning all nuclear weapons and research programs.North Korea also reaffirmed a commitment to disable the reactor in an undefined next phase of denuclearization and to discuss with the United States and other nations its plutonium fuel reserves and other nuclear programs that "would be abandoned" as part of the process. In return for taking those further steps, the accord said, North Korea would receive additional "economic, energy and humanitarian assistance up to the equivalent of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil."
Yeah right. On the one hand I fully expect the Koreans to cheat on the deal at the earliest opportunity. On the other, of all the threats we face right now this one is the least amenable to a solution.
As for the agreement itself, if you want the gory details you can find them on the Washington Post's website here.
Here's what I think is going to happen:
One fine day we're going to wake up and North Korea will be in chaos. It will come out of the blue, totally unexpected.
Totalitarian governments are at once very strong and very weak. They're strong in the ways we're all familiar with; total control of socitey. But at the same time they're very brittle. One day it seemed like the Soviet Union would be forever, and in a short time the entire Empire had collapsed. Romania, for example, was totally under the control of Nicolae Ceausescu. Then one day we heard of fighting in the streets and rumors that he and his wife were on the run. The next we learn that they'd both been shot by their own army. The whole thing was triggered by the government's attempt to evict a popular pastor from his apartment. Who could have imagined?
I think the same thing is going to happen with North Korea. Some small event, the type you can never forsee, is going to snowball into something massive.
The question is whether the end will be relatively peaceful or terribly violent. No one in Eastern Europe had nuclear weapons, the Soviets having removed theirs before they evacuated.
Kim Jong il may be tempted to go down in a blaze of glory. He might not have a deliverable weapon for some time, but all he has to do is put one close to the border and light it off and lots of people are going to die.
But they don't even have to do that. Over half of the North Korean army is stationed within 90 miles of the border with the south (GlobalSecurity analysis here). The South Korean capital, Seoul, is almost right on the border itself, and the North has spent fifty years hiding artillery and rockets in the mountains just north of the city. The North could do great damage in a short period of time.
None of this is to say that it is a waste of time to negotiate with North Korea. Far from it. This agreement does stand a chance, but only if China puts pressure on the North to impliment it. They might not, in that I believe China is using the Korean crisis to distract us from their main goal, which is to take back Taiwan. But we shall see.
The real test, I think, will be how we handle the collapse of the North. It might be an unwinnable situation, and we need to recognize that even if we do everything "right", the situation might still get out of control. And it isn't going to be any easier whether the person in the White House is Republican or Democrat.
Posted by Tom at February 13, 2007 9:08 PM
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Comments
What a bunch of commies. Bush's people just negotiated the same deal Clinton's did back in the 1990's that Bush dropped in 2001. The only difference is N. Korea now has nukes they built since 2001.
And how about that pinko liberal Washington Post going into Walter Reed and showing the dead roaches, rotting floors and rat-infested rooms our wounded troops are recovering in? That proves they hate our troops. Bunch of fag commie pinko liberals.
Posted by: DeadEyeDick at February 22, 2007 7:01 AM
More to the point of your posting Tom, but Eastern Europe (including Romania) had westerners traveling in and out of them frequently. North Korea is pretty much sealed off, even from China.
Eastern Europe (including Romania) was dominated by the USSR and they had Soviet troops stationed on their soils. North Korea is not dominated by any outside power and no foreign troops are there.
Eastern Europe (including Romania) had recent memories of independence and some level of market capitalism, free enterprise and a somewhat higher level of personal liberty.
North Koreans have no such memories of better times. Korea was subjugated and enslaved by Japan from 1895-1945 and occupied by Soviet troops from 1945-1949.
Korea was always closed and suspicious of outsiders, that's why it's nickname for the last thousand years has been the "Hermit Kingdom."
North Korea's legitmacy rests upon the perception by the people that their government is keeping them safe from an always-impending attack from the outside, a perception that is fairly easy to maintain because there is no internet, no radio, no TV, no cable, no nothing coming in from outside to make those people suspect otherwise.
A very few North Koreans are allowed to go back and forth to China, and they're all made to live right next to the border where they stay.
We know this because those people have told the Chinese this.
Kim Jong-Il isn't going to live forever, but in all likelihood, when he kicks the bucket there will be a short, relatively bloodless power struggle among the hierarchy and the people will not notice much of a change.
Imagine, Tom, if you had been raised in a basement and raped every week from the age of two to eighteen, then moved to a padded cell for a year, and then to solitary confinement where you were allowed to read science and math books as entertainment, fed two inadequate meals a day, and the only people you saw were the ones who fed you, made announcements, led you in your exercises and told you that the rest of the world hated you and wanted to kill you. You'd think you had it pretty good compared to the alternatives, and personnel changes wouldn't disturb you very much.
People like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney would be very happy to run a country like North Korea, because everyone follows the rules, toes the line, supports the leadership and liberals who want to change things get killed.
Posted by: DeadEye Dick at February 22, 2007 7:47 AM
Oh dick, you were doing so well until that last paragraph. If you want me to take you seriously please avoid cheap shots.
Posted by: Tom the Redhunter at February 22, 2007 8:50 PM
