Flowbark Said, "China sees no problem having a tinpot dictator on its borders, all the better to keep the red-meat crowd in the US distracted. "
Thank you for demonstrating my point, Texican. Countries vulnerable to American conservative bellicosity can take heart that this collective is easily distracted by the threat du jour. Or does that sound too much like the French Ambassador?
Speaking of leverage… Last week Japan said that A) it might have to go nuclear, and B) that it would even consider a first strike against North Korea if it thought a nuclear attack was imminent.
This is in violation of Japan’s own constitution, which permanently forswears war as a means of conflict resolution. So I wonder if the U.S. and Japan aren’t working together behind the scenes, in order to ratchet up the heat on China? A nuclear Japan and a nuclear South Korea are not a good thing for China.
And Powell announced yesterday that the U.S. was willing to resume food aid to North Korea. There’s that old carrot-and-stick again.
I think people have been mistaking a tactical apparent disinterest for an actual unwillingness to negotiate on the part of the US administration. But, for a blanket defense of what Bush says and does, I refer you to someone else. In a limited defense of GWB, to truly negotiate requires KJI throwing us a bone. I’m sure he is willing to accept our gifts. Then comes the hard part: getting anything close to actual compliance with a written agreement.
As for the Turkey gift, I’d love for you to criticize it here. I agree, it’s payola. But, and not that you do, I don’t think that foreign policy is as simple as backing the good guys. In the neighborhood we are talking about negotiating sucks. Bribe, butcher, and backstab - even moreso than usual.
The obvious example is Pakistan. By all rights they are an enemy in the war on terror. We’ve known about the ISI - Taliban - Bin Laden connection for years now. But, what do we do, invade Pakistan? No way. The Pakistani government is cooperating in a way that Saddam would never consider.
--------Beagle: "I’m truly not sure that North Korea has anything legitimate to sell, BTW. Their only hard currency really does come from arms sales. "
I checked the CIA’s World Factbook, and this does not appear to be the case. (Though I must add that I don’t know how good the CIA’s numbers are. Economics are not their forte, to my knowledge.)
Exports: $708 million (f.o.b., 2000 est.)
Exports - commodities: minerals, metallurgical products, manufactures (including armaments); agricultural and fishery products
No commodity breakdown was available, but here’s the kicker:
Exports - partners: Japan 40%, South Korea 24%, Hong Kong 7%, China 6%, France 4%, Germany 4% (2000)
I’m guessing that Japan, South Korea, France and Germany don’t import many armaments as a group. (40+24+4+4=72%).
Not to diminish the import of what little civilian industry North Korea has, but how does that compare to South Korea? Also, do you have any numbers on North Korea’s arms exports, that we can rely on? I love to send other people scurrying for cites.
Anyway, to avoid all that. I’m only saying that there is a large civilian / military export imbalance with North Korea that you don’t see with many other countries. One problem, I would guess, is estimating the arms transactions between nations like Pakistan and North Korea. Or, North Korea and Yemen. I can only guess how far the list goes on. You can’t put stuff in dollars you don’t even know about.
Sam and Beagle: Well to be quite frank, it is difficult to tell what exactly the administration is doing. I agree that they have appeared to have woken up in the past couple of months.
Still, it appears likely to me that a lack of engagement during the first 2 years of the Bush admin was a policy error.
I’m on the firmest ground when I advocate a (very) traditional Realpolitik approach. And it seems to me that Powell is a practitioner of that craft. Still, there do appear to be advocates of a more unilateral and fundamentalist approach within the Bush admin as well. On the Korean peninsula, it is my belief that they should not prevail.
---------Not to diminish the import of what little civilian industry North Korea has, but how does that compare to South Korea? Also, do you have any numbers on North Korea’s arms exports, that we can rely on? I love to send other people scurrying for cites.
As I said, I’m uneasy with the CIA’s estimates, because I don’t know how they got them or -more important- whether they just regurgitated official figures.
And I only have 1 year’s worth of data.
Look how small their total exports are though. Less than $1 billion. Including armaments (if the numbers are reliable). It seems entirely plausible that these clowns can be bought off.
OK, South Korea, FWIW. This is a remarkable example of successful capitalist development BTW. Disturbingly, much of it occurred under dictatorial conditions.
Exports: $168.3 billion (f.o.b., 2001)
Exports - commodities: electronic products, machinery and equipment, motor vehicles, steel, ships; textiles, clothing, footwear; fish
Exports - partners: US 21.8%, Japan 11.9%, China 10.7%, Hong Kong 6.2%, Taiwan 4.7% (2000)
Oh. Here’s the contrast that Beagle may be looking for.
South Korea:
GDP - per capita:
purchasing power parity - $18,000 (2001 est.)
