OT: A Nuclear North Korea

[Ludd]

Thougt you might find this interesting.

A view from the left. The Guardian is an English newspaper.


Dan Plesch
Tuesday October 10, 2006
The Guardian


North Korea's nuclear test is only the latest failure of the west's proliferation policy. And it demonstrates the need to return to the proven methods of multilateral disarmament. Far from being crazy, the North Korean policy is quite rational. Faced with a US government that believes the communist regime should be removed from the map, the North Koreans pressed ahead with building a deterrent. George Bush stopped the oil supplies to North Korea that had been part of a framework to end its nuclear programme previously agreed with Bill Clinton. Bush had already threatened pre-emptive war - Iraq-style - against a regime he dubbed as belonging to the axis of evil.

The background to North Korea's test is that, since the end of the cold war, the nuclear states have tried to impose a double standard, hanging on to nuclear weapons for themselves and their friends while denying them to others. Like alcoholics condemning teenage drinking, the nuclear powers have made the spread of nuclear weapons the terror of our age, distracting attention from their own behaviour. Western leaders refuse to accept that our own actions encourage others to follow suit.
North Korea's action has now increased the number of nuclear weapon states to nine. Since 1998 India, Pakistan and now North Korea have joined America, China, France, Russia, Israel and the UK.

The domino effect is all too obvious. Britain wants nuclear weapons so long as the French do. India said it would build one if there were no multilateral disarmament talks. Pakistan followed rapidly. In Iran and the Arab world Israel's bomb had always been an incentive to join in. But for my Iranian friends, waking up to a Pakistani bomb can be compared to living in a non-nuclear Britain and waking up to find Belgium had tested a nuclear weapon.

East Asia is unlikely to be different. In 2002 Japan's then chief cabinet secretary, Yasuo Fukuda, told reporters that "depending on the world situation, circumstances and public opinion could require Japan to possess nuclear weapons". The deputy cabinet secretary at the time, Shinzo Abe - now Japan's prime minister - said afterwards that it would be acceptable for Japan to develop small, strategic nuclear weapons.

It was not supposed to be like this. At the end of the cold war, disarmament treaties were being signed, and in 1996 the big powers finally agreed to stop testing nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945. The public, the pressure groups and the media all breathed a great sigh of relief and forgot about the bomb. Everyone thought that with the Soviet Union gone, multilateral disarmament would accelerate.

But with public attention elsewhere, the Dr Strangeloves in Washington, Moscow and Paris stopped the disarmament process and invented new ideas requiring new nuclear weapons. A decade ago, Clinton's Pentagon placed "non-state actors" (ie terrorists) on the list of likely targets for US nuclear weapons. Now all the established nuclear states are building new nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration made things worse. First, it rejected the policy of controlling armaments through treaties, which had been followed by previous presidents since 1918. Second, it proposed to use military - even nuclear - force in a pre-emptive attack to prevent proliferation. This policy was used as a pretext for attacking Iraq and may now be used on either Iran or North Korea. More pre-emptive war will produce suffering and chaos, while nothing is done about India, Israel and Pakistan. So we are left with a policy of vigilante bravado for which we have sacrificed the proven methods of weapons control.

Fortunately, there is a realistic option. Max Kampelman, Ronald Reagan's nuclear negotiator, has proposed that Washington's top priority should be the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction on earth, including those possessed by the US. At the ongoing disarmament meetings at the UN, the vast majority of nations argue for a phased process to achieve this goal. They can point to the success of the UN inspectors in Iraq as proof that international inspection can work, even in the toughest cases. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that removed the missiles from Greenham is an example of an agreement no one thought possible that worked completely. This, and other legacies from the cold war, can and should be applied globally.

A group of Britain's closest allies, including South Africa and Ireland, are trying to broker a deal on global disarmament. Tragically, Britain won't be helping. Political parties and the media are deaf to these initiatives. The three main parties all follow more or less the US approach. They know that no US government will lease the UK a successor to Trident if London steps out of line on nuclear weapons policy. The media almost never report on UN disarmament debates. Disarmament has become the word that dare not be said in polite society.

Do we have to wait for another pre-emptive war or until the Japanese go nuclear before the British political class comes to realise that there can be a soft landing from these nuclear crises?

