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  1. #21
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    Default Re: Murder /Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

    Quote Originally Posted by sukumvit boy View Post
    Excellent interview with Dr. Henry Kissinger on The Charlie Rose Show this week, about his recommendations for immediate and long term future options for North Korea.
    https://charlierose.com/guests/131
    As expected a standard realist view of international relations with two flaws in the argument. China acting in its national interests rather than to suit the interests of the USA is pure realism and could have come out of a textbook from the 1950s, just as the argument that at times, apparently now, the interests of the US and China coincide, that being the need to attempt some control of North Korea, and specifically its nuclear programme.
    The first flaw in the argument is that realist theory when applied to nuclear war created the doctrine of deterrence which argues that the consequences of a nuclear war are so destructive that first use is disavowed by the states who own nuclear weapons. But the UK in 2006 did claim the right of first use even if it was hypothetical, and Theresa May shortly after becoming Prime Minister also said that in the right circumstances the UK would deploy them, although she failed to acknowledge that the UK cannot do so without US permission. In addition, deterrence was fundamental to the Cold War, yet suddenly the prospect of Iran and North Korea developing this capability undermines deterrence because of the view that both states are irrational and would use them, even though the original argument in deterrence would still apply. Kissinger can't bring himself to admit Kim is a rational leader, because then he would be on a level playing field, yet it can be argued he is indeed a rational leader and the rhetorical flourishes about attacks on the USA serve to feed a domestic audience with samples of his power, rather than make Americans scared of being fried by night.

    The second flaw is the assumption that only pressure on China can make a difference in North Korea, whereas the recent documentary on the murder of Kim Jong-Nam illuminated the deep relationship between North Korea and Malaysia which is a crucial supply line for the military and the Kim family in particular. Yet we do not hear of any pressure being applied to Malaysia, even though successfully cutting off the flow of money and supplies would severely perhaps fatally weaken Kim's power base in Pyongyang, much as the PLO sued for peace with Israel when they lost the military, political and crucially, the financial support of the USSR. You can see the film here although there might be copyright issues outside the UK
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...-in-the-family

    The fear of instability is real, the complexity of unifying Korea profound, but would it be any harder than the re-unification of Germany?


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  2. #22
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Murder /Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

    Oh , looks good , brand new !
    That link didn't work , this one is ok.




  3. #23
    Junior Poster nitron's Avatar
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    Default Re: Murder /Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

    I once heard , Qadafi received letters from his public, he would read them and become heart broken....

    They went something like this.....
    " Please , dear leader, kill my neighbors dog, it makes so much noise, and I'm afraid it will do me great harm, was it not written that the Prophet himself....."

    "...oh and can you move my family closer to the ocean, nothing fancy, of course..."

    "... Brother Qadafi , one more favor, send some people and some money ,so that I can replace my door which faces...."


    His dreams of a Pan African, Pan Islamic,....whatever......died long before he died..

    (Paraphrasing, from documentary on Qadafi, I think by the BBc a year after his death, interviews of people who knew him)



    If the fat kid lives there's suffering, if the fat kid dies there's chaos.



  4. #24
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Murder /Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

    Quote Originally Posted by sukumvit boy View Post
    Oh , looks good , brand new !
    That link didn't work , this one is ok.

    Well done with lots of new material . Tks Stavros.



  5. #25
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    Default Re: Murder /Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

    While North Korea continues to provoke and the US and its allies respond, I offer a link to an article which is 10 years old but offers a perspective on North Korea's links to the world economy, suggesting that the republic is better connected to the outside world than is often made out, although I think there will have been changes since it was published in 2007 and some of the trade is modest in terms of revenue.

