North Korea has conducted its second nuclear test. The big question now is whether the world’s response will recognize the unique features of this most recent intensification of the crisis, and so effectively answer Pyongyang’s latest challenge to global nuclear stability and the embryonic disarmament renaissance.
The pundits and publics breathed a sigh of relief after the recent summit: President Barack Obama and President Lee Myung-bak get along.
The United States has basically thrown up its hands in the current crisis with North Korea. Washington has mounted an aggressive campaign at the UN to further isolate the world’s noisiest nuclear aspirant. But no one thinks that UN actions will have much effort.
Future historians will view the Bush administration’s assertion of unilateral U.S. power and authority as the last gasp of the American empire. The imperial overstretch that historian Paul Kennedy diagnosed near the end of the Cold War is finally hitting us: the banking crisis, the recession, the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ever-increasing Pentagon budget.
John Feffer argues with Brent Choi and Joowoon Jung about the proper response to North Korea’s behavior.
This article originally appeared in Asia Chronicle. It is part of a strategic dialogue on North Korea that includes this article by Brent Choi and Joowoon Jung. The authors respond to each other here.
This essay is part of a strategic dialogue on North Korea that includes this article by John Feffer. The authors respond to each other here.
(Editor’s Note: This article will also appear in The Asia-Pacific Journal.)
Just as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was arriving in Asia this week, Pyongyang was threatening to test a long-range missile. That’s its way of saying, “Don’t ignore us!” North Korea’s nuclear program is not in the top tier of foreign policy issues facing the Obama administration. The new team in Washington believes it has to deal with other priorities — the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global economic meltdown, climate change, and Middle East peace — before it can address the North Korean conundrum.
As Barack Obama assembles his foreign policy team, he appears to be drawing from two primary sources: the Clinton faithful and Republican renegades. These old dogs might be up for some new tricks, but one risk of relying on such “experience” could be the triumph of conventional thinking in Washington — when the world expects, and the times demand, fundamental change.