Deal or No Deal (North Korea and the U.S.)

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

It appears that North Korea extracted a significant change of position from the Bush administration. News sources are reporting today that the State Department will remove North Korea from the list of states that sponsor terrorism in return for agreement to a plan to inspect North Korea's nuclear facilities.

Sounds like North Korea simply agreed to a plan for inspection. The articles I've seen, however, don't comment on whether the plan contains enough substance to provide a comfort level that North Korea is not a nuclear weapons threat.

Plans don't seem to mean much, especially in the context of deterring an unpredictable nation who may be attempting to build a nuclear weapons capability. Plans can be flawed despite the most earnest intentions by those who create the plan, especially when the plan is dependent upon compliance with a secretive society. Hopefully removing North Korea from the terror-states list will actually make a meaningful contribution toward preventing the nuclear weapons club from gaining a new member.

[Anonymous]

I find this debate and ongoing effort by the United States to force countries to disarm themselves really interesting. What I find most intriguing from a diplomatic perspective and a foreign policy one is that to me it seems that demanding that a nation comply with nuclear disarmament while actively pursuing nuclear arms for "national Security" would be more sure to antagonize leaders of foreign nations. People in power surely do not like to be told what to do and dictated to from other world powers. In my opinion, it is more threatening to our national security to have irrational actors be characteristically acting solely out of the attempt to soothe their ego than the United States or any world power not allowing countries to act in their self-interest and pursue their own national security as we do ours. No country and no leader wants to be told what to do on an international stage or reprimanded. Instead of playing into the hands of seemingly irrational people and giving them a reason to act irresponsibly and out of sense of displaced power perhaps we should instead use psychology to reinvent our diplomatic relationships. North Korea is not going to disarm because we demand so. They will pursue it until they choose to subsist. They may appease us momentarily, but to me that is more discomforting than allowing them to run their own country.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the comment about countries not willing to give up to give up their nuclear arms just because we demand it. It seems as though another approach should be sought after. If another country threatens us with an attack, then they should know that the threat will be taken seriously, and the consequences will be severe. What if another country demanded that we get rid of our arms, how would we feel? Granted we are a powerful county, but not allowing a country to possess arms that they may use to protect themselves makes us seem like bullies. To say that you can't have weapons because you may misuse them, but I'm going to have as many as I want, somehow doesn't seem right.

[clay dube]

I understand and generally agree with the points Dawn and others are making here. The way the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT) was supposed to work is that if you agreed to not build weapons, you'd get assistance in building power plants. The trade off was access to peaceful technology in exchange for giving up the possibility of developing weapons. North Korea withdrew from the treaty in the early 1990s.

Here's the treaty website (part of the UN site):
http://www.un.org/events/npt2005/npttreaty.html

[Anonymous]

I agree that it just doesn't sound right to law down the law and then have your way. It seems to be the way we do business though in America (check the financial pulse). In a way, I don't blame North Korea. They obviously can see through America and are almost refusing to let their guard down. They appear in their practices to be stable and level-headed and thereby don't present themselves as a current threat. I just hope it stays that way.

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