Can There Be Agreement With North Korea?

By Rich Kozlovich

Xander Snyder posted this article, North Korea Negotiations Aren’t Dead Yet on Aug 30, 2017 in Geopolitics | Geopolitical Futures, discussing the over flight of a N. Korean short range ballistic missile.

There were some interesting points made here including why Japan didn’t bother to shoot it down, as in they can’t or they’re not confident in their systems and didn’t want to appear vulnerable if they attempted to do so and failed. All good points.

They also sent one out far enough to demonstrate they could hit Alaska if they wanted to do so, and the author says this “was clearly an escalation, but it, too, must be considered in the context of ongoing negotiations”, as in “a regime expressing displeasure with a hang-up either in negotiations or in the direction they’re taking.” That’s really the point, isn’t it? Where is this going to go? What will everyone settle for? And what will the long-term consequences be?

The author explains this was done over Japan for a number of reasons. Japan once invaded and controlled Korea and they just imposed sanctions on N. Korea. N. Korea took a page right out of Chinese diplomacy. This was an “object lesson” aggression for future consideration.

Is there real room of legitimate compromise with N. Korea? I don’t think so, and as the author notes: whatever compromise they discuss would be extremely difficult to implement.

He goes on to note that the U.S. needs to “ensure that North Korea has not only abandoned its nuclear weapons program, but also that its ability to resume the program is removed. This would mean intrusive inspections that the North is unlikely to accept.”

N. Korea will want assurances they won’t be attacked by S. Korean or American forces, which is a red herring or the belief of a completely irrational paranoid regime, which is what they are, and the U.S. isn’t going to diminish it’s “presence in the Pacific”, which is what China would like in order for them to impose an economic hegemony over their neighbors through intimidation, which puts it at odds with the Phillipines and India, which want to become the dominent naval power in the region.

I agree with the author that this is the calm before the storm, because N. Korea is going to push this to the point it can’t be ignored militarily.  I can't see how there can be any agreement or compromise that will be acceptable to Kim, so that leaves two options.  His military has a coup and executes him or a military intervention, wherein N. Korea will cease to exist and the peninsula will be united under S. Korean control giving the people of N. Korea a chance for descent lives instead of the brutality they’ve experienced since 1948.

I also think Russia and China will benefit because this will open a much larger consumer market for them, if they will only grasp that obvious reality.