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November 9, 2006

Chosun Ilbo’s Take on Dem Takeover Sketches Shape of New Realignment

Today is November 9th, which means that the official sulking period has ended, and it’s time to start picking your way though the banquet of bloggable delicacies of our new moveable feast.  America has moved to the left, but it’s uncertain just how far.  At the same time, Korea seems poised to move  right just, and it’s not at all clear that either side will stop to shake hands if, and when, they cross paths.  A more elemental question is...
Categories America/An Alliance?/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 8, 2006

The Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Heard

“Our interest is a stable North Korea.” — Bill Richardson They sell uranium to Libya, sell  missiles to Iran and Syria, renounce or violate every agreement they make, kill “impure” babies, gas kids, put the handicapped in concentration camps, and intentionally starve millions of their people.  And we want  them to be able  to go on doing that?  My idea of our interests obviously differs from Bill Richardson’s.  The North Koreans have fooled him so many times, he’s obviously beyond...
Categories Diplomacy/Washington Views/WTF?
November 8, 2006

Wobble Watch: Robert Gates on North Korea

A few links that may interest (or depress) you.  In 2004, Gates teamed up with Zbigniew Brzezinski to call for direct bilateral talks with Iran.  Procedurally, you can’t say that we gain much by letting the Europeans do it for us, since we certainly don’t share a common set of interests or base beliefs with Europe.  Substantively, I don’t see what you can gain by talking to a man as hell-bent as Ahmedinejad.  Especially if we show weakness in Iraq,...
Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 8, 2006

Rumsfeld Resigns

[Update:   More on Robert Gates here, and some clues to how he thinks here and .]   It was probably inevitable, and if it might have been the only way to preserve any kind of bipartisan consensus on Iraq.  I agree with Robert’s analysis, as it concerns Korea policy.  Rumsfeld has managed the downsizing of the alliance creditably, confronting, rather than denying, the effect of the political trends there.   Much of what Rumsfeld did right in Korea is owed...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 8, 2006

Thoughts (and Yours?) on the Mid-Term Elections

[Update:   An Instalanche is always some consolation.  Thanks,  Glenn, and welcome to everyone.] [Update 2:   On the other hand, Rumsfeld’s resignation may have a significant effect, less so if Richard Lawless stays on.] [Update 3:   Of course, I could be wrong.  Bill Richardson has a long history of dealing with the North Koreans  going back to  the Clinton era, and we’re all familiar with how that worked out.  And as I’ve said again and again, we’ve only...
Categories America
November 6, 2006

What’s Joe Di Trani doing these days?

You may recall that  before he resigned from the six-party  negotiations  team,  Di Trani was one half of the New York Channel, along with Han Song Ryol (Han, who is a real bastard, has also moved  on).  Those were the bilateral talks that the State Department was pretending not to have while the Democrats and some Republicans were demanding we have them.  Di Trani, who was at the CIA previously, went to the Directorate of National Intelligence.  Now (via Richardson)...
Categories Diplomacy/North Korea/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
November 6, 2006

Why Talk?

Some people are wondering just what we expect to get from talking to the North Koreans.  But Ms. Rice is coming under increased fire inside and outside the administration from officials and experts who are skeptical about what diplomacy can achieve in this case, and who argue that there is no chance a new round of nuclear talks with North Korea will succeed. “What’s a good description? Fantasy? Dreamworld?” said Nicholas Eberstadt [OFK interview here], a North Korea expert with...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
November 5, 2006

Wobble Watch: Treasury Won’t Lift Sanctions on Kim Jong Il’s Macau Accounts

New press reports link the bank accounts that mean so much to Kim Jong Il with  his nuclear and other  WMD programs.  North Korea used its accounts at a Macau-based bank, suspected of having served as a base for the North’s alleged illicit activities, to pay for devices that could be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons, a Japanese daily reported Saturday. Quoting unidentified sources, Yomiuri Shimbun said China froze North Korean accounts worth US$24 million...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
November 4, 2006

Kerry’s Website: ‘Right Either Way’

Screenshot here.  This, to me, is the money quote: Although there are plenty of well-educated people in our armed forces — Kerry was one of them — military service has long been an opportunity for those with less education and fewer skills than they need to work in the private sector.  Indeed, the military sells itself as a place to garner skills and to help pay for higher education. Ah shore m glad i kud git out of souf dakota...
Categories U.S. Military/WTF?
November 4, 2006

