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North Korea is a nuclear weapons state … whether Trump likes it or not

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: December 10, 2017, 08:54:21 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Can Congress rein in ‘fire and fury’?

The legislature is a bystander regarding war.

By GEORGE F. WILL | 7:30PM EST — Friday, December 08, 2017

A television screen shows pictures of President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. — Photograph: Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
A television screen shows pictures of President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
 — Photograph: Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.


THE FIRST USE of nuclear weapons occurred on August 6th, 1945. The second occurred three days later. That there has not been a third is testimony to the skill and sobriety of 12 presidents and many other people, here and abroad. Today, however, North Korea's nuclear bellicosity coincides with the incontinent tweeting, rhetorical taunts and other evidence of the frivolity and instability of the 13th president of the nuclear era. His almost daily descents from the previous day's unprecedentedly bad behavior are prompting urgent thinking about the constitutional allocation of war responsibilities, and especially about authority to use nuclear weapons.

Last month, for the first time in 41 years, a congressional hearing examined the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which gives presidents sole authority. There was serious discussion of whether a particular presidential order for their use might not be “legal” — necessary, proportionate. But even if, in a crisis, time permits consulting lawyers, compliant ones will be found: President Barack Obama's argued that the thousands of airstrikes that killed thousands and demolished Libya's regime did not constitute “hostilities”.

The exigencies of crisis management in an age of ICBMs require speed of consultations, if any, and of decisions. And the credibility of deterrence requires that adversaries know that presidents can act in minutes. Furthermore, the authority to employ nuclear weapons is, as was said at the congressional hearing, “intertwined” with the authority “to take the country to war”. So, as a practical matter, President Trump can unleash on North Korea “fire and fury” without seeking the consent of, or even consulting, Congress. This, even if North Korea has neither attacked nor seems about to attack the United States. A long train of precedents tends to legitimate — although not justify — practices, and this nation has engaged in many wars since it last declared war on June 5th, 1942 (when, to satisfy wartime legalities, it did so against Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania). Over many decades, Congress has become — has largely made itself — a bystander regarding war.

Senator Lindsey O. Graham (Republican-South Carolina) says, “If we have to go to war to stop this, we will.” By “this,” does he means North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons, which it has had for 11 years? Or ICBMs, which it is rapidly developing? If so, Graham must think war is coming, because there is no reason to think North Korea's regime will relinquish weapons it deems essential to its single priority: survival. As Vladimir Putin says, North Korea would rather “eat grass”. U.S. actions have taught this regime the utility, indeed the indispensability, of such weapons. Would America have invaded Saddam Hussein's Iraq if he had possessed them? Would America have participated in destroying Libya's regime in 2011 if, soon after Saddam's overthrow, Moammar Gaddafi had not agreed to abandon his nuclear weapons program?

North Korea, says Trump, is a “situation we will handle” — “we will take care of it.” Does “we” denote deliberative and collaborative action by the legislative and executive branches? Or is “we” the royal plural from the man whose general approach to governance is “I alone can fix it”? Trump's foreign policy thinking (“In the old days, when you won a war, you won a war. You kept the country”; we should “bomb the shit out of [the Islamic State]”) is short on nuance but of Metternichian subtlety compared with his thoughts on nuclear matters: “I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.”

A U.S. war of choice against North Korea would not be a pre-emptive war launched to forestall an imminent attack. Rather, it would be a preventive war supposedly justified by the fact that, given sophisticated weapons and delivery systems, imminence might be impossible to detect. The long war on the primitivism of terrorists has encouraged such thinking. A leaked 2011 memo from the Obama administration's Justice Department argued that using force to prevent an “imminent” threat “does not require … clear evidence that a specific attack … will take place in the immediate future.” So, regarding al-Qaeda, the memo said that because the government might not know of all plots and thus “cannot be confident that none is about to occur,” any leader of al-Qaeda or “associated forces” can be lawfully targeted at any time, without specific knowledge of planned attacks.

It would be interesting to hear the president distinguish a preventive war against North Korea from a war of aggression. The first two counts in the indictments at the 1946 Nuremberg trials concerned waging “aggressive war”.


