Blogging on vacation (hey David, does that get me bonus points?) here at a small liberal arts college in the Southeast where I'm visiting a friend. Just went to a talk by a neo-con international relations scholar on North Korea that gave me an enormous headache. Favorite line to the question, what lessons can we learn about North Korea and non-proliferation? "Once a country gets nuclear weapons it makes non-proliferation harder...." So the answer is a nice robust military presence in Korea. Neo-con logic that I thought Aeon would admire.

Aeon J. Skoble - 10/9/2004

Whoops, sorry if I was overly defensive there. But actually I did kinda sense you were joking around a bit, but I couldn't tell which parts! My bad - it's been a busy week. The logic there was indeed silly.

Pat Lynch - 10/9/2004

I was joking. I thought you, as a philosopher, would appreciate (i.e. find funny) that bizarre leap in logic......man, academics in mid-semester are a tense bunch aren't they?

Hope all is well with you man.

Aeon J. Skoble - 10/8/2004

First of all, I have no idea how I got lumped in with the neocons. Unless "neocon"="not a pacifist." In fact, I _don't_ admire this reasoning. The robust military presence in Korea might be justified in terms of _preventing_ N. Korea from becoming a nuclear power, but that's moot. Given that N. Korea has always been a client-state of the nuclear-equipped communist Chinese, it's hard to imagine _any_ policy that would have been effective. OTOH, I suppose it would be better if the North could take over South Korea, then we wouldn't need _any_ troops there.