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 5%
industry: 44%
services: 51% (2001 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure:
$12.8 billion (FY00)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
2.8% (FY00)
North Korea:
GDP - per capita:
purchasing power parity - $1,000 (2001 est.)
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 30%
industry: 42%
services: 28% (1999 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure:
Definition Field Listing
$5,124.1 million (FY01)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
31.3% (FY01)
So a little under a third of N Korea’s economy is military, according to the Factbook. That’s a problematic developmental strategy, I would say.
“North Korean arms exports”
I question that last sentence.
Zoe
Such as?
AZCowboy
[quote]
Who the hell are we to impose our belief structure on the rest of world?/
[quote]
The rest of the world doesn’t seem to have a problem imposing theirs on us. And just what is wrong with “imposing” the belief that it’s wrong to enslave your people? If you saw someone being mugged, would you just shrug your shoulders and say “Who am I to impose my belief structure on that mugger?” Liberals seem to have a penchant for disguising their apathy towards the suffering of others as “respecting other belief systems”. Some belief systems simply don’t deserve respect.
So if 51% of the world population agrees that slavery is good, we shouldn’t do anything to discourage slavery?
vibrotronica
Let me see if I have this straight. Your proposed “solution” is to continue with a program which has already failed. If it fails again, we should “contemplate” military action? What possible reason would Saddam be deterred? We have already threatened to attack if they don’t comply, and they haven’t complied. If we don’t attack, any further threats are going to sound pretty empty. If you oppose us carrying through on our threats now, what possible reason do we have to think that you won’t oppose carrying through on them if Saddam defaults again?
The rest of your list consists not of alternatives to war, but of completely independent issues.
MrTuffPaws
We have already made it clear that we will lift the sanctions if he complies. That has been an integral part of sanctions from the beginning. What, do you think that after the Gulf War, the UN agreed to put sanctions against Iraq in perpetuity, regardless of what they did? You must have a rather low opinion of the UN if you think that they would consign a country to perpetual poverty simply to punish it for a war.
Sam Stone
I was thinking the same thing. There are ways in which threats from Japan are more powerful than those from the US (eg “We don’t care what happens to SK, we just want to make sure you don’t have nukes” would sound more believable from Japan than from the US).
Flowbark
To put that into perspective, the population of NK (as far as I have been able to determine) is about 25 million. So that works out to exports of roughly $30 per person.
[Post previously eaten. Gerbils found it delicious. Resubmission follows.]
…and if NK exports are $30 per person, that means that exports are about 3% of the (rather closed) N. Korean economy.
Beagle: I’m speculating here, but remember that not all arms exports are nasty arms exports. (For example, Brazil at one time was something like the fifth largest military exporter in the world. Their trade was mostly small arms though, IIRC). Your link reflects this- I just thought I might point it out.
Furthermore, given the collapse of the USSR, one would expect N Korea’s military exports to decline precipitously after 1989-91. Hence their interest in Yemen et al. (Whether current sales of ballistic missile equipment is listed under “misc military supplies” or whether it is counted at all remains unclear).
Thanks for pointing that out without even a mention of US arms exports. That took restraint. I just don’t want North Korea to become the cut-rate nuclear dealer to every nation with good credit.
Just to be clear, I’m against any military action in North Korea. In fact, pulling our troops out sounds dandy. This is one of those long-term problems that you just keep a lid on.
Was there an OP here? Let me whack at that. War should be avoided but not when defeat, greater suffering, or a worse future war is the result.
Interesting thread. Some good ideas, some really dumb ones. But the whole time I read it, there was a song going round in my head, by Suicidal Tendencies:
Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just a song. But it’s also good sense. ASSUMING THAT WHAT WE’VE HEARD ABOUT IRAQ IS TRUE (the gassing of the kurds, the inhumane treatment and executions of prisoners, etc), then this is a guy that has to be removed. He has no business running a country or having his hands on weapons. Somebody that dangerous to HIS OWN COUNTRY is surely a danger to the rest of us. Dancing in times square with a sign that says “War is not the answer” is a nice, squishy gesture, but it only perpetuates the problem. The greatest weapon of the fascist is the tolerance of the pacifist. Think about that. Sometimes war is the answer. Pacifism only fed Hitler. It’s only feeding Saddam (not making a value comparison - only saying that they were both dangerous). You can’t kill him with kindness. It seems he’d be happy to take our money and aid, then shit it back out at us on the nosecone of a missile.
Further, the people who have access to the latest and greatest information and intelligence have decided that the best course of action is to finish what we started 12 years ago and get rid of him. He has shown no sign of giving in, shaking hands and saying “I was just funnin’” or giving up power. The U.N. has (unsurprisingly) been completely ineffectual in taking care of the situation. Saddam Hussein has shown that he understands only one language: Violence.