    It looks at -
    Arms Sales, including missiles with customers in the Middle East and Africa;
    Drugs- North Korea, in addition to giving safe heaven to criminal gangs from China, South Korea and Japan has used them to export opiates and synthetic drugs such as methamphetamines netting somewhere between $71-200 million (estimated revenues); it has also exported heroin -in 2003 a North Korean freighter was seized off the coast of Australia with 125 kilos of heroin on board, most of it from South East Asia.
    Counterfeiting -in addition to bank notes, such as the $100 bill, North Korea has also produced counterfeit tobacco products, and pharmaceuticals.
    Aid -formal aid from the UN and other NGOs brings money into NK, as do remittances from workers abroad.
    The article also looks at a wide range of development projects, and foreign investment, some of which will have fallen off in recent years owing to sanctions.

    Nevertheless, it does mean that North Korea has been able to survive sanctions in the past through economic activities that were legal as well as illegal, so it remains to be seen how much more sanctions can achieve and whether or not they would ever be severe enough to cause the North Korean regime to choose an alternative to military might and confrontation.

    The article is here-
    http://gps.ucsd.edu/_files/faculty/h...orth-korea.pdf


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  6. #26
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Murder /Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

    Yes , the paper is certainly still relevant with regard to pointing out the many avenues of revenue and trade that N Korea has developed over the decades. It mentioned "and possibly Syria " regarding arms sales ,which has since been confirmed and includes the chemical weapons recently used in Syria and of course the VX ,the most potent poison ever developed, used to kill Kim Jung Nam. Also the recently discovered ties with and through Indonesia outlined in the excellent BBC documentary (North Korea:Murder in the Family ) above . The video of which we seem to have lost.


    Last edited by sukumvit boy; 08-30-2017 at 12:10 AM.

  7. #27
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    Default Re: Murder /Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

    I woke this morning to another round of hysteria regarding North Korea and the various mixed messages coming from the USA which include an attack by the President on South Korean 'appeasement' of the North, the Defence Secretary confirming the US does not intend to bomb North Korea into oblivion, and the claims that China's President Xi is 'pissed off' with North Korea for testing a nuclear missile and raising tensions again. I do have a peaceful solution to this situation.

    South Korea's official position is to make the whole of the Korean peninsula nuclear free, and this should be the basis of a new treaty between North and South Korea, with guarantors in China, the USA and Russia. Thus,

    1) The Treaty would commit both North and South Korea to a non-nuclear energy and weapons regime, with the guarantors agreeing not to deploy nuclear weapons in either the North or the South.
    2) The US would reduce it's military presence in South Korea by 50%, and China act as 'defender of last resort' for North Korea, so that neither North or South Korea need be in fear of an attack by either country or its allies.
    3) A UN sponsored package would offer North Korea long-term economic investment in agriculture and industry to stimulate economic growth and reduce North Korea's involvement, or dependency on illegal trade. The aim would be to integrate not isolate North Korea from the regional and world economy.
    4) In return, a limited form of 'open border' arrangements between the North and South would enable people from both countries to travel without restriction, with the long term aim of bringing people in the North and South closer together.
    5) North and South Korean political and military leaders to hold regular -perhaps every six months- meetings in order to prevent misunderstandings and tensions to run out of control.
    6) For the longer term, a more co-ordinated effort to bring the people of Korea and Japan into a dialogue that moves on from the stale rhetoric of the Japanese occupation and bases future relations on friendship and co-operation.

    The primary aim is to prevent any escalation of tension into military engagement in the short term, while building the components of a peaceable and practical relationship between North Korea and its neighbours in the long term. It requires a step back from military confrontation by both the USA and North Korea, while offering both the opportunity to see North Korea end its isolation and become more fully integrated in the global economy.


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  8. #28
    filghy2 Silver Poster
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    Default Re: Murder /Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

    These would be good ideas in a saner world, but what would be in it for Kim Jong Un to make such a deal and stick to it? It's not unreasonable for him to see nuclear weapons as the best guarantee of his regime's survival. I doubt that he's all that interested in economic development or opening to the rest of the world - the North Korean people may be suffering but he certainly is not. Opening would also loosen the regime's control.


