Joel Wit: Time to Get Serious About North Korea
[Joel Wit is a visiting fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the founder of its North Korea website, 38North.]
As James Steinberg, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, leaves for Beijing this week to discuss North Korea's most recent provocation, it is tempting to describe his trip using time-worn quotations from two well-known foreign-policy experts: Yogi Berra (it's "déjà vu all over again") and Albert Einstein (the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result)....
Fifty years of history, if not just pure logic, tell Kim Jong Il that the United States and South Korea will not risk escalation. Just read recently declassified documents about the Richard Nixon administration's deliberations on how to respond to North Korea's unprovoked shoot-down of an American EC-121 spy plane in 1969, which killed all the crew members on board. Nixon's initial impulse to be tough was toned down over time by recognition of the reality that Washington and Seoul have too much to lose in a fight with Pyongyang....
Unless the United States changes course, the threat to its interests and those of its allies will get much worse in the months ahead. Expect more provocations, escalation, and possibly even war....
Read entire article at Foreign Policy
As James Steinberg, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, leaves for Beijing this week to discuss North Korea's most recent provocation, it is tempting to describe his trip using time-worn quotations from two well-known foreign-policy experts: Yogi Berra (it's "déjà vu all over again") and Albert Einstein (the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result)....
Fifty years of history, if not just pure logic, tell Kim Jong Il that the United States and South Korea will not risk escalation. Just read recently declassified documents about the Richard Nixon administration's deliberations on how to respond to North Korea's unprovoked shoot-down of an American EC-121 spy plane in 1969, which killed all the crew members on board. Nixon's initial impulse to be tough was toned down over time by recognition of the reality that Washington and Seoul have too much to lose in a fight with Pyongyang....
Unless the United States changes course, the threat to its interests and those of its allies will get much worse in the months ahead. Expect more provocations, escalation, and possibly even war....