· Dan Plesch, a fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Keele University.

[Ludd]

Sorry about that long post, but it does go to show the difference between US and European thinking.

In parts of Europe, the US is the main threat to world peace, not NK or Iran. Sounds bizarre I know, but some recent polls prove it.

[Raapys]

Well, consider the guy that's in charge and it's not that bizarre. The mere fact that a guy like that gets to sit in the president's seat doesn't exactly raise an outsiders confidence in the US.

US appear to be driven basically by fear and paranoia, continually encouraged by the current administration.

[Possum]

Ludd said:

In parts of Europe, the US is the main threat to world peace, not NK or Iran. Sounds bizarre I know, but some recent polls prove it.

No, Ludd, wrong. Go back and re-read what you wrote there.

You missed two very important words, "perceived as".

In parts of europe, the US is perceived as the main threat to world peace, not NK or Iran.

Then you compound your error of logic with the second sentence. Polls prove nothing. Nothing at all. In the first place, a poll deals only with opinions, not facts. In the second place, a poll doesn't even prove what people's opinions are, since a poll only samples a tiny portion of the body being surveyed, then extrapolates those results to the entire body.

If you had chosen your words more carefully, you could have said what you were trying to say in a clear and concise fashion. Instead, you blurted out an ill-constructed "sound bite" that made you look like you don't have a clue.

And are you seriously suggesting that public opinion in europe should shape US foreign policy?

[Ludd]

My apologies for the lack of logic, poor English skills, ill-constructed "sound bite" and so-on. I do the best I can.

To be honest,further discussion in the face of such hostility seems pointless.

[Atrocities]

Hey no problem Ludd. You should read some of the crap I have typed. It was a very good article you posted, it does help to broaden the perspective of the dicusssion to have other POV introduced. JOb well done.

[Barnacle Bill]

Lordy I hate to weigh in on an OT topic, but 3/4 of a bottle of good Spanish wine made me do it....

Iraq: Gulf War I (1991, Bush 41's war) wasn't finished. Rule#1 absolutely has to be that shooting war between dictator & USA = dictator goes down. Went for Santa Anna, went for the Kaiser, went for Der Fuhrer, went for Togo, that it didn't go for Kim's pappy & Uncle Ho was an abomination. Didn't stop at the Rhine in '45, so shouldn't have stopped at the Euphrates in '91. Therefore, correcting that error would have been self-justified in '92, '93, '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, '00, '01, or '02. We finally did it in '03 - what took so long? Everything after that falls under Powell's "you break it, you bought it" doctrine, but IMO there wasn't any choice but to break it (it being Saddam).

Tony Blair: The guy's a big-time lefty. Bush 41 sent political operatives to (unsuccessfully) help his opposition keep him out of power. The bulk of his own party loaths his foriegn policy alignment with the eeeevil Bushchimphitler, and he has to rely on the Tories to keep the wheels on re Iraq. Yet, he sticks his head in the meat grinder anyway. Why? Well, the guy clearly ain't STUPID, so clearly the only answer is that he really believes in the mission and has the STRENGTH OF CHARACTOR to put right before politically expediency. Plus, he's really good at speachifying. So, despite the fact that I agree with next to nothing he's done in "domestic policy", I love the guy.

What the Euros think of the US: Not a matter of great concern to me. I love Europe - love the wine, love the food, love the art, love the history, "some of my best friends are European" (including my wife, BTW), and remain majorly impressed with the French contribution to US independence (I have pics of the placs at Yorktown, and scoffed at the C.2003 "boycott"). However, their opinion on US foriegn policy carries about as much weight with me as the opinion of the waiter on the subject of my retirement investments.

North Korea: We won't do anything. The problem for SK is that Seoul is within artillery range of NK, NK has wads of heavy arty stationed in range to pound Seoul to rubble, and most of the SK economy is concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area. Hence, Kim has SK by the short hairs even w/o nukes. If we did do something, though - look, NK is a 3rd World basket case armed with Soviet export model ("monkey model" as the Soviets themselves called it) equipment or Chinese/local clones thereof, and organized/trained per the demonstrated-ineffective Soviet "military science". Any modern Western force would go through them like... Schwarzkopf through the Iraqis. However, it ain't gonna happen. So, Kim will build his "Dongs" and we'll all jaw about it, and maybe the Japanese will go nuclear too, but someday the wheels will come off and Kim ends up like Ceausescu - unless he does someting totally stupid like launch a missile AT Japan/SK/US - in which case the Schwarzkopf thing probably happens and if he's lucky Kim ends up in is silly show trial like Saddam.

