How to deal with a nuclear-armed Kim Jong Un

How to deal with a nuclear-armed Kim Jong Un, by David A. Andelman, May 10, 2021, CNN,The Biden administration has pledged to pursue “calibrated” diplomacy.

to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to halt his mad dash toward a deliverable nuclear weapon. But that is a vain hope. Instead, the world and especially the United States must find a way to live with a North Korea armed with The Bomb. And keep Kim from using — or selling — it.

Discussions with a number of individuals who have dealt with the North Korean government or monitored the actions of its ruling family have convinced me that no Kim — neither Kim Jong Un, nor his father nor his grandfather — ever has or will give up a quest for a deliverable nuclear weapon. Nor is Kim likely to relinquish such a device once it can be deployed. Indeed, North Korea clearly does have any number of such devices — some analysts say it could be more than 60 — though the delivery vehicles are still in development.

That brings us to the realm of what may be possible and achievable. For Kim, possession of a nuclear weapon is a question of existential survival. His ultimate fear is no doubt the fate of Libyan strongman Colonel Moammar Gadhafi — dragged from a drain pipe by rebels and executed, a direct consequence of the decision to relinquish his own nuclear program that allowed his enemies in the West to undermine his regime.

Still, it’s not clear that President Biden or his principal advisers are prepared to accept any nuclearized North Korea. President Joe Biden has said that any diplomacy “has to be conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization.” At the same time, he and his team are rightly rejecting former President Donald Trump’s “go big or go home” approach — agreeing to remove all sanctions in exchange for North Korea fully dismantling its weapons program — which Kim rejected out of hand at their last, abortive summit in Hanoi……….

The essence of any such [diplomacy] plan must lie in the United States finding a way to persuade the North to join the global nuclear non-proliferation club. Implicit would be the acceptance that it already has a weapon. In turn the North will need to make its weapons and their security clearly visible and open to inspection…………
The essence of any such plan must lie in the United States finding a way to persuade the North to join the global nuclear non-proliferation club. Implicit would be the acceptance that it already has a weapon. In turn the North will need to make its weapons and their security clearly visible and open to inspection. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/09/opinions/north-korea-nuclear-biden-andelman/index.html

May 11, 2021 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | North Korea, politics international

2 Comments »

This is a bizarre piece with a theme that verges on the racist. Are North Korean people and their leaders inherently less trustworthy than those in the UK, USA or Israel, all of which have vast numbers of now-illegal nuclear weapons and whose governments have invaded and occupied many sovereign nations. When did the DPRK last engage in armed warfare? I think it was the 1950s. For all its many flaws, the DPRK is a society and nation no different than any other in terms of its sovereignty and the humanity of its people and its leaders. Why should the DPRK refuse nuclear weapons when the USA et al are rapidly upgrading and increasing their own? Here in the UK, our highly-popular leader BoJo stated that he would launch nuclear weapons against a state which engaged in cyberattacks against the UK. That’s as mad as any dictator and shows how the UK populace don’t care about the dangers of our own nuclear arsenal. But for a poor, Asian country… that’s beyond the pale, it seems.

Comment by John Smith | May 11, 2021 | Reply
- I didn’t see it as racist. But I agree with the rest of your comment. To me, it makes complete sense that North Korea would want nuclear weapons. They saw what happened to Iraq and Libya -who DIDN’T have nuclear weapons. And North Korea has an appalling history of being bombrd to the ultimate degree by the USA. The sad reality is that the rich white powers assume that it is their right to bomb anybody.
  
  Comment by Christina MacPherson | May 11, 2021 | Reply