The Policy Blender

treat them like the awkward little brats that they are - ignore them, they just want attention.

Oh, and you should never give children nuclear weapons, so we'll have to confiscate them.

So what do we do - we say 'Now now, Kim, hand them over or I'll send you to your room', but without a military invasion?

we should point out that he has a girls name, too.

There's definately a deal of "look at me, look at meeee mummy!" about this latest episode...

Getting rid of North Koreas Nuclear weapons is an impossible task if current diplomatic approaches continue to be followed. Negotiators have failed to speak softly (axis of evil etc) and no longer appear to carry a big stick. This lack of a military option is due not just to the scale of Korea, or indeed the Iraq overspend, but because the South Korean people believe they are following a path to re-unification in which large scale military attacks would be untenable.

It is clear that removing or stalling a dangerous regimes military capability is not enough to prevent internal atrocities an potential WMD build up from continueing. North and South Koreans continue to express a desire for re-unification. The rest of the world needs to start properly backing the re-unifiction process in Korea.

It is estimated that the north already has around eight nuclear weapons. Even without long range missile systems one would imagine smuggling a warhead overland through russia into europe would be possible. So, I suppose if you are going to be scared about North Korea you might as well be scared now. One is enough, after all. As it stands current diplomatic efforts seem to favour allowing the Nuclear North to fester, so they can develop more weapons and Kim can starve more of his people to death.

I believe that the wrong things are on the table in negotiations with North Korea, because of an irrational fear of anything that might be seen as appeasement.

Take the question of supplying electricity to the North. The South Koreans are aware that re-unification with the North in its current state would be economic suicide. Think Germany after the wall times 1000. As a result a move to completely electrify North Korea (insert joke) began. This was taken by the US, China, Russia and Japan as something to be bartered against denuclearisation.

There are several reasons why this was wrong. Firstly, detecting the exact number and location of Korean WMD's is, eh, you know how that works. This means any settlement would be inevitably unsatisfactory. This is particularily true when it is clear that they have the knowledge to continue to produce such devices. Negotiating with the current highly untrustworthy regime is a waste of time.

Secondly, if we accept the rest of the world has a huge ammount to gain in moving toward reunification, then being allowed to help this process in any way should be the number one goal in negotiations.

So, lets be clear what I'm suggesting before somebody points it out with great shock.

North Korea requires structural gifts in order to allow reunification to proceed.

It is not going to become any more dangerous to its own people or to others because it has electricity, or running water, or better educational equipment, or working hospitals.

The West needs to get over our fear of appeasement and try and achieve the goal of reunification.

I agree with graham apart from the last three paragraphs.

don't give bad children treats.

I'm not sure I agree with your analogy, Ben. While I'm not as up on the situation as any of you, I think electricity and running water aren't treats. A better sentence might be 'Don't give bad children meals', which is a pretty harsh parenting strategy by any standards, once it stretches into months and years. I'm afraid you're going to have to express yourself seriously again.

I'm not suggesting we should punnish bad behavior, but I have a real problem with rewarding it.

This, for me, is the same as sending thieving little shitbags on holiday at the taxpayers' expense, or appeasing Saddam. It just encourages them to take the piss.


These fuckers have got to learn to play ball. They've got to be positive members of the international community to realise the benefits of it.

They want to be arseholes: let them be arseholes on thier own, without nukes.