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Friday, October 27, 2006
US Stands Alone on Arms Control The Control Arms Campaign has registered a major success today with the UN approving a resolution that should lead to a Arms Trade Treaty. This treaty will seek to set international standards on the trade of arms and hopefully crack down on arms flowing in conflict areas where they can cause no end of destruction and violence. The resolution received overwhelming support with 139 countries voting YES, 24 ABSENTIONS and 1 NO. The No vote was by the US. I don't the US is making any friends with that kind of attitude. The List In favour: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, C?te d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Zambia. Against: United States. Abstain: Bahrain, Belarus, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Kuwait, Libya, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Yemen. Absent: Armenia, Bahamas, Botswana, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Federated States of Micronesia, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Tajikistan, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Viet Nam, Zimbabwe.
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Wednesday, October 25, 2006
The Nuke Made No Difference Yesterday I attended a lecture about North Korea's recent nuclear testing and its implications. It was by a Professor whose opinions I have heard before and I commented briefly on. After hearing the talk I was disappointed. The focus is, as always, on who is to blame. Whose polices toward North Korea are the least likely to work. This argument is superfluous in my opinion. South Korea looks are the US policy as being ineffective. US sees South Korean policy as naive and ineffective. US sees that China is not doing enough. Korea thinks Japan is being more of a hindrance than a help and so on and so on. This kind of discussion leads no-where. Each country in the six-party talks has important and different national interests at stake when it comes to North Korea. There is, unfortunately, insufficient cross-over of these interests that would allow for the countries to co-operate and forge a more unified approach to dealing with North Korea. And so, as I have mentioned before, if doesn't matter what North Korea does or how close it comes to the brink of war, it will never lead the other countries to develop more cooperative policy. In fact, the closer North Korea gets to war the more US will want to hit it with sticks and the more urgently South Korea will want to be to appease it. Where does this leave the six-party talks? Nowhere. The six-party talks should be abandoned. The US should continue with sanctions but should stop talking to the North. The North sees US as a threat that could attack them. US would do better if they just stepped back from North Korea.(aside from humanitarian issues). Instead, as this lecture showed, more and more the parties are resorting to bickering and finger-pointing. What a complete waste of time. Tuesday, October 17, 2006
What IS their Game? It seems that no matter what North Korea did in the past there were always pundits, experts and ordinary Joes who thought they knew the real motives behind North Korea's actions. It was a call for help, or a trick to get more money, or a ploy to delay progress, or something. I too always felt that, even though I may not really know the true motives driving North Korea's actions, there was essentially some plan that North Korea was following. Now I have to question that assumption. Lets step back to the Agreed Framework. The North Koreans signed on the framework in 1994 but we now know that they did not keep their side of the bargain. As the Agreed Framework died a messy death the North Koreans worked in earnest to develop nuclear weapons regardless of world opinion. In the meantime they also attended the six-party talks aimed at halting their nuclear program. They attended under duress and called constantly for bi-lateral talks with the US, which they did not get. And then, just as things were plodding along endlessly with lots and rhetoric and little action, North Korea exploded what they tell us was a nuclear weapon. Predictably this led to sanctions. And now North Korea is labelling the sanctions as an act of war. Surely North Korea would have predicted beforehand that the outcome of the nuclear test would be sanctions. Surely by declaring sanctions as an act of war, the rest of the world would expect North Korea to declare war right back at us. But instead, they declare sanctions as an act of war and then prepare to do another, less than impressive, nuclear test. Is North Korea trying to look like a master of calm and restraint by not fighting back against the world's acts of aggression (ie: sanctions)? Or, more likely, are they holding back because they do not want to fight the world (I say 'world' to show that it was a UN resolution and not a US thing). In which case why declare the sanctions as an act of war? Why not play down the impact of sanctions? North Korea does not want to talk, either in the six-party forum, or even bi-laterally in my opinion. Nor does it want to go to war because it knows it will be destroyed. They don't seem to want peace and they don't seem to want war (at least they don't want a war they would lose). And now it finds itself in a very strange situation where it has gone so close to the brink that anything they say now needs to be backed by action. Testing another nuclear weapon seems is a pointless exercise, but it seems that these days pointless words and pointless gestures are all North Korea can do. They don't even know what they want. Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Nuclear Fallout - The first casualty It seems that dissension among the ranks has led to the collapse of The Korea Liberator. It would appear that the recent events in North Korea and how they should be handled has led to 'irreconcilable differences'. I guess that North Korea can cause regime collapse too. Fortunately, the end of the KL does not see the end of the authors. Joshua, we are told, will return to One Free Korea; and Richardson will return to DPRK Studies. I note that I do not have that on my blogroll. I will try to remember to rectify that on the weekend. Speaking frankly, I loved the KL. I don't think there was a single post, apart from the 'North Korea in the News' segments, that I agreed with. I usually departed the site feeling a mixture or outrage, contempt and mirth. And in the words of the great Bill Waterson, as spoken through my hero, Calvin, "Shock and titillate me just don't ever bore me". The KL was never boring. Tuesday, October 10, 2006
In other news... The North Korea nuclear test, if it indeed happened, must surely go down as one of the most successful PR events in history. The timing was absolutely impeccable - it has totally blitzed any other news that would otherwise have come out of Korea. Sadly, most of what we are reading in the papers is not anything to do with the North Korean nuclear test. Rather, it is speculation by pundits on what they think is going to happen in reaction to the test. This is done because the person who guesses right can then enjoy the right to say 'I told you so' and the bigger benefit of having people believe you are wise and insightful. What the hell, I'll give it a go myself: South Korea will formally downgrade the Sunshine Policy (or whatever its current name is) by stopping or reducing visible exchanges but still maintain humanitarian aid and all the other exchanges that are going on under the radar. China will side with US and the others to pass a UN Security Council resolution and join in sanctions (but maybe not oil and not humanitarian food aid). Japan will be calm and follow the lead of China and US so as not to completely destroy recent efforts of being more buddy-buddy with China and Korea. US will huff and puff and nobody will care. So now we can get on to more interesting stuff. Ban Ki Moon has been approved to become the new UNSG. My absolute favourite headline was Despair at UN over selection of 'faceless' Ban Ki Moon. That'd certainly take the wind out of your sails. Ban won't start the job until the new year so at least Kofi Annan can handle the immediate North Korea crisis and avoid the allegations of bias that Ban will likely incur when he takes office. But the news that should have been big in Korea today but was overshadowed is that today is World Day Against the Death Penalty. In particular, the event marked the launch of a new Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network. This is a network of NGOs and human rights activist groups throughout Asia who are dedicated to the abolition of the death penalty in Asia. The launch was held in Seoul to urge the National Assembly Legislation and Judiciary Committee to support the Special Bill to Abolish the Death Penalty. Saturday, October 07, 2006
Where on Earth has Kathreb Been? Its been a while since I blogged. I almost feel guilty but it has been an exceptionally busy time. The first distraction was an abandoned kitten which we picked up about six weeks ago. We discovered that she was blind and had a slight neurological twitch. It would appear that once the owner discovered this, they abandoned her. This caused much stress in our little share house in London. My sister and I adamantly refused to deliver the kitten to a shelter unless we could get a guarantee that she would not be put down. There was much debate in the house on how to handle the situation and things got a little strained. Fortunately everything was resolved when we finally found a shelter that could give us the guarantee we needed. The other main distraction has been a month-long visit from my parents. Their visit included a trip to Scotland and then a tour to various villages around the UK visiting relatives. It also meant long days being a tourist around London and then home and having to cook for four people. Next was the career front. I started a new job at the end of September. However, it is only a short-term contract so I am still having to keep looking for work for when the contract finishes. There is no hope of extension. Job interviews are getting much more stressful. The job I got involved a forty-minute interview and a one hour test. Another interview I had included a presentation, interview and one and a half hour test. The preparation for these interviews took up much of the time that would otherwise have been spent blogging. Most of this is now behind me so I am hoping that my schedule will settle down a little and I can return to regular blogging. There have been a lot of things going on the IKK that I would've liked to have added my two cents but didn't have time. But with the North Koreans about to test a nuclear weapon and Ban Ki Moon set to become the new UNSG there seems to be plenty of interesting stuff coming up worth blogging about.
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