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“Nice, but of course the U.S. cannot promise such a miraculous change. As long as he remains a brutal dictator who rejects all of his people’s rights and as long as he tries to control the economy it won’t come to fruition. I doubt he is just going to surrender himself to a capitalist revolution which would see him immediately deposed and killed by his many, many victims. Life can get better for N. Koreans but it will be limited as long as things continue as they always have.”

There are 2 ways to liberalize a Communist nation: the first way was tried by the Soviets - liberalize the political end of things, but keep a hard grip on the economy. That failed, miserably so. The 2nd way is the Red Chinese way, where political power is kept with the Party, but the economy is liberalized gradually to Western standards (with, of course, ample bribery, theft of intellectual property and other corruption)...and that has worked very, very well.

Which model do you think that fat Kimmy is going to follow? I’m betting on him picking Door #2. Those in the political leadership in Norklandia who don’t want to do this will either be shot, imprisoned or bought off - Kim is young, and wants to live a long life in which he is rich (through corruption, of course) and admired (and if he does liberalize things and make a better life for his country, it wouldn’t be entirely unwarranted).

That all being said, no amount of good that Kim ***may*** do for his country will wash away what he has done to murder, torture, imprison, starve, etc. his people, nor his acts of pure terror against those outside of his country. But if you want him to dispose of his nukes, he needs a hefty incentive...which is that he’ll be guaranteed safety against outside interference and have the opportunity to be a market-oriented country with all of the benefits that such implies. There’s no perfect justice, but I view this deal (as it has been presented so far) as about the best possible compromise that benefits the largest number of people. The status quo only benefits arms sellers and some diplomats, and I’m quite willing to put their interests off to the side to prevent US cities from ever being under serious threat of being nuked by Kim or whomever replaces him someday.