The Japan Card

[Drake Tungsten]

You're posting, aren't you? Add something!

All the good points were already discussed a couple pages back. I don't see the use in dragging up topics that have already been discussed. Although I am tempted to laugh at chegitz and politely differ (ever so slightly) with MtG...

[Dinner]

What will they really do? Invade the South? Like they can afford to do that when they import 75% of their food and 95% of their energy. Given war the U.S. has abundant ways of blocking Communist Chinese exports so I dare say the commie bastards will fall in line rather then let their export economy go belly up.

[Drake Tungsten]

What will they really do? Invade the South? Like they can afford to do that when they import 75% of their food and 95% of their energy.

The problem is that North Korea can't afford to just sit around and languish anymore either. Their economy has been in desperate straits for a long time, which has backed them into a corner. They desperately need money, but Kim Jong Il isn't willing to make the sort of changes that are necessary to become part of the world community. He wants to maintain his grip on power, so he is trying to gain the money his country needs while maintaining his military and control over the populace. The nuclear program is just the latest way of going about this.

The nuke program allows Kim to blackmail Western governments into providing aid for North Korea. If this doesn't work, Kim can sell the nuclear technology (along with ballistic missile technology) to outside parties and make money that way. The North Koreans don't have nuclear weapons just for deterrence; they also provide a great bargaining chip in negotiations and a new lease on life for Kim Jong Il's regime.

If the US pushes too hard to take this away, who knows what the hell could happen? If North Korea didn't have nukes, what options would they have to obtain cash? They're not going to make huge economic reforms while Kim is in power, so they're really out of luck. With no hope for the future, can we say that Kim might not be tempted to attack South? From all indications he is not a rational man to begin with, so the slight chance of a successful invasion of the South may seem like a good idea to Kim. Hell, he might just want to go out in a blaze of glory. We don't know what he's thinking and there are few real checks on his power.

All in all, the whole situation is a huge mess. Throw in the competing interests of the United States, China, Japan and South Korea and the whole thing becomes damn near impossible to analyze. I don't know what's going to happen, but the possibility of things going extraordinarily bad does exist.

[Seeker]

Kim's tours of Russia and meetings with Putin reported in the papers would seem to suggest this policy of isolation won't work very well, especially since Putin and Jiang have declared publicly that they will work to establish a 'multipolar' (ie, not the US controlling everything) world, with specific mention of NK.

[mindseye]

Convicted child molesters would have a brighter political future than anyone who proposed developing a nuclear force.
(...)
Even among the right-wing nationalists, and pro-militant types, nuclear capability is a taboo subject

Mtg, are you not aware that last year the leader of the Japanese Liberal Party suggested this very thing? Although there was quite a strong negative reaction to the suggestion, it was revealing that the idea was spoken of publicly by so high a party official.

China has no real interest in yanking the DPRK's chain

... and in fact has a strong interest in the contrary. If there is any sort of political break-down in North Korea, the steady flow of North Koreans already illegally entering China could turn into a tidal wave. Given the social unrest already simmering in China's northeast, China is not much interested in any idea that is accompanied by risk of chaos in North Korea.

[DanS]

"I guess that rules that option out, huh?"

Gatekeeper: Nope. Kim Jong Il can't rule any of our options in or out.

"...and in fact has a strong interest in the contrary."

Mindseye: China's going to have to help bring out the trash sooner or later.

[MichaeltheGreat]

mindseye - yes.

Even though the LDP isn't quite the monolith it was for most of it's life, they way they do things is pretty interesting.

Things like Shin Kanemaru's money house, where currency was literally the insulation materials in the walls (he was taking bribes and getting kickbacks faster than he could smuggle the money out, so he ran out of hiding places)

Tanaka running things from jail (and after).

My reading on the public "discussion" was that it was more a way of burying someone's behind the scenes advocacy by creating a little public controversy. Serious policy in the LDP is done in private, and not by the PM, but by the different power brokers in the party. When something makes news, it's already a done deal, except in cases like this.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DanS
"I guess that rules that option out, huh?"

