Caught this on the BBC this evening; stuff along these lines has been alluded to over the past week or so in various news sources. It's looking like the Administration is starting to take a Stance on North Korea of all nations.
I'm trying to figure out what's going on here. The general attitude towards North Korea's one of the more baffling things I've seen out of the past few years - and I try to pay attention to the news as much as possible, so let me tell you that's pretty damn baffling. A few series of 180s on policies towards North Korea have reverted it from a country which was willing to grant concessions to a corner.
Lately referring to Bush's stance towards North Korea as trying to negotiate with someone who has a dagger in their belt, North Korea's been getting increasingly aggressive to the point of not quite threatening first use of nuclear weapons. For the most part this is a direct result of the highhanded attitude towards them, and the fact that we're seeing things like Cheney's ridiculous implication that North Korea and al-Qaeda are in cahoots is making me wonder just what the hell is going on here.
I'm of a mixed mind on things. If there's one country whose leadership could go without me feeling too much guilt, it's North Korea's (actually, there's a few others, but that makes that sentence suck, much like this sidebar is. The life of the amateur rhetorician..). On the other hand, headway was being made in negotiations by the regional powers before the unilateralist "doing things our way is the only acceptable option" meme kicked in a couple of years ago. Suddenly, the progress of several years worth of negotiation's gone. And now people seem to be actively provoking Pyongyang even more. If there's a single country that has nothing to lose, it seems to be the one being shoved even further into the corner right now.
Just what's going on with this? Does Washington want a war on the Korean Peninsula or something?
Posted by zibblsnrt at April 15, 2004 09:28 PM