North Korea has been busy over the past two days, testing missiles and trying to convince the world that it is a military superpower — and led by a very crazy dictator, Kim Jong Il.
“We’re at the moment when the president has to decide whether he wants an unconstrained, nuclear North Korea to be part of his legacy,” said Jonathan D. Pollack, a professor of Asian and Pacific studies at the United States Naval War College who has spent much of his career studying North Korea and its improbable strategies for survival. “Until now, the attitude has been, ‘If the North Koreans want to stew in their own juices, let them,’ ” Mr. Pollack said. “But it’s becoming clear that Mr. Bush may leave office with the North Korean problem much worse.” (credit: The New York Times, July 6, 2006)
The dispute with North Korea has frustrated presidents as far back as Harry Truman, but has been particularly difficult to manage since the attack on the World Trade Center. Why is that? I’d wager to say that North Korea wants attention, and when it isn’t getting attention, it stages a crisis. More precisely, Kim Jong Il stages a crisis, much like his father did when he was supreme ruler in the mid-1990s.
Russia has backed down, saying that it wants less harsh penalties than what the U.S. has proposed, and the U.N. Security Council will spend five years drafting a resolution, essentially removing them from the options list. I vote for continuing the six-way talks proposed, and rejected, several times before. It seems like the most sensible course of action now. What do you think?
As for the title of this post and the image above, both are credited to the film Team America, starring none other than Kim Jong Il (in puppet form). It’s a great introspective masterpiece depicting the strife between the North Korean way of life and the… ummm, yeah.