Gatekeeper: Nope. Kim Jong Il can't rule any of our options in or out.

"...and in fact has a strong interest in the contrary."

Mindseye: China's going to have to help bring out the trash sooner or later.

Dan - with all due respect, I disagree. We don't have anything close to the sort of offensive military options we have with IRaq or most of the world - the NK military are not a bunch of slackers.

We also don't have much leverage with the PRC, because it's really not in their long-term planning to help the US remain the geopolitical power in the world. NK is very convenient for them right now, and as long as Kimmy does what's perceived as convenient, they won't yank that chain, unless we're willing to pay a very high price.

[DinoDoc]

How does a nuclearized Korean peninsula serve China's interests in anyway? Or is this more of a situation where relative losses matter to them more?

[HershOstropoler]

Dan:

"Kim Jong Il can't rule any of our options in or out."

I think he can. Despite the rhetoric the US can only go after relatively soft targets like iraq. It would take a lot to get the US to suffer the losses from a war with NK. So that option is out.

"China's going to have to help bring out the trash sooner or later."

Well they see the US rather than NK as the trash they want to bring out of their backyard.....

[DanS]

"the NK military are not a bunch of slackers"

No doubt. However, our options will be based on this fact, not on some bleeting out of NK about sanctions leading to war.

"NK is very convenient for them right now, and as long as Kimmy does what's perceived as convenient"

NK is a liability to China, not "very convenient." NK is a tarbaby.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Seems to me you guys are thinking too much from an American perspective, and assume the PRC is.

We are rivals to the PRC's long term geopolitical plans, the DPRK isn't. The nukes in North Korea won't be pointed at Beijing. Even rabid pit bulls tend not to bite the hand that feeds.

Dino - NK is a nice proxy, that the PRC can pay lip service to trying to reign in, while it exerts a disproportionate diversion on US plans, especially in Asia. I can see the PRC leadership having to struggle to maintain a straight face, while they play this both ways.

Nobody wants the **** to really hit the fan, but disruption/diversion of US policy goals while the PRC leadership washes it's hands publicly can't be all bad.

Dan - a tarbaby, yes, but I like the pit bull analogy better. The PRC can't really get in our face directly, but they have no interest in letting the rest of the world become happy lackeys of the Yankee Imperialist Aggressors^tm. So having that pit bull on the loose, as long as they keep the frothing mouth pointed in the right direction, is convenient. And if the pit bull was ever so dumb as to point the wrong way, they could handle that quickly and easily.

China wants to be, is becoming, and will be a major global power. I don't think they see the best way to do that as being our boys and helping carry out American policy interests, unless we offer them something really juicy.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Nobody wants the **** to really hit the fan, but disruption/diversion of US policy goals while the PRC leadership washes it's hands publicly can't be all bad.

How much of a danger to the view the combination of NK's nuclear ambitions and thier propensity to sell any and all military technology that isn't nailed down?

[Arrian]

I don't think other countries necessarily view proliferation the way we do. I'm not at all sure of the following, but here is one way to look at things:

First, from a psychological perspective, we had nukes first, and it spread from there. We've always had an interest in stopping/slowing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Second, though this might change with time, China has fundamentally different security concerns and goals than us. Our game is power projection. The foil to that is nukes. Exhibit A is NK. China doesn't really project much power at this point, and probably won't for some time yet. Nukes simply don't cramp their style as much.

Unless China gets into the game of sending troops around the world getting into other people's business (like us), other people having nukes isn't nearly as big a concern for them. Sure, it's a concern, but it's not at the same level.

-Arrian

[DanS]

"We are rivals to the PRC's long term geopolitical plans, the DPRK isn't."

We are coopetitors with China. We do $120 billion a year in business with them. One-tenth of China's economy. And this is a very recent phenomenon. Business began to boom in 2000. Times have changed and there is real value being exchanged in the US/China relationship, even though we aren't best of friends by a long shot.

I interpret China's inaction as being caught flatfooted. I could ascribe more forethought to it like you have, but overall I believe China is more inward-looking right now. They could care less what we do if it doesn't impact their interests directly.