Tag Archives: north-korea

The Biggest Beneficiaries of "America First" Are . . . Russia and China

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is addicted to dramatic announcements, and he’s had a bunch. He killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his first day in office. He’s weakened ties with Europe and trashed NATO. He’s cozied up with autocrats and given short shrift to our usual democratic allies. He’s focused all of his attention in Asia on North Korea. Yesterday he pulled out of the Paris climate accord. Who do these actions benefit?

TPP: Mostly China, which was left out of TPP and now has an open road to create its own trading bloc. The benefit to the US is minuscule at best.

NATO: Russia, of course. I assume this needs no explanation?

Paris: Mostly China, which can now take the high ground and bill itself as the global leader in combating climate change. The benefit to America is probably zero or negative.

North Korea: China. They’re pretty obviously stringing Trump along, doling out tiny claims of progress in return for concessions by Trump. I’m guessing their claims in the South China Sea are very safe as long as they keep up this charade with Trump the global bumpkin.

Autocrats: China and Russia, which very much like the idea of the leader of the free world affirming that human rights are for suckers. America gets nothing from this policy of alienating the allies we have in return for kowtowing to autocrats who share no values with us and have no intention of becoming allies.

I’m not saying this is a deliberate policy from Trump. I doubt he really has one. But it’s pretty remarkable that America gets nothing from “America First,” while China and Russia are big beneficiaries.

For a more coherent take on this, check out Max Boot in the LA Times today. He has a pretty clear-eyed read on what’s going on.

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The Biggest Beneficiaries of "America First" Are . . . Russia and China

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Mike Pence’s Trip to Korean Border Featured Lots of Angry Staring

Mother Jones

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Vice President Mike Pence arrived at the Korean border Monday, where he warned North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that the United States was prepared to “abandon the failed policy of strategic patience” following Pyongyang’s failed missile launch this weekend. The word of caution came amid escalating tensions between the two countries, and the possibility of military retaliation against North Korea for the recent provocation.

While resulting headlines conveyed the administration’s tough stance, on social media, the vice president’s stern message was obscured by the fierce facial expressions he displayed during his trip to the DMZ.

Pence can at least take comfort in knowing his angry arm-crossing was swiftly upstaged by his boss’s gaffes at his first Easter Egg Roll.

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Mike Pence’s Trip to Korean Border Featured Lots of Angry Staring

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After Threats, Time For Talks With North Korea?

Mother Jones

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VP Mike Pence is on the Korean Peninsula today:

David Frum would like to see more than just a few staged visuals::

I was vaguely planning to write a post reminding everyone that we still have only two options regarding North Korea, but the New York Times reminds me that we have three:

a military strike that could ignite a full-blown war;
pressure on China to impose tougher sanctions to persuade the North to change course, an approach that failed for his predecessors;
or a deal that could require significant concessions, with no guarantee that North Korea would fulfill its promises.

I’d forgotten all about the diplomatic option, what with Rex Tillerson insisting that the era of “strategic patience” was over and Pence warning North Korea not to test US “resolve.” But I suppose it might actually be the most likely one. A military strike designed to take out North Korea’s bomb/missile-making capacity would require a lot more than a few dozen cruise missiles. It would probably take weeks and would indeed touch off a real, live hot war that I doubt Trump has any stomach for.1 The China option is currently underway, and I suspect it has a better chance of success than in the past, simply because China is a little more fed up with Kim Jong-un than in the past. But it’s still unlikely to work.

And that leaves diplomacy. This also has close to a zero chance of working, but it might have a decent chance of providing Trump with something he can claim is the greatest treaty ever signed. Maybe that will be enough for him.

1I hope not, anyway.

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After Threats, Time For Talks With North Korea?

