Do you have better analysis of North Korea and its nuclear ambitions? Of likely Chinese responses?
Would you like for the US to bomb North Korea? Do you think bombing would be effective? If you do, wold you take responsibility for anticipated responses? Have you an estimate of what those responses would be?
PhotoThe Chinese diplomat Wu Dawei, center, with Pak Song Il, right, of the North Korean Foreign Ministry, after arriving at Pyongyang Airport last week.
BEIJING — When the veteran Chinese diplomat Wu Dawei left for North Korea last week, he probably knew he had been dispatched on mission impossible: to persuade the country’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, to climb down from his threat to launch a rocket as part of his quest to develop ballistic missile technologies.
Not only did Mr. Kim ignore China’s entreaties, sending Mr. Wu home empty-handed. He did so emphatically, ordering the launch a day earlier than expected so that it fell on one of China’s most important holidays, the eve of the Lunar New Year.
It is unclear how long President Xi Jinping of China will tolerate what some analysts here are calling the humiliation of his country at the hands of a capricious Mr. Kim. But there are no immediate signs that Beijing will radically change course and turn away from its traditional ally.Continue reading the main storyRELATED
It’s a bad result, it’s a humiliation,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international relations at Renmin University. “I think Kim Jong-un made many mistakes, and this is one of his major mistakes.” Even so, he added, “It’s hard to say what different approach China will take.”
North Korea said Sunday that the rocket had successfully put a satellite into orbit.South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said the launch indicated that North Korea had made some technological advances toward its assumed goal of pursuing an intercontinental ballistic missile. The satellite launched Sunday weighed 440 pounds, twice as heavy as a satellite launched in 2012, according to lawmakers who attended a closed briefing by the spy agency on Sunday.
The United Nations Security Council, at an emergency meeting Sunday requested by the United States andJapan, issued a statement signaling its intention to stiffen penalties against North Korea, but without saying how or when. A draft Security Council resolution is under negotiation, diplomats said. The key is what China will allow in terms of tightening or broadening sanctions.
Hours after the launch, the Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed “regret” and counseled calm and cautious action, a tone that drew immediate ridicule from users of the Chinese social media site, Weibo.
In contrast to calls from South Korea, Japan and the United States on Sunday for tougher sanctions against North Korea, China said early dialogue — meaning the resumption of talks among major powers and North Korea — was its preferred way to rein in Mr. Kim. Those negotiations, led by China and known as the six-party talks, fell apart in 2009 after North Korea walked out.
In response to the Foreign Ministry’s statement, one person on Weibo said: “I feel ‘regret’ for the Foreign Ministry.”
Another user said: “I have been racking my head but I simply can’t figure out why we have to offend everybody in the world to defend a rogue regime.”
Popular sentiment in China, where Mr. Kim has been maligned online as overweight, bumptious and inexperienced, appears to run against the government’s public patience with the North Korean leader.
In a poll on Weibo conducted Friday and Saturday, two-thirds of the 8,000 respondents said they supported a strike by the United States to destroy North Korea’s nuclear weaponsprogram. Eighteen percent of those interviewed said they were against such a strike, and 16 percent said they were neutral.
In a telling signal of official disapproval of the results, Chinese censors had deleted the poll by Sunday afternoon.
Despite its frustration with Mr. Kim and frosty personal relations — Mr. Xi has refused to meet with Mr. Kim — China will probably continue to put up with his behavior, said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University.
China is afraid of turning its recalcitrant ally into a worrisome enemy, he said.
The government has opposed severe sanctions aimed at curtailing the amount of oil that China exports to North Korea and at stopping imports of mineral resources. So far, China has supported only sanctions that limit the transfer or sale of military equipment or other items that would help North Korea’s weapons program.
“China thinks more severe sanctions will reduce China’s influence in North Korea,” Mr. Shi said.
Most important, China was afraid that hammering North Korea with heavy sanctions would turn it into a hostile country that could “take action” against Beijing, Mr. Shi said.