• George F. Will writes a twice-weekly column on politics and domestic and foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He began his column with The Post in 1974, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: This 1960s nuclear fallout shelter is a time capsule to the past — and offers lessons for the Trump era

 • David Ignatius: Kim Jong Un wants to join Trump's club

 • Josh Rogin: Inside the drive to ‘make a deal’ with North Korea

 • The Washington Post's View: Photos reveal North Korea's crimes against humanity

 • Jane Harman and James Person: The U.S. needs to negotiate with North Korea

 • VIDEO: Washington Post Hate Mail: George Will is a ‘liberal’?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/congress-cant-stop-trumps-fire-and-fury-time-to-change-that/2017/12/08/aebcdce6-db7f-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html
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« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2017, 10:08:48 pm »


from The Washington Post....

North Korea is a nuclear state. But can the U.S. accept that?

Analysts say there is still room for diplomacy — but with more realistic goals.

By ANNA FIFIELD | 6:20PM EST - Saturday, December 09, 2017

U.S. and South Korean warplanes conduct combat exercises Wednesday. The exercises comes after North Korea fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile on November 29th, believed to have shown the capability to reach the U.S. mainland. — Photograph: Handout/Getty Images.
U.S. and South Korean warplanes conduct combat exercises Wednesday. The exercises comes after North Korea fired a new intercontinental
ballistic missile on November 29th, believed to have shown the capability to reach the U.S. mainland. — Photograph: Handout/Getty Images.


TOKYO — Every time North Korea does something provocative — which is often — Washington insists that Pyongyang must give up its nuclear weapons program.

Just last weekend, days after North Korea launched its most high-tech intercontinental ballistic missile yet, national security adviser H.R. McMaster said that President Trump “is committed to the total denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

Not that this line is confined to the Trump administration. The Obama and Bush administrations before it also repeatedly insisted that North Korea must denuclearize.

That might have been a realistic aim before Pyongyang could build a hydrogen bomb and missiles that can reach the United States. It's just a matter of time before the North Koreans can put the two together — if they can't already.

The Trump administration won't admit it, but North Korea is now a nuclear weapons power, analysts say. Why would Kim Jong Un's cash-strapped regime spend so much time and money on building these weapons only to give them up? And even if they were prepared to bargain them away eventually, why would they do so now, when Trump and his top aides are threatening military action?

“We've seen no indication in recent years that they are interested in denuclearization,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, a North Korea expert at Yale Law School who was an Asia adviser to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. “So it’s difficult to rationalize how we are still so fixated on it.”

Vipin Narang, a nuclear nonproliferation specialist at MIT, agreed.

“It's a fantasy that they're going to willingly give up their nuclear programs so long as Kim is in power. He saw the fate of Saddam and Gaddafi — why would he give up his nuclear weapons?” asked Narang, referring to the former leaders of Iraq and Libya, both of whom are now deposed and dead.

Trump's willingness to pull out of the international nuclear deal with Iran would only heighten North Korea's mistrust of a negotiated denuclearization agreement with the United States, he said.




For three generations, since the current leader's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, was in power, North Korea has pursued nuclear weapons as a way to deter the United States and ensure the regime's survival.

Pyongyang's perceived need for a powerful deterrent has only increased since Kim Jong Un took power six years ago this month. Young and inexperienced — he was 27 when he succeeded his father and had no military background — the third Kim has aggressively pursued nuclear weapons as a way to fend off outside threats and bolster his legitimacy inside North Korea.

“The only way you can convince them to denuclearize is to make nuclear armament costly enough to destabilize the regime,” said Chun Yung-woo, a former South Korean nuclear negotiator with the North. “To do that would require a total economic blockade to suffocate the regime.”

Since coming to power, Kim has ordered four nuclear tests, including the September detonation of what his regime claimed — and outside experts generally agree — was a hydrogen bomb. At the same time, he has presided over astonishing improvements in North Korea's ballistic missile program, culminating last month with the launch of a missile that puts all of the United States technically within his reach.

His regime has made these advances despite increasingly tight international sanctions aimed at cutting off its access to funding and parts, and despite increasingly vehement warnings from its traditional patron, China.

In both public and private meetings in Europe this year, North Korean representatives have repeatedly insisted on being accepted as a nuclear-armed state.