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Why North Korea’s Nuclear Test Isn’t Business as Usual

Mother Jones

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There’s still plenty of doubt about whether North Korea did in fact detonate a sophisticated hydrogen bomb on Wednesday local time, or if the explosion that triggered a 5.1-magnitude earthquake was a nuclear test more akin to previous ones in 2006, 2009, and 2013. Even as the UN Security Council held an emergency session on Wednesday, the White House said initial US findings were “not consistent with North Korean claims of a successful hydrogen bomb test”—something that would have represented a major ramp-up in North Korea’s nuclear capabilities.

But this test was not business as usual for North Korea in one important way, believes Charles K. Armstrong, a leading expert in Korean history and politics at Columbia University: “It’s not clear that they are really interested in using this as a negotiating tactic.”

That diverges somewhat from previous nuclear brinkmanship from North Korea’s leaders. In the past, the international community has managed to cool some of the persistent tensions set off by North Korea’s nuclear tests and missile launches by offering energy and food. That, in turn, was aimed at getting the country’s leaders back to the negotiating table, on a long and fraught road to potential nuclear disarmament. Now, Armstrong explains, Kim Jong Un appears less interested in building leverage for negotiations than in bolstering his internal political clout—and after North Korea’s continued broken promises on nuclear testing, it’s not clear that the United States and its allies could even offer him more enticements.

“There’s not much we can do anymore to increase the economic pressure on North Korea,” Armstrong said in a phone interview Wednesday.

In any case, this time the nuclear test appears to be more geared toward amassing power for the young leader than engineering a way to get much-needed relief. “Number one: They’ve conducted this nuclear test for themselves,” Armstrong said. “Not so much, this time, for the outside world, but to demonstrate the strength of the Kim Jong Un leadership, and the position that they are a force to be reckoned with.”

“I think they are very serious about a nuclear program,” he added. “They do want to engage with the US, in my view, and break out of their isolation and improve their economy, but in a kind of perverse way, they feel this is the best way to do it. They want to negotiate from a position of strength.”

Other North Korea experts have expressed similar sentiments. “North Korea’s armament program is on its own timetable, and it’s not unlikely that every potential new stage is tested out as quickly as possible, regardless of what is going on elsewhere in the world,” B.R. Myers, the author of several books on North Korea and a North Korea analyst at Dongseo University in South Korea, told Slate. “I think the West needs to get away from the habit of regarding the regime’s nuclear tests and ballistic launches as isolated provocations timed to generate maximum attention.”

Nuclear ambitions are key to the regime’s identity, Armstrong says, and shouldn’t be discounted. “The pillar of North Korea’s sense of identity and power under Kim Jong Un is having nuclear weapons,” he explained.

One dominant theory is that North Korea provokes the international community with nuclear and missile tests to try to exact aid as an inducement to calm down. After North Korea’s first nuclear test in October 2006, the six-party talks between the regime and the United States, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia fell apart, only to come together the following year when North Korea was promised shipments of 50,000 tons of fuel oil in return for a “freeze” of the country’s Yongbyon nuclear facility. But North Korea’s second nuclear test in May 2009 effectively ended discussion of US energy assistance to North Korea.

In 2012, Kim Jong Un promised his country would suspend nuclear tests and allow inspections in exchange for American food aid. But that also fell apart when North Korea launched a long-range missile later that year. North Korea again tested a nuclear device in February 2013.

This time, another key world event might be driving Kim’s decision-making: 2016 will be the first time in 36 years that the entire ruling Workers Party has met for a congress, hosted in the capital in May. “This is a very big deal,” Armstrong told me. “The nuclear test is part of the preparation in a way. It’s demonstrating Kim Jong Un’s strong leadership, and that North Korea is a strong and powerful state in the run-up to his major meeting.”

In this high-stakes game of nuclear chess, Armstrong stresses that it’s important not to lose sight of the North Korean people.

“What I hope does not happen, however, is cutting off of humanitarian aid, because this is really gravely needed by many millions of people in North Korea,” he said. “I would hope there can be a way found to move forward without making the people of North Korea suffer more than they already have.”