Mr. Xi has made the calculation that Mr. Kim, the third generation of the Kim family to rule North Korea, would be an enduring figure, and he sent Liu Yunshan, a member of the powerful Standing Committee of the Communist Party, to a military parade in Pyongyang last October to make a kind of rapprochement, Mr. Shi said.
China even appeared to be willing to risk its budding relationship with South Korea, an ally of the United States, by putting up with North Korea’s bad behavior.
The rocket launch on Sunday, which came after a fourth nuclear test by the North Koreans in early January, showed that China’s goal of maintaining good relationships with both North Korea and South Korea was an extremely difficult balancing act, Mr. Cheng said.
Mr. Xi has gone out of his way to court the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, by stressing the strong economic relationship between the two countries. China is South Korea’s biggest trading partner, and Ms. Park raised eyebrows among Washington officials last September by turning up at a huge military parade on Tiananmen Square in Beijing that was boycotted by Western leaders.
PhotoSecretary of State John Kerry, left, and President Xi Jinping of China during their meeting in Beijing in January.CreditIn a move sure to displease China, South Korea’s Defense Department said hours after the launch Sunday that it would start formal discussions with the United States about the deployment of a missile defense system known as Thaad, for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense.
China has vigorously opposed the deployment of the system, arguing that it would be used by the United States to interfere with China’s defenses and as a tool to contain China.
The North Korean rocket launch “is aimed at advancing its nuclear weaponsand their delivery missiles,” Ms. Park said. “North Korea poses a grave challenge to the peace of Northeast Asia and the rest of the world by rejecting dialogue and persisting in advancing its missiles for the sake of regime survival.”
Maj. Gen. Kim Yong-hyun, the head of operations at the South Korean military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said that Seoul and Washington had agreed that their annual joint springtime military exercises, code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, would be the largest ever this year.
He said that South Korea would deploy more propaganda loudspeakers along the border with North Korea and operate them for longer hours. South Korea switched on the long-dormant loudspeakers after the January nuclear test, and North Korea responded by sending balloons into the South to drop propaganda leaflets and trash.
In recent years, South Korea has aggressively courted closer ties with China, hoping it would help tame North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
The mood shifted in South Korea, however, after the nuclear test in January. China, North Korea’s only major trading partner, rejected repeated South Korean and American demands that it force the North to give up its nuclear-missile program by squeezing oil and other shipments.
President Obama and Mr. Xi spoke by telephone last week about the need for unified action regarding sanctions at the United Nations, the White House said.
But the agreement between the two leaders in California in 2013, when cooperation on finding a solution to the North Korea dilemma was the high point of their meeting, appears to have evaporated.
When Secretary of State John Kerry held more than four hours of talks with the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, last month in Beijing, there was little enthusiasm for more targeted sanctions by the Chinese, even though both sides knew that a rocket launch was likely to happen, American officials said.
“The general relationship between the United States and China is far from good, and I don’t think the U.S. has any real bargaining chips with China over North Korea,” Mr. Shi said. “The vital interest of the United States is to reduce the nuclear weapons, and the vital interest of China is to keep a minimum degree of stability and to keep North Korea a friend.”
Under various Security Council resolutions, North Korea is banned from rocket launches using ballistic missile technology. But it has touted its missiles and nuclear weapons as the “sacred sword” its people have long sought to deter American invasions. On Sunday, it called the satellite “a gift of most intense loyalty” for Mr. Kim.
COMMENTS ON GOVERNMENT BY AN ENDANGERED SPECIES, A POLITICAL CENTRIST
THE MODEL
One way of understanding the endless wars waged between those who advocate different styles of governing (governance) is to conceptualize all the arguments as manifestations of a basic struggle between competitive and cooperative styles of governance. Seen from a Psychological view, humans compete with each other and cooperate with each other. Humans’ band together to create governments. These governments compete and cooperate with each other. Governments regulate competition and cooperation between the governed.
The extreme of cooperative government is the forced cooperation of dictatorship. In so far as the dictator is successful, those he rules cooperate with him and each other by obedience to the ruler's rules. The extreme of competitive government, or non-government, is anarchy. There are no rules and regulations. The desires, skills, and wills of individuals rule.
