Victor Davis Hanson Ping !
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Posted on 06/29/2005 6:20:22 AM PDT by Tolik
The North Korean crisis offers only bad and worse choices for the United States. Kim Jong Il cultivates an air of lunacy, and threatens to nuke the Western critics who are more concerned with the plight of his North Korean people than he is.
Poor Japan is squeezed between nuclear China and North Korea. As a prosperous democracy that stays true to its nonproliferation pledges, its rewards are overflights of test missiles launched from a rogue state, coupled with the periodic venom of a bullying China.
Who can figure out the Chinese sphinx? Will it pressure its erstwhile Stalinist client to calm down, in fear of antagonizing the United States and imperiling its own $300 billion trade surplus? More likely the ascendant Chinese are amused by the sheer blood sport of seeing their crazed vassal tie an exasperated America in knots. Is North Korea really out of control, and thus a threat to the breakneck development of China, or is it a useful surrogate to remind the Japanese and South Koreans who really holds the leash of this rabid dog?
South Korea suffers increasingly the postmodern maladies of the affluent-and cynical-West. Its citizens want pan-Korean solidarity, but not to the point of losing the one-sided benefits of their American alliance. University students demonstrate for Americans to get out of Seoul. But they don't really want us to leave the Demilitarized Zone.
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
Let me know if you want in or out
As always, a good piece of analysis..One thing surprises me..he correctly identifies China as the big dog that can control NK, yet he doesn't discuss what China REALLY wants..which is Taiwan...IMHO, the two are linked, and that's where we have the most leverage..
Probably the best essay on this subject I've seen lately. Unfortunately, the one course of action we cannot afford relative to NK is inaction. The Bush Administration, chastened by what happened in Iraq (i.e. less support inside and outside Iraq than we bargained for, and far more resistance than we would have expected), and fearful of "the limits of American power" (although we have not yet tapped into the smallest fraction of American [fire] power), appears to be drifting aimlessly. I realize, as an Army General once told me, that "sometimes the best decisions you make are the decisions you don't make", but I also know that waiting until NK and Iran formally "test" nuclear weapons before we specify what counteractions we might/will take is like the sheriff waiting until the bad guy reloads his gun before ordering him to "drop it" (i.e. either country could defy the paradigm and start mass producing nukes before/without a nuclear test).
Absolutely. I just finished his book "Ripples of Battle" and I'm half way through "Carnage and Culture". Both are excellent reads.
What would happen to our own economy in such an event?
"What would happen to our own economy in such an event?"
The more relevant question is "what would happen to China's economy if it occurred?" We can operate comfortably without China while China would collapse without us. Over half of their exports go to America and our allies. While only 13% of our total imports are Chinese.
China Export Partners:(2004)
US 22.8%, Hong Kong 16.2%, Japan 12.4%, South Korea 4.4%
http://www.cia.gov
How long would it take to shift that 13% to other countries, or somehow bring that manufacturing home again (very unlikely considering the cost of doing business here)? I'm still thinking that the shock to our own economy would be significant.
my point being that if America would INSIST that China grab NK by the neck there would not be any need for any kind of boycott...this whole situation with NK could be resolved in weeks...NK is dependent on China and China is dependent on Ameria and our allies for its exports.
just a matter of following the food chain. LOL
It is my understanding that the crisis involving our plane which was forced down early in the Bush administration was resolved, in part, when K-Mart and other retailers, warned the Chinese that an angry American public was about to launch a boycott of Chinese-made products.
Our government has no control over this kind of behavior by angry consumers.
well it all seems very elementary my dear, Watson, I mean Happygrl. LOL
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