Choe Son Hui, the director of U.S. affairs in North Korea's Foreign Ministry, said recently that Washington will have “have to put up” with the fact that her country now has nuclear weapons. “This is a matter of life and death for us,” she said at an October nonproliferation conference in Moscow.

Acknowledging that North Korea has nuclear weapons is a step that the Trump administration — like Obama's before it — has been unwilling to take. “We don't want to admit that our policy has failed for successive presidents,” Narang said.

Both administrations have urged China to use its leverage over North Korea. While Beijing says that denuclearization is its fundamental objective, it takes a much longer view of the process.

“From Beijing's perspective, it is unrealistic to expect an immediate denuclearization of North Korea — especially since the world has so far proved unable to even prevent the North's present capabilities from growing,” Tong Zhao, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, wrote before Trump's visit to Beijing last month.

In Washington, however, there is a growing sense that time is not on the United States' side.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in October that North Korea was only a matter of months away from perfecting its nuclear weapons program.

“They are close enough now in their capabilities that from a U.S. policy perspective, we ought to behave as if we are on the cusp of them achieving that objective,” he said at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative think tank.

“There are ways to address this problem short of armed conflict,” McMaster, the national security adviser, said on Saturday, “but it is a race because he’s getting closer and closer, and there's not much time left.”

Trump and McMaster have repeatedly said that military options are on the table, a message that North Korea takes especially seriously when U.S. fighter jets are practicing precision strikes on the Korean Peninsula.

This is coupled with frequent assertions that Kim is an irrational madman — a “sick puppy,” as Trump most recently put it — who can't be deterred in the way that the U.S. military deterred his father and grandfather.

“There are a lot of people who argue that there's still a window to stop North Korea from getting an ICBM with a nuclear warhead to use against the United States,” said Narang, referring to an intercontinental ballistic missile. “They're telling themselves that if they strike now, worst-case scenario: Only Japan and South Korea will eat a nuclear weapon.”


• Anna Fifield is The Washington Post's bureau chief in Tokyo, focusing on Japan and the Koreas. She previously reported for the Financial Times from Washington DC, Seoul, Sydney, London and from across the Middle East.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • This is how nuclear war with North Korea would unfold

 • Senior U.N. official to visit North Korea this week

 • U.S., South Korea begin air combat drills that include simulated strikes on North Korea

 • North Korea has shown us its new missile, and it’s scarier than we thought

 • Trump pledges new wave of ‘major sanctions’ on North Korea after call with China's Xi

 • North Korea's latest missile launch suggests weapons testing lull was seasonal rather than strategic

 • With technology, these researchers are figuring out North Korea's nuclear secrets


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-korea-is-a-nuclear-state-but-can-the-us-accept-that/2017/12/09/6fd76d7c-da79-11e7-8e5f-ccc94e22b133_story.html
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« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2018, 12:18:10 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Trump said China was caught ‘red handed’ selling oil to North Korea.
Beijing denies it did anything wrong.


The U.S. president seems increasingly frustrated with his North Korea plan.

By EMILY RAUHALA | 7:28AM EST — Friday, December 29, 2017

The Lighthouse Winmore, a Hong Kong-flagged ship, is seen in waters off Yeosu, South Korea. South Korean authorities boarded the tanker and interviewed its crew members for allegedly violating U.N. sanctions by transferring oil to a North Korean vessel in October, an official said on Friday. — Photograph: Hyung Min-woo/Yonhap/Associated Press.
The Lighthouse Winmore, a Hong Kong-flagged ship, is seen in waters off Yeosu, South Korea. South Korean authorities boarded the tanker and interviewed
its crew members for allegedly violating U.N. sanctions by transferring oil to a North Korean vessel in October, an official said on Friday.
 — Photograph: Hyung Min-woo/Yonhap/Associated Press.


HONG KONG — Did a Chinese ship deliver oil to North Korea in defiance of the U.N. Security Council? President Trump and South Korea seem to think so. China does not.

Hours after Trump accused China on Thursday of being caught “red handed” selling oil to the North Koreans — in apparent violation of sanctions adopted by the United Nations in September — South Korea released information that appeared to support his claim.

South Korean authorities said Friday that on November 24th they seized and inspected a Hong Kong-flagged vessel that on October 19th transferred 600 tons of refined petroleum to a North Korean vessel.