Democratic capitalism is a compromise between competitiveness and cooperation with a tendency to lean towards favoring competition in contrast to democratic socialism which combines competition and cooperation with a greater emphasis on cooperation.
THE APPLICATIONS
A. Politics
Politics in these two styles of governments is the art of finding solutions to real problems facing the country and creating political alternatives that protect the synergy between competition and cooperation.
Competition leading to monopoly which destroys competition is a classic example of an economic event in which cooperation (government regulation) helps maintain competition. Government regulation, a form of forced cooperation, can support competition or stifle it as exemplified by large government bureaucracies regulating imperiously, efficiently and stupidly.
My centrist view is based on the model I have just discussed and supports cooperation (frequently government intervention) which enhances competition and competition (often private enterprise) which creatively enhances the welfare of the whole country by providing wealth accessible through jobs, taxes and the spread of ideas.
When Romney and Gingrich turned against the Universal Mandate that all Americans must participate in health care, they undermined an interesting experiment in combining government cooperation, the demand that all cooperate by enrolling in health insurance, with insurance companies competing for the client. With no Universal Mandate, universal healthcare, which is inevitable, will be supplied by a large inefficient government bureaucracy. As a centrist, who believes in neither pro government nor anti-government rhetoric, I am able to look at political behavior through a lens which magnifies the results of actions rather than the ideological purity of actions.
Santorum’s religious emphasis, if realized, would stifle competition as it is stifled in countries with no separation of church and state. Ron Paul’s libertarian views, if realized, would remove protection for the 50% of the population with average intelligence and below from the wiles of the 50% of the population with above average intelligence. Obama’s fascination with the power of government regulation does competition a disservice.
What is a centrist to do in an election year when so much is polarized? I will vote for Obama because the right and the left see him as soft. This suggests, as I believe is actually true, that Obama neither supports endless expansion of government bureaucracy to the detriment of competition or the destruction of government to the detriment of those less gifted at competing in a modern capitalist society. I believe that of all the candidates, Obama will be the most skill full at muddling through the middle.
B. Endangered Species
One creative solution to protecting endangered species with a balance of cooperation and competition was created by a Texas landowner. The landowner imported endangered animals and created an animal sanctuary on land that was similar to the animals’ original homes in Africa.
Finances were provided by allowing hunters to hunt for a fee. Twenty percent of the animals were sacrificed to hunting for the survival of the whole community of animals. This is a superb example of cooperation (the animals sanctuary) together with competition (hunting for a price) combining to address an environmental problem. Hawaiian land owners who rent out land, kept pristine, for weddings or other social events is another good example of cooperation (keeping the lands pristine) combined with competition (renting out the lands for special occasions) to deal with an environmental issue (over development of natural resources, in this case land).
Unfortunately, an ideologist who hopes she can force death to cooperate is suing to stop the killing of the animals and thereby destroying the financial resources needed to keep the animal sanctuary going. This is an example of a naive idealist forcing cooperation and eliminating competition in a destructive way.
C. A Centrists Looks at Gender Relationships
The movie, Separation, documents the effects of a cultural attempt to force cooperation between the two genders by subordinating females. The hooded garments that symbolize female subordination and forced cooperation inform the movie with a visual intensity. The movie also documents the not so underground system of bribery (competition) referred to in the movie as a relic of a tribal system of blood money. Bribery provides a context where the inequality between the sexes can be addressed to some degree by a woman with money.
The movie shows how when competition is restricted by cultural values, competition goes underground and reemerges as bribery or worse. The end of the movie illustrates the emergence of a highly destructive competition which ignores the demands of the culture for forced cooperation and subordination of self by women.
D. A Centrists Looks at American Marriage
A good marriage in America involves an honest realization and discussion of the inevitable competition for resources of love, attention and material goods. This realization and discussion must be combined with the willingness to find cooperative solutions to the openly acknowledged competition. Solutions may be as simple as taking turns, trading resources or as complex as both parties exploring childhood influences on their emotional responses.
Bad marriages deny the reality of competition for resources: the partners compete in covert ways for resources. Such covert competition can vary from moral persuasion to violence and the threat of violence.
