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Updated Saturday, May 30, 2009 10:07 am TWN, By John J. Metzler , United Nation Correspondent North Korea creating major worriesThe latest chapter of the evolving crisis with North Korea came when the neo-Stalinist state tested another nuclear weapon and then for good measure fired off a number of medium range missiles, precisely the type of rocket which could hit South Korea or Japan. World reaction was predictable; shock, outrage and a verbal slap from the U.N. Security Council. John Bolton, former U.S Ambassador to the United Nations told Fox News that the jarring events which coincided with Memorial Day, were the “3AM call for the Obama Administration,” alluding to last year's campaign challenge that the new administration would be “tested by crisis.” President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched rhetorical salvos on North Korea which sounded more like George W. Bush than from Kumbaya Democrats. So what is to be done? Now that communist North Korea has formally renewed its membership in the “Axis of Evil,” will the rhetorically “tough, robust and firm” set of economic sanctions really change the behavior of the quaintly titled Democratic People's Republic of Korea? Or will the DPRK continue to develop nuclear weapons and hone the technical missile capacity to deliver them to Japan? Let's look at the record. Tub-thumping threats from Kim Jong-il's regime are nothing new. Yet the DPRK is politically far more isolated than even twenty years ago when it could rely on its political comrades in People's China and the Soviet Union. Still Pyongyang's threat to pull out of the 1953 Armistice agreement which ended the Korean War, (recall there was NEVER a formal peace treaty), allows the defiant North an excuse to respond militarily to any “provocation” from either South Korea or the U.S. U.N. sanctions which permit search or North Korean ships carrying proscribed cargoes could trigger a response. Under the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty, the United States remains militarily bound to defend South Korea. North Korea remains a moribund Marxist state with a collapsed economy, severe food shortages, and a weak infrastructure. This is a country getting massive humanitarian assistance while at the same time threatening the global order. Comments May 31, 2009 valwayne@ Reply Under Barack Obama nothing will be done about N Korea, and they know it, which is why they are stepping up their actions including ending the armistice with S Korea and putting themselves back into a state of war. And S Korea and Japan would be wise not to put too much stock into their defense treaties with the U.S. If either is attacked Obama is likely to dither at the U.N. Soon N Korea will be able to launch a nuclear tipped missile at Japan or the U.S. They will share the technology with Iran who will do the same, and who knows what that will mean for the world. That will be Obama's foreign policy legacy, or worse! June 18, 2009 jaredlrice@ This is going to end in another world war. We are all in danger while North Korea is not leashed. Hopefully the UN can come to some plan of action. We know that the Obama administration won't. |
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