[dogscoff]

Tony Blair: The guy's a big-time lefty.

Lol! You americans wouldn't know a lefty if it jumped up and nationalised your public services! To you guys a 'lefty' is someone who suggests that just maybe, sometimes, in some extreme theoretical circumstances, it might be reasonable to suggest that perhaps government money might legitimately be used to assist sick people who can't afford to see a doctor. Anyone further left than that is a rabid communist and should be shot.

Our traditional political spectrum has your 'lefties' beyond our mainstream right wing and our 'lefties' as proper socialists: Renationalise the trains, the hospitals, all that. The posh toffs of the tory party were the right wing (yah, boo, hiss) and working class trade unionists of Labour were on the left. The intellectual liberals were piggy in the middle (and they never got to catch the ball).

Over the last 10 years Blair has pulled his so called 'labour' party further right than the tories! Our leftmost party now (disregarding the minority fringie parties) is the liberal party, which *used* to be the dead centre ground. There is no longer a true, large scale socialist party in this country, which leaves a powerful vacuum waiting to be filled.

On the other hand, Blair has dragged our entire political stage so far right (based on some US model, as far as I can see) that now people are starting to wonder if the right wing UKIP party (or, as I like to call them, the "I'm not racist BUT..." party) are the 'true' voice of modern Britain. Even the BNP (the 'let's beat up all the black people and deport them to Africa' party) are winning votes.

Me? I've given up on the lot of them. I don't believe in policy any more, since politicians state their policies before the elections, then promptly do the exact opposite of what they promised, grab all the cash out of the public purse and blow it on whores, wars and big expensive cars. I might just about vote liberal next time, since they haven't been in power yet so I feel they ought to be given a chance to (dis)prove themselves before I give up on democracy altogether, stop voting, stop paying taxes and turn anarchist.

We all talk so smugly about our "democracies" in threads like these but when was the last time *your* duly elected representative actually served the will of the people rather than their own interests? Democracy is a scam.

[RonGianti]

Ludd said:
My apologies for the lack of logic, poor English skills, ill-constructed "sound bite" and so-on. I do the best I can.

To be honest,further discussion in the face of such hostility seems pointless.

That was an excellent article, thanks for the link.

I would not call it hostility. There are a lot of complex issues at stake and heated emotions. I, for one, appreciated it when someone calls me on my own lack of logic or a poorly thought out position. This may be OT for this forum, but its completely ON Topic for each and every one of us! Don't give up. Its a lot more important than whether or not SEV Standard is balanced

[Possum]

Ludd said:
My apologies for the lack of logic, poor English skills, ill-constructed "sound bite" and so-on. I do the best I can.

To be honest,further discussion in the face of such hostility seems pointless.

Oh, please.

First, no need to apologise.

Second, if I'd known english wasn't your native tongue, I'd have been quite a bit less harsh. *I* will apologise for that.

Third, I did not attack you personally. I attacked your statement. As my catholic friends say, "Love the sinner, hate the sin."

There is no hostility toward you here. I did express scorn for what you appeared to be saying. But that's not the same thing.

30 years ago, at the age of 17, I lived and worked in the city of London. Over and over, I had this exchange with brits and other europeans -

Them: "So, are you Canadian?"
Me: "Ah, no, actually, I'm American."
Them: "F***ing Americans"

Now that, my friend, is hostility. Unearned, unwarranted, unjustified hostility.

Oh, there were reasons then, just as there are reasons now.

Then it was the aftermath of the war in southeast asia, during which we Americans were regularly vilified and excoriated in the european press.

Today, it's Iraq, and we are being regularly vilified and excoriated in the european press...

As Howard Cosell said, "It's like deja vu all over again!"

I enjoy the company of european people. I enjoy their foods and wines. I respect their sometimes superior and always different ways of doing things.

But as for their political opinions, well, yeah, pardon me while I try to look like someone who gives a damn