Kathreb

Economic and other issues are taking a back burner at the moment as the issue of North Korea and the nukes steal the headlines. As in any instability in the Korean peninnsular the major players are America, China, Japan, Russia and sometimes North and South Korea. Japan and Russia are simply in supporting or neutral roles at the moment.

The North is asking the US for talks but the US is refusing to play ball until the North drops the nuke program. But the US was refusing to talk to the North even before re-starting of the nuke program was announced. Instead the US is trying to get China to play ball with them and denounce the North nuclear program.

The South after demanding more respect from US has offered to mediate the problem between North and America. Because as we can see, the tension is not between North and South, its between America and the North. However, if tension leads to conflict its the South that will get attacked and maybe Japan. And to think the US will run to the rescue if anything erupts while they are busy in Iraq is to be extremely niave (in my opinion) because despite what the US says, they cannot support two wars at once. Especially when war breakouts in a country bordered by three superpowers. Especially when US has failed to get as many staunch allies as it would've liked in its mission to eradicate terrorits and regimes that support them.

In fact the whole US foreign policy is currently incomprehensible. All US seems to be doing is exacerbating things. My particularly favourite thing about the previous link is the quote by Rumsfeld stating that the problems in NK are "nothing to do with us". While the US didn't invent the policies of the North I strongly suspect that its strongarm tactics to enforce economic and trade embargoes, cut fuel aid and ask the same of China, and the 37,000 odd US troops glaring the North across the DMZ have in their own (large) way affected North policy choices.

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