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  9. #29
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    Default Re: Murder /Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

    I understand the strategic logic of nuclear weapons, but only in the context of deterrence, as the use of such weapons on the battlefield by inviting a proportionate retaliation risks far more in terms of destruction than most regimes would consider sane. War after all is fought for a purpose, and in military terms, the armies starting the war expect to be victors at the end of it.

    On the other hand, nuclear deterrence has not deterred conventional military campaigns, be it the Falklands/Malvinas invasion by Argentina in 1982, or Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In addition, there is the intriguing case of Israel in 1973 and the claim that Moshe Dayan or Golda Meir or both considered using their nuclear weapons at an early stage in the war when their lines were overrun by the Egyptians -but that they drew back from it and appealed to the US which raised the nuclear stakes which in turn triggered the USSR to intervene and restrain the Arabs.
    http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archi...om-kippur-war/

    In the case of Korea the nuclear option was considered twice in the 1950-53 War, in 1950 when MacArthur proposed dropping 30 atomic bombs to both crush the Communists and their allies and to warn off the USSR, and in 1951 after MacArthur's replacement though the preparations never materialized. A nuclear strike on North Korea was actually ordered by President Nixon in April 1969 when a US spy plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan and Nixon ordered a retaliatory strike -which never happened because Kissinger got on the phone to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the order was rescinded -because Nixon was drunk. Indeed, the claim is

    Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor for Nixon at the time, also got on the phone to the Joint Chiefs and got them to agree to stand down on that order until Nixon woke up sober the next morning.

    According to Summers and Swan’s book “The Arrogance Of Power: The Secret World Of Richard Nixon,” Kissinger is reported to have told aides on multiple occasions that if the President had his way, there would have been a new nuclear war every week.
    http://www.businessinsider.com/drunk...ea-2017-1?IR=T

    We don't enough about the relationship Kim has with the Party and the Army, but we do know that when Kim Il-Sung died there was no immediate transfer of power to Kim Jong-Il but that his success in succeeding his father may have been a trade-off between the family and the army. If one accepts that Kim Il-Sung created a Stalinist autocracy in North Korea, one can appreciate that it survives because the people at the top of the pyramid know that as the echelons reach down to the people, they have enough loyal party members and military personnel to benefit from the regime. Autocracies fail when liberal reforms undermine the autocracy, or when there are enough party or military personnel to rebel against the leadership.

    Kim may therefore not care about the state of the economy, largely because his source of wealth is external, but lower down the food-chain there must be party apparatchiks and officers who rely on their position to extract benefits from the local economy, for whom economic growth is essential, so the idea that the regime can sail on without regard to sanctions and their effect is I think an exaggeration. In addition, it would also be possible for disaffected officers to organize a coup within the leadership so that Kim could disappear, never to be seen again (they could even manufacture an illness brought on by stress and hard work) while a cabal of officers take power to preserve it, but also by de-escalating the current tensions.

    Nobody needs nuclear weapons, the US laid waste to Korea and Vietnam without them; Mosul is in ruins; the Russians twice attacked Grozny in the 1990s and reduced it to rubble just as Saudi Arabia has spent the last two years destroying the Yemen.

    I wonder if within the elites of North Korea, Kim is being goaded to be provocative, or is being viewed as a threat to their interests, so that the 'end game' to this present situation may not require any action by the US, China, or Russia, and take place behind closed doors in Pyongyang.


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  10. #30
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Murder /Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

    LOL, great stuff about Nixon from "The Arrogance of Power" ,tks.
    Very interesting proposal regarding N Korea treaty outline in post #27 above. Between your and Kissinger's proposals I think we could make something work.
    Would that "Kim could quietly disappear, never to be heard from again" ! That would be the best solution for all concerned .
    Dreams can come true as evidenced by the turnaround in Myanmar in 2011.



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