Again, assuming that what we’re being told is true, there’s only one answer.
And it appears (to me) that war IS the answer.
I have seen no evidence that the program of inspection, containment, and deterrence has failed, except for vague assurances from the Bushes that he’s a “bad guy.” The renewed intensive inspections have so far failed to turn up anything worth going to war for. Thanks to the sanctions, the no-fly zone, and constant surveillance, Iraq hasn’t invaded or threatened anybody in the last ten years. If they were to do that, I would support military intervention under the auspices of the UN. If Iraq were credibly tied to Al Qaeda in the same way that our “ally” Pakistan is, then I would favor military action under the auspices of the UN or alone if necessary. If there was any such evidence, it would have been made public a long time ago. If such evidence were made public, I predict that much of the domestic oppostion to war would weaken or evaporate. Just saying “Oh, we know he’s cooperating with Al Qaeda, but we can’t tell you what or how we know so you’ll just have to trust us,” is not good enough. Telling us “Oh, he has weapons of mass destruction, but we can’t tell you what he has or how we know, so you’ll just have to trust us,” is not good enough, either. Powell’s presentation to the UN was not sufficent and seems to have only hurt the push for war.
Furthermore, your argument that “Well, we’ve already threatened him, so we have to go to war now” is circular and self-fullfilling. Are you saying it’s right to go to war because we said we would? It’s like me saying “Stop messing with my truck or I’ll punch you in the nose.” Since you see that I’m a huge, strapping, belicose fellow, you immediately stop messing with my truck and back away. Even though my goal has been met, do I still punch you in the nose anyway to prove I was serious? If I do, am I in the right? Just because we made the threat, does that make it right or mean it’s the right thing for our country to do to follow through with it? Do we press on with every doomed policy just to make sure people “know we’re serious”?
My list was meant to outline what I consider a sensible, moral foreign policy, since we don’t seem to have one right now. It was a response to the OP’s assertion that people who oppose the Iraq war have no ideas or alternatives of their own and are just opposed to war because they don’t like Bush or they’re against all wars. For the vast majority of anti-war people, that is simply not the case. I hate and fear Bush, but if Al Gore were advocating the same position as Bush is right now, I’d still be opposed to it because it’s the wrong war with the wrong people at the wrong time. I am generally opposed to war, but when your country is attacked, you have a right–nay, a duty–to respond in kind and eliminate the threat.
We are and should be at war with Al Qaeda and Islamic fascists who supported them and their ilk. Attacking Iraq is bad strategy. For the life of me, I don’t understand why we’re doing it. This whole “they could give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda” thing is a fig leaf. If we were serious about that, we’d be taking action in Pakistan right now. The only rationale for attacking Iraq I can see in the context of the war against Al Qaeda and fundamentalist Islamic states is to seize Iraq’s oil fields so our military cannot be brought to a halt by an oil embargo. If that is the case, then this is an immoral war of agression.
vibrotronica, what about the fact that thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s have died in the years since the war, due to the sanctions the world has in place against Iraq? If Saddam remains in power (which he no doubt will, without war), the death toll will continue to climb. In one of the threads here, someone pointed out that if the US goes to war and ousts Saddam in less than a year, the number of Iraqi’s who would die because of that is less than the number who’ve died since sanctions were imposed.
How long to do you think that the world will want to spend the time, money, and resources to essentially keep Saddam locked up in the world’s largest prison? Folks were bitching that the no-fly zones were a waste of time just a few years ago.
Note To Moderator: I’d appreciate it if you would fix the quote tag in The Ryan’s post above (3034542), where he/she simply transposed the / and the [, causing their words to appear in a quote attributed to me. Thanks.
Curious: How does the rest of the world impose theirs on us?
It must be nice to have such an absolute view on morals - like they are carved in stone for everyone. Conservatives have a way of throwing out their governance principles so they can impose their morality on everyone else (prayer in school, outlawing abortion, etc.).
Slavery? Well, that was an interesting analogy to pick, only because I doubt you could find a majority of the world that supports it. So how 'bout we pick the death penalty? The majority of Americans support the death penalty. Most other free countries of this world look at us as immoral for supporting the death penalty. Should we now go impose the death penalty on the rest of the world?
You see, it isn’t apathy towards the suffering of others, as you misattribute it. And if that were really the driving force for the conservatives, Iraq wouldn’t be very high on their list.
Sure, Saddam is a raving ass. But if we can’t get the rest of the world to see that, it sure seems like it is possible that our perspective is flawed. Gaining international support is an appropriate check and balance system. Remember, we went to the UN, they didn’t come to us.
