Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: North Korea

  • Macron’s German Challenge, What America Should Attempt in Syria

    Emmanuel Macron Alexis Tsipras Angela Merkel
    French president Emmanuel Macron, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and German chancellor Angela Merkel speak during a NATO summit in Brussels, May 25, 2017 (NATO)

    Eric Maurice writes in EUobserver that French president Emmanuel Macron’s biggest challenges comes from Berlin, where Angela Merkel and her conservative party are skeptical of plans to create a European Monetary Fund and establish a European deposit insurance scheme to protect savers:

    Although the two plans were initiated by the EU before Macron took them, their rejection would signal a clear rebuttal of the French president’s more ambitious proposals for the longer term.

    Merkel hasn’t ruled out a European Monetary Fund, but — like the Dutch and other deficit hawks in the north of Europe — she wants it to be an “intergovernmental”, as opposed to an EU-led, institution.

    Germany isn’t in favor of creating a eurozone budget and finance minister either.

    I predicted in September that these would be the most difficult items on Macron’s wishlist, but other things are still doable: harmonizing corporate tax rates and asylum procedures, creating an EU military intervention force, reforming the Common Agricultural Policy. (more…)

  • Trump Agrees to Meet Kim, Trans Pacific Partnership Continues Without Him

    Donald Trump has accepted an invitation from Kim Jong-un to meet one-on-one. It would be the first time a sitting American president met with the North Korean dictator.

    North Korea craves international legitimacy, which the United States have deliberately withheld. Trump’s break with decades of policy is risky — but it’s not if existing policy has worked. North Korea remains a rogue state. It has only continued its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs.

    The challenge now, as Fred Kaplan writes in Slate, is organizing a careful diplomacy that includes coordinating common negotiating positions with Japan and South Korea.

    Unfortunately, Trump has yet to appoint an ambassador to Seoul. The State Department’s top North Korea expert has resigned. None of the three top foreign-policy officials in Trump’s government — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster — have much experience in Asia.

    Also read this thread by Robert E. Kelly about why Korea hands are skeptical. (more…)

  • Don’t Risk War with North Korea: Experts

    American F-16 fighter jet
    American F-16 fighter jet at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea, May 4, 2016 (USAF/Nick Wilson)

    American president Donald Trump’s advisors have floated the possibility of what they call a “bloody nose” attack on North Korea.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that officials are “quietly debating whether it’s possible to mount a limited military strike against North Korean sites without igniting an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula.”

    Experts doubt it. (more…)

  • Retired Military Chiefs Caution Trump Against North Korea Strike

    The Financial Times quotes four retired American military officials cautioning President Donald Trump against attacking North Korea. (more…)

  • Trump Contradicts Chief Diplomat on North Korea

    American president Donald Trump has publicly undermined his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, for the nth time.

    On Tuesday, Tillerson announced a new North Korea policy when he said the United States were prepared to start talks without preconditions.

    “Let’s just meet and let’s — we can talk about the weather if you want,” he said.

    The White House immediately put out a statement that contradicted him: “The president’s views on North Korea have not changed.”

    The administration has said it won’t speak with North Korea unless the regime is willing to discuss curbing its nuclear program.

    A spokeswoman for Tillerson’s own State Department even tweeted:

    We remain open to dialogue when North Korea is willing to conduct a serious and credible dialogue on the peaceful denuclearization, but that time is not now.

    Needless to say, this sort of ambiguity at the highest levels of government will do little to defuse the crisis. (more…)

  • Worry More About Iran Than North Korea

    North Korea’s nuclear program is more advanced than Iran’s yet it is not the one that should keep Americans up at night, argues Adam Garfinkle, a foreign-policy expert.

    President Donald Trump has threatened “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if North Korea continues to provoke the United States.

    Garfinkle doesn’t share his sense of alarm. (more…)

  • Trump’s Big Mouth Fails to Impress the World

    Not only is Donald Trump aching for a conflict with Iran; the American president also seems to be keen on a war with North Korea.

    His latest threat, to meet further North Korean provocations with “fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before,” is disconcerting for two reasons:

    1. Who believes him? Certainly not the North Koreans, who responded to Trump’s bluster by threatening to strike the American island of Guam.
    2. North Korea never backs down. It is the superpower, not an impoverished country with an army from the Stalin era, that is supposed to act responsibly and deescalate. (more…)

  • Trump Discovers That Bluster Is Not a Foreign Policy

    Donald Trump
    Donald Trump gives a speech in Derry, New Hampshire, August 19, 2015 (Michael Vadon)

    Donald Trump is finding out that tough talk doesn’t get you anywhere in the real world.

    He tweeted in January, before taking office, that he would not allow North Korea to develop a nuclear weapon that could reach the United States.

    As president, he pressured China to rein in the nuclear ambitions of its client state, threatening commercial reprisals if it didn’t.

    Neither appears to have been impressed. (more…)

  • North Korea in the Next Five Years

    The Korean War, fought from 1950-53, was a result of two earlier wars in the 1940s: the American-Japanese War, which ended with the destruction and occupation of Japan in 1945, and the Chinese Civil War, which ended in a Communist victory (and Nationalist retreat to Taiwan) in 1950.

    With the Communists and Americans as the only powers in East Asia following these wars, the Korean Peninsula was split in two, each side taking a piece for itself.

    When the United States triumphed over the Soviet Union around 1990, many expected the North Koreans to fix their broken ties with South Korea. That this did not occur was partly the result of inertia, partly the result of Kim Il-sung’s living until 1994 and partly the result of the 1997 East Asian financial crisis, which kept the South Koreans too poor to want to bear the cost of investing in North Korean infrastructure or labor.