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Why North Korea’s Nuclear Test Isn’t Business as Usual

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When Will China Finally Get Tired of Propping Up North Korea?

Mother Jones

The United States might not have much leverage over North Korea, but China does. Virtually all of North Korea’s external trade is with China, and Chinese support is pretty much all that keeps North Korea from collapsing. This means that when the United States wants to pressure Pyongyang, it has limited options as long as Chinese support of the regime remains strong. But how long will that support last? Over the weekend, Jane Perlez of the New York Times reported that it might finally be faltering:

When a retired Chinese general with impeccable Communist Party credentials recently wrote a scathing account of North Korea as a recalcitrant ally headed for collapse and unworthy of support, he exposed a roiling debate in China about how to deal with the country’s young leader, Kim Jong-un.

….The parlous state of the relationship between North Korea and China was on display again Wednesday when Pyongyang commemorated the third anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, the father of the current leader, Kim Jong-un, and failed to invite a senior Chinese official.

The last time a Chinese leader visited North Korea was in July 2013 when Vice President Li Yuanchao tried to patch up relations, and pressed North Korea, after its third nuclear test in February 2013, to slow down its nuclear weapons program. Mr. Li failed in that quest….After the vice president’s visit, relations plummeted further, entering the icebox last December when China’s main conduit within the North Korean government, Jang Song-thaek, a senior official and the uncle of Kim Jong-un, was executed in a purge. In July, President Xi Jinping snubbed North Korea, visiting South Korea instead. Mr. Xi has yet to visit North Korea, and is said to have been infuriated by a third nuclear test by North Korea in February 2013, soon after Kim Jong-un came to power.

So does this mean that China might help us out in our current dispute with North Korea over the Sony hack? Probably not—or not much, anyway. North Korea’s very weakness is also its greatest strength: if it collapses, two things would probably happen. First, there would be a flood of refugees trying to cross the border into China. Second, the Korean peninsula would likely become unified and China would find itself with a US ally right smack on its border. Given the current state of Sino-American relations, that’s simply not something China is willing to risk.

Not yet, anyway. But who knows? There are worse things in the world than a refugee crisis, and relations with the US have the potential to warm up in the future. One of these days North Korea may simply become too large a liability for China to protect. If that ever happens, North Korea’s lifespan can probably be measured in years or months.

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When Will China Finally Get Tired of Propping Up North Korea?

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Fly Through Pyongyang With This Gorgeous Timelapse Video

Mother Jones

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Enter Pyongyang from JT Singh on Vimeo.

Timelapse videos of mega-cities like New York have become something of a viral video cliché in recent years. (If you’re anything like me, you lap them up without shame, all the same). But I bet you’ve never seen the capital of the world’s most reclusive nation, North Korea, quite like this before. The filmmakers—JT Singh and Rob Whitworth—spent six days in Pyongyang filming this video that delivers you right into the very-human nitty gritty of a place that looks far less creepy than those “Mass Games” videos would lead you to believe.

Even so, how much can we rely on this portrait for an accurate take on North Korea as a whole? Not a lot: the capital is home to the ruling elite, and used by the regime as a showcase city; people here are hardly representative. For example, 16 of North Korea’s 24 million people suffer from critical food insecurity, relying only on state-rationed food, according to the UN; one out of every three children is too short for his or her age. Hunger, poverty, lack of electricity, brutal repression and political reprisals… you name it: A UN special inquiry recently described North Korea’s human rights violations as without “parallel in the contemporary world.”

It’s also true that the video is effectively an advertisement for a company operating out of Beijing called Koryo Tours, which has run tours into North Korea since 1993; the group covered the filmmakers’ travel expenses. (Full disclosure: I’m pals with Vicky Mohieddeen, who accompanied the film crew, and works for Koryo).

But I think it adds vital perspective to a place shut away from the world by its repressive government. It’s oh-so-interesting taking a look inside.

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Fly Through Pyongyang With This Gorgeous Timelapse Video

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