More on Korea

1. It's no secret that Bush's foreign policy reflects domestic political considerations: his constituents, his beliefs, his sense of history. The same is true of North Korea. You can talk until you are blue in the face about China, Japan, and the U.S., but the determining factor in North Korean actions will be Korean politics. Koreans treat the country as in a constant state of war with the United States, see the U.S. as the inheritors of Japanese colonial oppression, and are not particularly happy with the efforts of any power to try to manipulate Korean policy.

2. Turning Korea into a theological question (good/evil) or a pseudo-scientific one (sane/insane) does little to solve the problem. Making such proclamations while lacking even a basic sense of North Korean history shows how empty they are. '

It's worth noting, in this respect, that the armistice ending the Korean war forbade nukes anywhere in Korea. The United States violated the armistice by setting up warheads in 1958.

3. The situation in North Korea is very, very bad. Probably much worse than Iraq under Saddam, and certainly worse than what has been reported in the media so far. Those who proclaim to care so much about this pain would be well advised to
a. be aware of its extent
b. not advocate killing the people they are ostensibly trying to help

4. The motivations of North Korea's neighbors are fully as complicated as those of the North Korean government. The United States has been really fucking stupid in its Keystone Kop attempts to manipulate China. In a BBC interview this morning, Bolton stated that Korea was really "rubbing China's noses in it," "defying China at every opportunity," and "embarrassing China." Of course, Bolton's public announcement of Chinese embarrassment would exacerbate the problem. Chinese diplomats can tell what he's trying to do, and are likely to be nearly as pissed at the United States as they are at Korea. Meanwhile, Koreans often regard Chinese gov't policy as condescending and paternalistic.

Bottom line: China is unlikely to solve our problems, and trying to goad them into action will make them less effective and less likely to further U.S. interests.

5. The problems with Korea are largely the legacies of an accidental partition that took place as U.S. civilian leaders sought to make arrangements for the occupation of Korea after World War II. There are some pretty obvious implications of this for Iraq: any policy that seeks partition should be managed very, very carefully.

The Baker plan will seem like a great idea in comparison to the neocons, and it will seem to offer a way out. But it could easily create more problems than it solves.