    It was also partly the result of a miscalculation on behalf of North Korea in 1987, 24 months before the Berlin Wall came down. Seeking to ruin the South’s first-ever Olympics in 1988, the North blew up a commercial airplane. It was by far the deadliest attack on the South since the armistice began in 1953. South Korea’s anger and mistrust of North Korea as a result of this deed persisted during the 90s. (more…)

  • Imagining the End Game: How North Korea May Collapse

    There are few things that touch off more firestorms than speculation. Speculation is easy; any drunk hanging out in front of a local Dunkin Donuts can do it.

    But that shouldn’t automatically invalidate all speculation. You can, for instance, look at the clouds in the evening and guess you’ll need an umbrella in the morning. That’s not the mad-cap rantings of a person ideologically committed to morning umbrellas but the rational thought process of someone who’d rather not get wet on the way to work.

    You can apply such rationality to geopolitical speculation as well. It’s important not to get too specific — assigning timelines and trying to foretell specific events is invariably doomed to failure. Just as you might guess the next morning will have rain based on the clouds in the evening, you also probably know better than to go bandying about how rain will arrive at 7:13 AM. You know a general forecast; that’s good enough to make a rational decision. (more…)

  • South Korea Should Study Its Past to Deal with North’s Future

    North Korea is known for its exaggerated and bellicose proclamations against South Korea. Recently, it declared that strikes “without warning” would occur if protests in Seoul marking the anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il continued. But the recent execution of Kim Jong-un’s uncle, Jang Sung-taek, demonstrates a far deeper issue that North Korea wants contained: the internal desire for reform or revolution. If South Korea reflects on its previously successful and not so successful engagements with North Korea and learns from them, it is possible for a reunification or positive reform to eventually occur without war or destruction.

    Despite losing many of its allies and supporters following the Cold War, North Korea has persisted in rebelling against international etiquette and refuses to collapse. South Korea is experienced in the rogue state’s belligerent attitude and has actively spent the last fifteen years dedicating policy experts and analysts to the task of avoiding war and establishing a peacefully feasible reunification. Some have been historically progressive whereas others have led to armed confrontation. These precedential dealings are the best platform to successfully move forward regarding a rogue state that cannot be understood through standard rational analysis. (more…)

  • Japan Prepares to Thwart North Korean Missile Strike

    With American and South Korean intelligence predicting a missile launch by North Korea in the coming days, Japan announced a series of measures to protect its territory and calm nerves among its population. This comes as South Korea raised its military watch alert level to “vital threat” and its president vowed to respond to any provocations.

    As the stream of bellicose statements from North Korea continued and reports indicated that it has prepared missiles on its east coast ready for launch, Japan’s defense minister Itsunori Onodera on Sunday directed the island nation’s military to be ready to shoot down a North Korean rocket should it threaten Japan. The navy sent anti-missile ships to the Sea of Japan and Patriot batteries were deployed in and around the capital Tokyo as well as elsewhere in the country. (more…)

  • North Korea Cancels Peace Pacts, Threatens Nuclear Strike

    Days of escalatory remarks and posturing on the Korean Peninsula culminated on Friday with the North announcing that all peace pacts with the South will be called off and threatening a nuclear strike against the United States. The move follows the unanimous approval of new sanctions by the United Nations Security Council as a punitive measure for Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons test last month.

    A spokesman for President Barack Obama stated in response that the United States can defend against any North Korean attack and that Pyongyang’s rhetoric is not unusual. However, the threat of nuclear assault is a serious problem for regional and international security. Could the rogue regime actually deliver a nuclear device to American soil? If not, could it hit treaty partners like Japan and South Korea? (more…)

  • North Korea Nuclear Explosion Tests China’s Patience

    North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test on Tuesday in defiance of the international community which had urged it not to. It was the communist regime’s third such test in seven years and the first under the leadership of Kim Jong-un.

    The United States Geological Survey registered a 4.9 tremor in the northeast of the Asian country at the time of the suspected test. North Korea’s state news agency reported that a test had been conducted with a “lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force” than during the previous two in 2006 and 2009.

    The United States described the test as a “highly provocative act” and called on the international community to take “credible action” against the government in Pyongyang.

    China reportedly summoned North Korea’s ambassador in Beijing to register its displeasure with the test. China, North Korea’s only ally, supplies the regime with much needed fuel and food. Its statement, typically more restrained when it comes to the neighboring communist state, said that it was in “staunch opposition” and “strongly dissatisfied” with the test and urged all sides to respond calmly.

    The United Nations Security Council, in a hastily called meeting in New York, strongly condemned the test as well. However, there were no indications that any more sanctions on the North were forthcoming. (more…)

  • Would Korean Reunification Cripple the South?

    North Korea, poor, malnourished, authoritarian, with supposed nuclear capabilities and a new crowned boy leader, is wildly different from its cousin beneath the 38h parallel. There they grow four inches taller, are workaholics, cyber obsessed users of democracy who lay claim to some of the most successful companies in the world such as Hyundai, LG and Samsung.

    There are always rumors flying about over whether the two will take the same path as East and West Germany did even when they are busy trying to slay each other’s citizens, whether through sinking ships or the shelling of South Korean islands. Many believe that the economic cost of reunification to South Korea and the loss of Chinese influence in the North mean that it will not happen. But if it does, there’s some reason to be optimistic.

    In 1960, South Korea was a starveling with a per capita annual income of $80. Since then, “The miracle on the Han River” has boasted the world’s most explosive economy: 8.7 percent annual growth through 1990 transformed it from an agricultural nothing into techno-metro sophisticate.

    Just think what all those comparative undereducated North Koreans could do to the country. Goldman Sachs projects that, in an ideal scenario, the gross domestic product of a united Korea would overtake that of Japan and other highly industrialized economies in thirty to forty years — if North Korea’s full growth potential were tapped. (more…)