North Korean Spy’s Wife Was the Secretary to a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel

No information on which Lieutenant Colonel, or which unit (link in Korean).  Her side of the story is that she just kept his appointments, that he wasn’t in a sensitive position, and she couldn’t have stolen any secrets had she wanted to.   Hey, the wives of North Korean spies can have day jobs, can’t they?  If the South Koreans do what I increasingly think they  will try  to do —  a whitewash  —  then we will have a case of...
Categories An Alliance?/The Fifth Column/U.S. Military
November 3, 2006

Wobble Watch: Condi Rice Talks Tough, the Pentagon Talks Scary Tough

The Administration is trying to sound tough with the North Koreans, but I’m inherently distrustful of tough talk that comes the week before an election: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday the United States wanted “concrete action” when six-party talks resume on North Korea’s nuclear program. Rice said the starting point for the talks, which North Korea has boycotted since last November in protest at U.S. financial restrictions, would be to seek implementation of an agreement signed with...
Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views/WMD
October 30, 2006

‘Contain and Transcend’

Eric Sayers of the Center for Security Policy has produced a very interesting paper called “Contain and Transcend:  A Strategy for Regime Change in North Korea.”  Eric doesn’t think we can or should  actually promote democracy or encourage dissent inside North Korea — I  think we can and should  — but he  gets the  essential formula right:  starve the regime, reach out to the people.  This one is a must-read think piece.  Eric also keeps a fine blog, The Neo-Reaganite.
Categories Appeasement/Geopolitics/Washington Views
October 29, 2006

Airborne Laser Leaves the Hangar

The system, mounted in a modified 747, is designed to track missiles in their boost phase.  Although it won’t be ready for test firing at a missile until 2008, it should be operational by the end of the decade.  And it looks cool. In a ceremony at the Boeing Co.’s Integrated Defense Systems facility in Wichita, the agency announced it was ready to flight test some of the low-power systems on the ABL aircraft, a modified Boeing 747-400F designed to...
Categories Technology/U.S. Military/WMD
October 28, 2006

Suspected N. Korean Spies, Shielded by Ruling Party Parliamentarian, Played a Leading Role in Anti-U.S. Protests (The Death of an Alliance, Part 58)

[Update: Welcome Gateway Pundit readers; this story is developing rapidly, and now, there’s new evidence that the North Koreans tried  to help the ruling leftist Uri  Party win the Seoul  mayor’s race last May.  Plus, more evidence of a North Korean hand in fanning anti-Americanism in the South.] A  widening  spy scandal surrounding  several senior members of the  leftist Democratic Labor Party and  a U.S. citizen  may have  led to  the resignation of the head of the National Intelligence Service...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
October 26, 2006

Where Is That Other Shoe?

[Update:   A State Department official who asked not to be identified said the sanctions authority, bearing the name of Senator John Glenn, who sponsored it in the Congress, is open-ended in the range of sanctions available. That official predicted that all financial and economic transactions with North Korea would be ended, except for humanitarian aid. ] We’ve all been waiting for othe other shoe to drop — for the U.S. to announce what sanctions it will impose — since North...
Categories Diplomacy/Money Laundering/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
October 23, 2006

So Much for a Nuclear-Free Korea

Update:   A well-informed reader says the Pentagon denies this story. This should get their attention in Beijing.  As ye sow: Seoul and Washington will add use of nuclear arms by U.S. forces in response to North Korean atomic weapons in a joint operation strategy codenamed OPLAN 5027, sources said Thursday. That would mean the return of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea 15 years after they were pulled out in 1991. At the 28th Military Committee Meeting (MCM)...
Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/WMD
October 19, 2006

Interview: L. Gordon Flake, Executive Director, Mansfield Foundation

Gordon Flake (bio)  is two things that make his opinions interesting and valuable to me.  First, he’s a fluent Korean speaker, and those of us who aren’t are always at some disadvantage to those who do when we are gathering the facts we process into our views.  Second — and Gordon may not agree with this characterization — his views  strike me as classically  liberal. His views are probably more independent and less jaundiced by partisan bias or  ambitions  than...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/Famine & Food Aid/Google Earth/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Media Criticism/NK Economics/Proliferation/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views