But at a daily news briefing in Beijing, a spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry flatly dismissed the claim, saying media accounts “did not accord with the facts.”

“China has always implemented U.N. Security Council resolutions pertaining to North Korea in their entirety and fulfills its international obligations,” said the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying.

“We never allow Chinese companies and citizens to violate the resolutions,” she said.


Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying gestures during a news briefing in Beijing. — Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying gestures during a news briefing in Beijing.
 — Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press.


The standoff underscores Trump's frustration at his attempts to press China to tighten economic pressures on North Korea as part of global efforts to curb the North’s nuclear and missile programs.

China is the economic lifeline for the regime of Kim Jong Un, and Beijing is under close international scrutiny for gaps in the sanctions.

China also appears angry at being unceremoniously called out by Trump — a rift that could shape the year ahead.

Since Trump took office, the United States and China have backed successive rounds of U.N. sanctions aimed at curbing North Korea's weapons program. But Kim has continued to conduct tests, including of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Trump has responded by periodically — and often very publicly — urging China to do more. On Thursday he tweeted: “Caught RED HANDED — very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea. There will never be a friendly solution to the North Korea problem if this continues to happen!”

He then posted a clip of himself talking about North Korea's nuclear program in a television interview that aired 18 years ago.

Trump's ire will not go down well with Beijing, which feels unfairly singled out by foreign critics, including Trump.

On Wednesday, when Hua, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, was asked about South Korean claims of a ship-to-ship oil transfer, she turned the tables by claiming news organizations did not have their facts straight.

The People's Daily, a Communist Party-controlled newspaper, followed up with a detailed account of her response, noting that she “hit back at the speculation with eight questions to drive home the point that the conclusion is based on speculation and not facts.”

The headline: “China tells foreign media to stop it with the wild speculation”.


Shirley Feng contributed from Beijing.

• Emily Rauhala is China correspondent for The Washington Post. She was previously a Beijing-based correspondent for TIME, and an editor at the magazine's Hong Kong office. In 2017, she shared an Overseas Press Club award for a series about the Internet in China.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • Trump fires opening shot in China trade battle

 • U.S. imposes sanctions on two key figures in North Korea's weapons program

 • Retired military leaders urge Trump to choose words, not action, to deal with North Korea


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/trump-said-china-was-caught-red-handed-selling-oil-to-north-korea-beijing-denies-it-did-anything-wrong/2017/12/29/89bc3a22-ec73-11e7-891f-e7a3c60a93de_story.html
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« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2018, 12:18:24 pm »


from The Washington Post....

North Korean leader says he has ‘nuclear button’
but won't use it unless threatened


In New Year's Day speech, Kim Jong Un vowed to make more nuclear warheads
but also struck a conciliatory note, opening a path to dialogue with the South.


By SIMON DENYER |  11:47PM EST — Sunday, December 31, 2017

South Koreans watch a news broadcast of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's annual New Year's Day speech, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul. — Photograph: Lee Jin-man/Associated Press.
South Koreans watch a news broadcast of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's annual New Year's Day speech, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul.
 — Photograph: Lee Jin-man/Associated Press.


BEIJING — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un boasted in an annual New Year's Day speech on Monday that he had a nuclear button on his desk and that the entire United States was within range of his weapons — but he also vowed not to attack unless threatened.

Kim promised to focus this year on producing nuclear warheads and missiles for operational deployment, adding that the United States could now “never start a war against me or our country.”

But he also struck a conciliatory note, opening the door to dialogue with South Korea and saying he would consider sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics to be held in his southern neighbor in February.

“The United States should know that the button for nuclear weapons is on my table,” he said during the nationally televised speech, according to a provisional translation by the Associated Press. “The entire area of the U.S. mainland is within our nuclear strike range.”

But Kim also said those weapons would not be used unless his country faced aggression.

“This year, we should focus on mass-producing nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles for operational deployment,” Kim said. “These weapons will be used only if our security is threatened.”

North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September and launched its most high-tech intercontinental ballistic missile in November, ignoring international condemnation and steadily tightening sanctions.

In typically bellicose language, it declared the latest round of United Nations sanctions imposed last month an “act of war,” and Kim said his country had achieved the historic feat of “completing” its nuclear forces.

