More Sanctions? Fugetaboutit
Forget about the stalled six-party talks or the five working groups aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear program. Forget about more useless sanctions. Forget about bipartisan recriminations. Forget about the blame game ─ especially picking on China and Russia. Forget about a nuclear East Asia.
The universal opposition and condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear tests ─ the first in October 2006 and the second on May 25 of this year ─ demands an urgent alternative solution to the rehashed and recycled proposals that have been tossed around since the 1953 Korean armistice took effect.
China and Russia, which like America opposed the North Korean tests, have been humiliated and desperately want a solution they can jointly embrace with America. Kim Jong Il’s nuclear bluff must be called. The Dear Leader crows that he is ready for war. Bring it on and let’s end the Korean War once and for all.
The Korean armistice signed on July 27, 1953, between North Korea and the U.N. Korean forces led by the U.S. remains in force. No formal peace treaty was ever concluded. People have forgotten that more than 84,000 soldiers from 16 countries serving under the U.N. flag died during the conflict. More than a million Korean civilians also died, as well as an estimated 900,000 Chinese troops fighting with the North Koreans. A peace treaty is long overdue.
Why should China and Russia go along? Because the U.S. will agree that Taiwan is a province of China and that America will not defend Taiwan should it declare independence. The U.S. settles two thorny issues simultaneously. China and America have a lot to offer Russia to come along.
America, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea must initiate five- party talks without pre-conditions or sanctions, which only hurt and subject the majority of North Koreans to more misery and suffering because of their self-centered sycophant authoritarian military leadership.
The five-party talks should explore how best to find an honorable face-saving exit for Kim and Co. This is a negotiating tactic America has perfected with several Haitian dictators over the years, allowing them to live comfortably in exile.
North Korea borders economic powers China, Russia and South Korea. Japan is nearby, across the Sea of Japan. These four economic superpowers could set up cooperative cross-border economic zones on their mutual borders, the kind Kim has visited and admired in China, and is hopelessly and helplessly trying to emulate.
These special economic zones would transform Pyongyang’s central planned Stalinist communist economy into neutral economic buffer zones in the potentially explosive area and stop the accelerating destabilization rippling through the region and beyond. It is the only feasible way to bring stability to East Asia.
It is in the world’s long-term strategic interest to neutralize North Korea’s nuclear capability, create a North-South confederation and eventually a unified Korea that enjoys prosperous cooperative economic zones with its neighbors.
Economic prosperity also would prevent a massive refugee exodus and ensuing crisis that China and Russia are concerned about, especially if American and European corporate citizens embrace the economic zones the same way they did in China. This would allow North Korea to finally sign a peace agreement that allows it to be gradually reunited with the South. The cost of reunification, unlike the case in postwar Germany, would be shared by the five parties looking out for what’s best for all humanity.
The five-party effort could transform the secretive and isolated Hermit Kingdom and its crippled economy into open, vital, sunlit renaissance model for basket cases like Zimbabwe and other failed states.
What is the alternative? More crippling sanctions, nuclear one-upmanship and political threats that can only lead to conflict, and potentially, Armageddon?
The universal opposition and condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear tests ─ the first in October 2006 and the second on May 25 of this year ─ demands an urgent alternative solution to the rehashed and recycled proposals that have been tossed around since the 1953 Korean armistice took effect.
China and Russia, which like America opposed the North Korean tests, have been humiliated and desperately want a solution they can jointly embrace with America. Kim Jong Il’s nuclear bluff must be called. The Dear Leader crows that he is ready for war. Bring it on and let’s end the Korean War once and for all.
The Korean armistice signed on July 27, 1953, between North Korea and the U.N. Korean forces led by the U.S. remains in force. No formal peace treaty was ever concluded. People have forgotten that more than 84,000 soldiers from 16 countries serving under the U.N. flag died during the conflict. More than a million Korean civilians also died, as well as an estimated 900,000 Chinese troops fighting with the North Koreans. A peace treaty is long overdue.
Why should China and Russia go along? Because the U.S. will agree that Taiwan is a province of China and that America will not defend Taiwan should it declare independence. The U.S. settles two thorny issues simultaneously. China and America have a lot to offer Russia to come along.
America, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea must initiate five- party talks without pre-conditions or sanctions, which only hurt and subject the majority of North Koreans to more misery and suffering because of their self-centered sycophant authoritarian military leadership.
The five-party talks should explore how best to find an honorable face-saving exit for Kim and Co. This is a negotiating tactic America has perfected with several Haitian dictators over the years, allowing them to live comfortably in exile.
North Korea borders economic powers China, Russia and South Korea. Japan is nearby, across the Sea of Japan. These four economic superpowers could set up cooperative cross-border economic zones on their mutual borders, the kind Kim has visited and admired in China, and is hopelessly and helplessly trying to emulate.
These special economic zones would transform Pyongyang’s central planned Stalinist communist economy into neutral economic buffer zones in the potentially explosive area and stop the accelerating destabilization rippling through the region and beyond. It is the only feasible way to bring stability to East Asia.
It is in the world’s long-term strategic interest to neutralize North Korea’s nuclear capability, create a North-South confederation and eventually a unified Korea that enjoys prosperous cooperative economic zones with its neighbors.
Economic prosperity also would prevent a massive refugee exodus and ensuing crisis that China and Russia are concerned about, especially if American and European corporate citizens embrace the economic zones the same way they did in China. This would allow North Korea to finally sign a peace agreement that allows it to be gradually reunited with the South. The cost of reunification, unlike the case in postwar Germany, would be shared by the five parties looking out for what’s best for all humanity.
The five-party effort could transform the secretive and isolated Hermit Kingdom and its crippled economy into open, vital, sunlit renaissance model for basket cases like Zimbabwe and other failed states.
What is the alternative? More crippling sanctions, nuclear one-upmanship and political threats that can only lead to conflict, and potentially, Armageddon?
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 7:30 PM
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