Lemur866: Don’t you mean either the Prime Minister or the Governor General of Canada?
Yeah, you’re right, Prime Minister, I forgot they speak French up there…
Your analysis is right on. Kim is a textbook narcissist, megalomaniac and antisocial thug. True, he’s an ugly, stupid, bumbling pissant who, through dynastic quirk, has people snapping their heels and literally dying to please him. But better to be ruler of a fourth-world basketcase that keeps the world’s superpower edgy, than to go the way of a would-be Gorbachev and risk revolt from his hardcore aides.
How did Augusto Pinochet?
Have you looked at North Korea? I pulled it up today on Google Earth. The hills outside of Pyongyang are one huge military installment that is bigger than the city itself. There are missile sites all over the country. The whole place is crawling with tunnels. There is just no easy way to do it, and we arn’t going to do it the hard way unless we really really have to. A little human rights violation here and there is nothing we arn’t prepared to ignore.
They would not believe it, given what’s happenned to General Pinochet.
He’s not quite as stupid as that. He’s not going to win any Nobel Prizes (unless he pulls an Arafat), but the man’s cunning enough. Some rumors suggest that he had to fight politically for his power after Il Sung died, and did well at it.
All those North Koreans for whom the Communist Party is and always has been the only real one. Oh, some will change their allegiance, but many will stick with the Communists out of lifelong habit. A unified democratic Korea where the Communist Party is not a major player is inconceivable. There is no post-Communist state in Europe where the old Communist Party has not survived (and, after a fashion, thrived) in some form.
Although, admittedly, in post-Communist countries day-to-day life for the average person was often a lot more comfortable under the Communists. It’'s hard to overemphasise how miserable life is in much of post-Communist Russia right now. There is a lot of nostalgia for times that, while not quite prosperous, wern’t actively bad. But it seems like life can’t really get much worse in NK. Very, very few will look back on the regime with any sort of fondness.
There is zero chance that Kim will emerge as some respected statesman. First, because he’s a freaking loon. Second, if that country ever opens up enough for the rest of the world to really see what’s been going on there, Kim is headed for a gallows.
Say, what is China’s attitude toward NK these days?
I was suggesting psychopathology, not stupidity or lack of shrewdness.
“A lot more comfortable”?
“Not quite prosperous”?
“Weren’t actively bad”?
My dear, you know not of what you speak. Were he alive, Alexander Solzhenitsyn might give a somewhat less charitable appraisal of day-to-day Soviet life, as might an estimated 30 million others who perished in labor camps, purges, progroms and engineered famines–as might tens of millions of former Soviets who lived in squalor and whose comprehension of “misery” is somewhat more robust and less abstract than yours.
[QUOTE=Carnac the MagnificentWere he alive, Alexander Solzhenitsyn might give a somewhat less charitable appraisal of day-to-day Soviet life, as might an estimated 30 million others who perished in labor camps, purges, progroms and engineered famines[/QUOTE]
[Slight Hijack]Alexander Solzhenitsyn is alive. He’s published as recently as 1998.[/slight hijack]
You are referring to Stalinist times in the USSR, when the vast majority of these crimes against humanity occured. Granted nobody intelligent wants to live in those days but the USSR of the 70s and 80s, perhaps. Sven is not the only person I’ve heard echo this statement about there being some nostaliga for the USSR. Even though there are improvements in modern Russia there is also widespread corruption, mafia influence and poverty which weren’t as bad under communism.
Watching documentaries about NK, I’m shocked at the number of “experts” who suggest that an internal coup in Pyongyang could somehow make things better. What these people fail to understand is that as evil and looney and prone to provocation as Kim Jong Il is, everyone else in any position to take over the reigns is probably even crazier and willing to go to war. There used to be moderates in the military, officers who received training in the Soviet Union, but they were all purged in the early 90’s. The military leadership who survived is very hardline. These are the people you’ll see in the documentaries threatening SK with nuclear and biological weapons (I’m 100% certain they have chem/bio weapons, and I would bet money that they have at least one nuclear weapon.). In their eyes, NK has nothing to lose in an all out war with SK. In my opinion, as awful as it sounds, if we have any hope of negotiating or otherwise bringing about a peaceful resolution on the Korean peninsula, it’s going to have to be with Kim Jong Il’s cooperation, not over his dead body.
If an internal coup does happen, and the new boss is wearing a military uniform instead of a business suit, watch out.
Actually, North Korea does have a lot to lose in a war with South Korea. There is a fair amount of tourism now from the South to the North and there is business investment in the North.
Oh, yes, they’d lose a lot of food too. The South is into providing humanitarian relief also.
Furthermore, acknowledging that the standard of living for many Russians has decreased is in no way an endorsement for the old system: the governemnt and economy just now collapsed, from a historical standpoint: it hasn’t even been 20 years. You’d expect things to flounder for a while, and it hasn’t been awhile yet. Think about Reconstruction: we tend to think of that as a flash in the pan after the main event of the civil way, but it was a 12-year period: people that were children at the beginning of it were adults at the end.
I am an avid reader of the Vladivostok News. The first time I brought it up, years ago, I was convinced it was a parody piece. The number of bizarre murders, openly corrupt institutions, random violence and just plain sad situations seemed too much to be real. But after much reading (the archives around 1997 are a lot of fun due to a rather bad translator) I realized it is real, and this is what life is like there.
Anyway, pulling it up today I was kind of surprised to see this on the front cover- an article stating that 66% of Russians disapprove of the collapse. They run these stories every once in a while.