North Korea's nuclear capabilities do not yet match Kim's boasts, experts say, since it is far from clear it could successfully deliver a nuclear weapon on one of its missiles. Yet there is little doubt its capabilities have advanced significantly in the past year.

But Kim, dressed in a Western-style gray suit and a tie, also offered a potential olive branch to Seoul saying it is imperative to lower military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and improve ties with the South.

He said that the path to dialogue was open and that he would consider sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics in Pyeong­chang, South Korea.

“North Korea's participation in the Winter Games will be a good opportunity to show unity of the people, and we wish the Games will be a success,” he said, according to a Reuters translation of the speech. “Officials from the two Koreas may urgently meet to discuss the possibility.”

South Korea has been trying to reassure the rest of the world that the Olympics will be safe despite the nuclear tensions, and President Moon Jae-in has said North Korea's participation would ensure their safety. He also proposed last month that Seoul and Washington postpone annual joint military drills until after the Olympics, and he generally takes a less confrontational approach to relations with the North than his predecessor, Park Geun-hye.

John Delury, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul, said Kim's message to Seoul was “more promising” than he had anticipated, addressing in a specific and actionable way South Korea's desire to make the Games a success.

“That should give hope to those in the South who are trying to get something going and open a channel at least,” he said.

The idea of improving relations between the two Koreas is one that is frequently spoken about but seldom achieved, and Kim's warmer words could also be seen as an attempt to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington.

While Kim's words were more combative towards the United States, he also refrained from a personal attack on President Trump, after the two men engaged in several rounds of mutual name-calling in 2017, Delury noted.

When asked about North Korea's nuclear claims on Sunday night, Trump said only, “We'll see, we'll see.”

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said Kim's claims about his country's nuclear capability underscored that there was no viable “military solution” to denuclearizing North Korea and that sanctions alone would not persuade Pyongyang to halt or reverse its nuclear buildup.

“To avoid a nuclear conflict and the full-scale deployment of an operational North Korean strategic deterrent force, U.S. leaders, in concert with South Korea, should redouble efforts to engage North Korea in direct talks and cease any further explicit or implicit threats of military action against the North,” he said in an email.

“The upcoming Olympics provide an important opportunity to break the ice and to begin discussions with the North Koreans on mutual steps that reduce the chances of miscalculation and war,” he added.

In the speech, Kim also stressed North Korea's economic achievements and noted the importance of improving the nation's standard of living, the Associated Press reported.


• Simon Denyer is The Washington Post's bureau chief in Beijing. He previously worked as The Post's bureau chief in New Delhi, as a Reuters bureau chief in Washington, New Delhi and Islamabad, and a Reuters correspondent in Nairobi, New York and London. He plays soccer and cricket, and supports Pompey.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: Experts say North Korea's latest ICBM is a big step for their missile program


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-leader-says-he-hasnuclear-button-but-wont-use-unless-threatened/2017/12/31/af3dc188-ee96-11e7-90ed-77167c6861f2_story.html
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« Reply #4 on: January 03, 2018, 12:24:20 pm »


from The Washington Post....

With North Korea, be careful what you wish for

Tough new sanctions against the North could cause more problems than they solve.

By ANDREI LANKOV | 4:46PM EST — Tuesday, January 02, 2018

An undated photograph of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. — Photograph: Korean Central News Agency/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
An undated photograph of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. — Photograph: Korean Central News Agency/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

ON December 22nd, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2397, which may well mark a dramatic change in the hitherto grossly ineffective sanction policies targeting North Korea. These tough new measures could well end up having a dramatic impact — but if they do, the consequences are likely to be much different from what their supporters anticipate.

The various sanctions imposed by the U.N. over the years have so far had little effect. Over the past decade, North Koreans have cautiously reformed their economy according to the Chinese model, allowing them to achieve annual growth of 4 to 5 percent. This has given the North a certain degree of resilience.

The major reason for the failure of the sanctions, however, has been China's willingness to undermine the sanctions regime wherever possible. Indeed, just last week, evidence suggesting that China has continued selling oil to the North prompted a harsh statement from President Trump. (China denies the reports.)

