Follow-up on North Korea and Six-Nation Talks

North Korean Follow-up

The day after the Author’s Blog on North Korea and the Mass Games, the North Korean News Service announced that it was PROMISED the Light-Water Nuclear Reactor and that if it didn’t get its way, it would lay waste to the Korean peninsula out of spite. Not unexpected, given North Korean “diplomatic tactics”.

But a Blogger this Author follows, Billmon, states that this announcement could be typically truculent bluster to pacify the hardliners and maintain Kim Jong Il’s image as the Fearless Leader he aspires to.

This post is on http://billmon.org/. The Blog is entitled “Appeasing North Korea” and it argues that the Bush administration is “reinstating” the Agreed Framework that Clinton reached with the North Koreans in 1994. It further suggests that the Bush Administration’s rejection of the Agreed Framework in 2003 was based upon equivocal intelligence (wow, could that have happened?) and Neo-Con “appeasement”.

Billmon cites the preeminent Korean expert, Selig Harrison. Harrison wrote “Korean Endgame” (which the Author has read) and also wrote an article for Foreign Affairs in early 2005. The link to the Harrison article is:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050101faessay84109/selig-s-harrison/did-north-korea-cheat.html

The Author will of course let the Readers draw their own conclusions on the Billmon post and the Harrison article. But it appears that the administration, bogged down in Iraq, isolated on (or without) an approach to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, has no choice but to “appease” North Korea and reject the Neo-Con cadres.

Thank you for visiting the Desert of the Real!