08-12-2017, 11:19 AM
(08-11-2017, 03:49 PM)Dill Wrote: Yes, I am saying NK had no reason to trust our diplomacy. Not sure any country can at this point, with Trump as president and a Republican Congress.
Certainly NK invaded the South--over 60 years ago. In their view, the South was occupied by the US and Rhee was a puppet leader. In the North's view, the Koreans would have settled their own affairs just fine if the US had not intervened.
Settled their own affairs how? By letting the North take the South by force?
Quote:50 years later, the regime that Clinton dealt with was not identical to the one that invaded back then. Nor was the US the same. Clinton cut a deal with Kim Jong Il in 1994 to shut down reactors capable of producing weapons grade plutonium in return for the building of two light water reactors 500,000 tons of fuel oil to tide the country over until the reactors were completed. SK and Japan would help with funding, the IAEA would inspect--very similar to the current Iran deal. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/19/world/clinton-approves-a-plan-to-give-aid-to-north-koreans.html?pagewanted=all
But Republicans won the midterm elections; Gingrich became speaker. Lacking funding, reactor construction stalled. Then Bush was elected, and he stopped the fuel shipments in 2002 and invaded Iraq the next year. NK said "Hell with this" and in two years had nuclear bombs. So after signing all the papers and getting four other countries committed, the US essentially backed out. I would not be surprised if some heads rolled in NK after that. Those who claimed the US could not be trusted were further empowered within the regime.
But North Korea was not completely upfront in all of this Dill.
In May of 1992 the nuclear declarations from North Korea was submitted to the IAEA which declared seven plutonium sites that could be subject to IAEA inspection and the IAEA conducted inspections to verify that the declarations were correct. Four months later in September, the IAEA asked North Korea to clarify issues regarding their nuclear activities because the IAEA discovered discrepancies in North Korea's initial report on it's nuclear program, issues which included the amount of reprocessed plutonium that North Korea had..
The following year in February 1993, the IAEA became highly suspicious of what North Korea was doing and demanded special inspections of two North Korean sites that the IAEA believed was being used to store nuclear waste because they had found what they said was "strong evidence" of North Korean misconduct. North Korea received the IAEA's request and subsequently denied them entry to the two sites. Barely even a month later North Korea announced that they were going to pull out of the non-proliferation treaty. After this announcement the IAEA declared that North Korea was not complying with their agreement and that their nuclear activities were unverifiable because they were denied entry to their facilities.
After talks with the United States, North Korea suspended it's decision to pull out of the treaty and decided to negotiate with the IAEA. The next year in March of 1994, North Korea agreed and allowed the IAEA to inspect their facilities. However, the inspectors were not allowed to fully inspect their facilities in accordance to the agreement, and the IAEA demanded that the North Koreans allow them to inspect their facilities to the fullest extent of their agreement.
About two months later in May, the IAEA reported that North Korea had discharged the fuel in their 5 Megawatt Nuclear Reactors before inspector's were able to get there in time, and because of the way that they discharged the fuel, it had become impossible for the IAEA to verify how the reactors were used and for how many years. As a response, the Board of Governors of the IAEA announced in June that North Korea was continuing to distance themselves in their agreement by not fully complying with the IAEA's inspection requests and were deliberately taking actions that prevented the IAEA from completing meaningful research on their facilities. Three days later North Korea withdrew from the agreement.
I know you want to harp on the Bush administration but the Bush administration only acted on what the Clinton administration had already picked up on, and that's that the North Koreans were doing some shady nuclear activities for years but it was impossible to determine what exactly they were doing because they repeatedly denied inspectors access to their facilities. Sure, the North Koreans are scared of us, but I think we need to be careful in framing what they are doing as "defensive" activities. Clearly North Korea has more in mind than preventing a US invasion.
Quote:Here's how diplomacy can solve everything.
NK can neither feed nor power itself. It depends on China and Russia for resources.
Get these countries, and the rest of the world, to impose sanctions on critical imports.
Cut off the food and power, and the regime either collapses or rolls back its nuclear capability.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/05/asia/north-korea-un-sanctions/index.html
In the meantime, don't say crazy things or create misperceptions that NK might act on.
But that's impossible. China would never let North Korea collapse because that's exactly what the US wants. Diplomacy will not work under the Kim regime.
North Korea has made it clear what they want from the US.
1)To stop joint military exercises with South Korea and call back our military (Not gonna happen)
2) For the US to stop sanctions (Not gonna happen)
3) For them to be allowed to have Nuclear Weapons (Already happening, but this prevents numbers 2 and 3 from happening).
