For the last two decades, U.S. administrations have come in like a lion and out like a lamb with their policies on North Korea. Determined to demonstrate Washington’s resolve, U.S. presidents have played hardball with Pyongyang in an effort to precipitate regime change or at least bully the intransigent country into knuckling under.
The test of Kim Jong-un’s leadership will be to convince the military to throw its support behind him.
Don’t look for reform in North Korea in the foreseeable future.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and Czech leader Vaclav Havel occupied the opposite ends of the political continuum. One fought against the corrupt communist powers; the other consolidated communist rule. One tried to inject morality into the practice of politics while the other pursued political ends with little or no reference to morality. Having made their marks first in the artistic sphere, they were both in some sense reluctant politicians. Once in power, they managed to stabilize their respective countries during difficult times. But they failed in their efforts at more dramatic transformation.
Kim Jong-il reportedly kept his son Kim Jong-un on the sidelines for fear of a challenge to his authority.
If electromagnetic pulse weapons pose a threat, it’s not from Iran or North Korea, as Newt Gingrich warns, but from the United States.
North Korea and Burma have been the beneficiary of foreign policy initiatives by China and the United States respectively.
The recent two-day talks between the United States and North Korea were a good start, but it also shows that a diplomacy contingent upon denuclearization will not likely break the deadlock. Perhaps the pending leadership succession from Kim Jong-il to his heir apparent Kim Jong-eun provides a window of opportunity for the United States to effectively engage the North through a different strategy, and denuclearization can happen from there.
The six-party talks may or may not resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, but they are the only game in town.
A massive army, as North Korea possesses, may have the same deterrent effect as nuclear arms.