In fact, though, cheating on sanctions makes perfect sense when viewed from the perspective of China's national interest. While China disapproves of North Korea's nuclear ambitions, it is far more afraid of any prospect of instability in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. Now, however, the bellicose rhetoric of Trump has changed this equation. Chinese leaders have reason to be afraid of a war and hence are more willing to face the risks brought about by a comprehensive sanctions regime.

Indeed, Resolution 2397 imposes what amounts to a full-scale economic blockade. Most North Korean exports, including the export of labor, are now illegal, so the country is likely to lose about 80 percent of its hard-currency earnings. Shipments of liquid fuel have been capped at about 10 percent of last year's level, and crude oil shipments are limited, too.

If these measures are implemented, the result will be a massive blow to the North Korean economy. Living standards, which have been rising recently, will nosedive. Even outbreaks of famine in the countryside are possible.

The apparent assumption of the sanctions' supporters is that the North Korean elite will respond to growing popular discontent by succumbing to the demands of outside powers and starting talks on denuclearization in order to avoid a revolution or coup. Indeed, the argument can be made that such an outcome is more likely today than it was during the Great Famine of the late 1990s. The North Korean surveillance system is increasingly rusty, and people are more aware of the alternatives.

In reality, though, the decision-makers in Pyongyang believe that the nuclear program is their only guarantee of security against both external attacks and foreign support for a local rebellion. The death of Moammar Gaddafi, widely presented in North Korea as an example of Western perfidy, made a deep impression on them. The North Korean elite believes that if Gaddafi had kept his nuclear program, the West never would have dared to intervene by imposing “no-fly zones” on his country. In such a scenario, government forces, benefiting from their air superiority and heavy weapons, would have probably prevailed over the insurgents.

For the North Korean elite, Gaddafi was a victim of his own naivete, and they are determined not to repeat his mistake. Even if the sanctions return North Korea to the state of economic disaster it experienced during the 1990s, when dead bodies piled up on the streets, the country's leaders will still not agree to negotiate away their nuclear weapons.

Even if revolutionary violence breaks out, however, the North Korean elite will fight back with everything it has. Unlike the elites in other crumbling regimes (including Gaddafi's), privileged North Koreans know that revolution will not merely change the leader and the top echelons of the military. It will almost certainly lead to the absorption of the North by South Korea, meaning that the entire North Korean elite — not only generals but also colonels and even majors — will lose power and income. These people are numerous (5 to 10 percent of the population). They will fight to the death, and their nuclear weapons will guarantee that nobody will dare to intervene in the bloody mess.

If the top leaders start losing the internal war and see themselves as doomed, they may decide to go out with a bang, not whimper — perhaps by using their nuclear weapons to attack neighboring countries and even the United States. China, which is increasingly seen by the North's rulers as a traitor, will not be entirely out of harm's way, either — even though the Japanese, Americans and South Koreans are likelier targets.

Even if a nuclear mini-Holocaust does not occur and the revolutionary forces eventually prevail, it will usher in an extremely painful and costly period of recovery. Refugees, violence and smuggling of weapons of mass destruction will remain issues for years. Turning present-day North Korea into an equivalent of the South will take decades.

Given the current state of mind in the United States, one can assume that these new sanctions will be more or less fully implemented. It is, however, time to start thinking ahead. The actual effects of these new, “effective” sanctions may turn out to be a nasty surprise for many. As the ancient sages warned us: “Be careful what you wish for.”


Andrei Lankov is a professor of Korean studies at Kookmin University in Seoul.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • South Korea bets that talks with North could pay off

 • The Washington Post says: Don't be fooled. Kim Jong Un is preparing to negotiate.

 • Letter to the Editor: Trump is daring Kim Jong Un to attack D.C.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/01/02/with-north-korea-be-careful-what-you-wish-for
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« Reply #5 on: January 04, 2018, 05:33:39 pm »

retarded little fat kid Grin
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« Reply #6 on: January 05, 2018, 10:57:27 am »

retarded little fat kid Grin


Yep, Donald J. Trump sure is a retarded little fat kid alright.

You have hit the nail right on the head!!



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« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2018, 11:29:44 pm »

Are you a stupid white cunt

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« Reply #8 on: January 07, 2018, 12:43:17 pm »



looks like they are going to hit kims power ,oops lights out ? lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Fn3eIKB8-qw

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Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP

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