Otherwise, we are not just the international police, we are international morality police. And I don’t recognize a universal standard for morality so that would be problematic in and of itself.
But what is worse, is that we wouldn’t be an international morality police without the international support. We would be the equivalent of the morality vigilante squad - kinda like the KKK portrayed themselves.
Where morality is pretty clear cut, and their exists international consensus - genocide, for example - then I feel we are obligated to work with the international community to stop it. But notice the importance of international consensus here…
And if you think your morals are better than everyone else’s, to the point that you feel an obligation to impose them on others - then you are a pretentious bastard.
And btw, when you say:
You have setup a strawman. Do you see a distinction between “do anything to discourage” and “impose”? One is a valid form of consensus building - the other is not. Do you understand the difference?
I have absolutely no problem with you, or anyone else, trying to convince the international community of their moral failings. Short of that, I do have a problem with imposing your views once you have failed.
Speaking of fallacies…
And look where it got him. Are you suggesting that the majority of the people that do not support a unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation are pacifists? Try checking an opinion poll. While I’m sure there are a few, the majority simply do not believe that war is the best option right now, and subject to change (with UN support, for example).
And who are you talking about when you say:
If you are referring to Bush and his cronies, they have consistently told us that they will make the case. And then they have failed to do so. So now they are down to “trust us”. Are we to be surprised that not everyone in the world trusts them? Hmmm, I wonder if the Shi’ites would have any reason to distrust the words of the US government…
And on preview:
Cite? Don’t you mean to say that they have died due to Saddam’s policies, and not due to the sanctions? Then what about the tens of thousands of Americans that may die due to renewed terrorist attacks from Muslim fundamentalists that perceive that the US is bullying them? Do you have any insight to the issues that led up to the 9/11 attacks?
Fighting AIDS in Africa would be much more effective in saving lives, much less expensive, much less controversial, and much safer.
Well, to the folks who’ve died, it pretty much doesn’t matter if it was Saddam’s policies or the sanctions that have killed them, they’re still dead, and many more are going to die so long as Saddam remains in power. The world’s decided that Saddam’s dangerous enough to confine to a prison the size of a country, as a consequence, the entire population of that country is also imprisoned. Doesn’t that speak to you as an injustice? Iraqi civilians are jailed because their leader’s a nutbag, a leader which they are powerless to remove. This will have severe consequences for the world later on.
The disenchantment that arose in the years following WWI is what enabled Hitler to come to power. Saddam might not be another Hitler, but the next ruler of Iraq could very well turn out to be.
The Bush administration has pledged $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa, whether or not they’ll actually pony up the money, or pony it up in a manner which is helpful to Africa is another matter. Certainly, AIDS is going to become the most pressing issue in the near future, but that’s a subject for another thread, don’t you think?
Seems to me we don’t need to go more than a few miles south of Florida to find a dictator creating injustices for his people, along with a US policy of sanctions. Why are not invading Cuba?
If we are going around correcting injustices whereever we find them, wouldn’t you agree that it would help if we had to support of the international community to do so? Do do otherwise suggests an illegitimate authority.
And certainly, there are plenty of injustices right here within our borders that we could start with (Patriot Act I comes to mind…).
So, yes, AIDS in Africa would be a subject for a different thread. But to justify our action in Iraq as a method to appease our conscience over social injustice…puhleeze.
Hmm, let’s see. When was the last time Fidel invaded another country? Attempted to procure large numbers of WMD? Or slaughtered thousands of his countrymen? Been awhile, I’d say. Not to mention that it’d be pretty hard for us to get support from the international community to go after Castro.
How long did it take the world to decide that they wanted to do something about the horrors which were going on in the former Yugoslavic states? Damn near a decade, IIRC. There were people opposed to that as well, even though there was plenty of evidence of brutality.
The simple fact of the matter is that no matter what’s going on, nor where it’s happening, folks are going to be opposed to it for one reason or another.
There are no easy answers to this. If the US tried to take out every oppressive regime on the planet, it’d never be able to get full international cooperation, domestic support, or be able to even pretend to be an economically viable country. So, we have two choices, we can either throw up our hands and let the world turn to shit at a vastly accelerated rate, or we can pick and choose our battles. Either way, we’re going to piss somebody off.
Yes. Did you have point? Your next to last post seemed to indicate that you favor invading Iraq right now. In your last post, you admit people could go either way (duh).
Are you suggesting that we should be the vigilantes of the world, correcting whatever wrongs we see, even if no one else does?
I’ll use small words for you: Iraq bad. Lots of bad places, but can’t fix them all. Iraq easier to “fix” than Cuba. Easy “fixes” better than no “fixes.” “Fixing” Iraq good. That help you?