Time to Talk? [North Korea Throwdown]

     

North Korea still remains skeptical of
US diplomatic attempts.

               After dominating headlines for the last month, North Korea has hinted that it may be willing to bring an end to its nuclear brinkmanship and begin a new round of talks with the United States. Pyongyang issued a detailed statement this past week outlining its terms for the dialogue, including demands that the US cease its “nuclear war practice” and annual war games with South Korea and rescind the stringent sanctions against North Korea’s economy.

               “They should take measures of retracting the U.N. Security Council’s ‘resolutions on sanctions’ cooked up under absurd pretexts,” the Policy Department of the National Defense Commission, North Korea’s highest governing body, said in a statement carried by its official Korean Central News Agency. “They should give formal assurances before the world that they would not stage again such nuclear war drills to threaten or blackmail [the North].”

                In response, a South Korean defense ministry official requesting anonymity stated “The tensions should gradually decrease from here, but we cannot lose ourselves to complacency. We do still have to be prepared for any provocations.” Nevertheless, as US Secretary of State, John Kerry, said during his recent visit to the peninsula, “...our preference would be to get to talks.”

                The only question remaining is what will the talks focus on?

Diplomatic Disasters

                World diplomacy with North Korea has a long and troubled past, plagued by the fact that US and international officials are completely unsure of the nation’s political status. Forced to use a fuzzy interpretation of state propaganda and gathered intelligence as a barometer, US diplomats have often missed key opportunities to get through to either of the Kim Jong’s. In the past, the US mantra has been to stop the North Korean nuclear program and to guarantee South Korea protection should Northern threats be actualized. However, if the US enters this new set of talks with the same mindset, the only item that will be guaranteed is a continuation of the vicious cycle of threats and provocation.

                Now that North Korea has a nuclear weapon, as well as the ability to launch such warheads globally coming in the near future, the US cannot afford to continue to treat North Korea as a misbehaving child but instead must look upon them as a viable threat. With that in mind, US diplomats need to recognize the fact that the current diplomatic stance only makes Kim Jong Un feel more threatened than reassured.

Ready for Reform

                Were Kim Jong Un reassured, the world might begin to see North Korea open up to more western thought and technology. Kim Jong Un has discussed improving North Korea’s dying economy and has hinted that the nation may move in the direction of reforms [however slight]. This fact was evidenced by the recent visit of Google CEO Eric Schmidt to Pyongyang, showing that Un may be ready to allow new development in North Korea.

                However, Charles Armstrong, Director of Korean Research at Columbia University, believes that any hope of change will be stifled by the current US approach to North Korean relations. “The dilemma, though, is that North Korea can only embark on serious reform from a condition of what it considers absolute security,” Armstrong notes in an op-ed for CNN. “Unfortunately, the quest for security and the desire for economic improvement have been in contradiction for some time. A genuine opening could unleash political and social changes...while the path of security through nuclear deterrence and missiles have led time and again to confrontation and renewed isolation.”

                The old adage states “Do not attempt to reason with a fool. He will only drag you down to his level and beat you over the head with his ignorance.” Call it nationalistic, but North Korea has been foolhardy in its recent provocation of the US. As history has shown, you cannot beat the ignorance of out of the communist political system, but instead, you can speak a language that they do understand: money. Only by providing  strong incentives instead of punishments, obtainable rewards instead of sanctions, and deliberate reassurance instead of threats in kind, will the US and the rest of the world slowly lure North Korea down the path of peace.

Sources:

-Washington Post, April 18, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-hints-at-willingness-for-talks-despite-ongoing-rhetoric/2013/04/18/33628576-a800-11e2-a8e2-5b98cb59187f_story.html

-New York Times, April 18, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/world/asia/north-korea-tension.html?_r=0

-The Guardian, April 18, 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/18/north-korea-conditions-us-talks

-Charles Armstrong, “Why Sticks don’t work with North Korea,” January 25, 2013, http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/25/why-sticks-dont-work-with-north-korea/

Mali: A Defeat Waiting to Happen...

French soldiers prepare for a patrol in Mali (AP/Reuters)

The joke goes that if you Google “French Victories,” the search engine will snarkily ask you if you meant to search for “French Losses.” While this sort of comment rankles many French patriots (I'm part French myself), the truth is that ever since the 17th century, France’s track record of winning wars has been extremely poor. And once again, it appears that France has involved itself in a war that it simply cannot win, this time in the North African nation of Mali.

Into Mali
On Wednesday, January 16, French soldiers launched an extensive air and ground campaign against Islamist rebels in Mali. The Guardian reported on the 16th that France launched air strikes against Islamist camps and mobile forces in Mali, its former colony, to stop a rebel offensive and "safeguard" Mali's existence. Troops from Nigeria and other regional powers will join about 1,700 French troops involved in the operation, part of a contingent expected to reach 2,500 soldiers. President François Hollande said France intended to "destroy" the Islamists or take them captive if possible.

These Islamists are al-Qaeda linked fighters that took control of the northern deserts of Mali early last year. The militants are well armed and well trained: Reuters notes that many are coming directly from the US conflicts in the Middle East. Determined to hold onto their gains in the country, the Islamists have warned that French troops will become bogged down for years.

The people of Mali are welcoming the French soldiers with open arms: the Islamists have imposed harsh Sharia law upon the region, cutting off hands and feet for minor crimes in addition to desecrating the sacred religious shrines in the fabled city of Timbuktu (yes, it does actually exist). The citizens have feared for their lives, worried of the potential damage the volatile terror groups might wreak. Mahamadou Abdoulaye, 35, a truck driver who fled from the northern Gao region of Mali into Niger, said the Islamists new recruits were both armed and inexperienced: a dangerous combination.
"We were all afraid. Many young fighters have enrolled with them recently. They are newly arrived, they cannot manage their weapons properly. There's fear on everybody's face," he said.

Nuclear Concerns
Unfortunately, there is more at stake here than meets the eye. Although Mali was originally a French colony, this invasion is not merely a “mother nation looking out for her children.”  As Mark Tran of The Guardian notes, the West and Mali's neighbours fear that the Islamists, who took over northern Mali, an area the size of France of desert and rugged mountains, will use the country to destabilise the rest of west Africa, including neighbouring Niger, France's main source of uranium for its nuclear industry.If the Islamists gain complete control of Mali, turning the nation into a stronghold, the potential that terror groups such as al-Qaeda In the Maghreb (AQIM) will use the area as a base for launching international attacks is huge. The potential that AQIM will use the area as a foundation for a takeover of Niger’s vast supplies of uranium is even greater. As J.G. Gilmour explains, the AQIM has direct ties to the Nigerian terror group, Boko Haram. Both groups have sworn to “expel all westerners in the Sahel and establish an Islamic theocracy with poor countries which have limited resources and weak military forces to react to their insurgency operations.”  The AQIM is hoping that terrorism activities will destabilize such countries by recruiting extremists to their networks and cells. Ultimately, this destabilization puts France’s almost unending supply of uranium at risk. This uranium, as activist Adam Cooper reports, is much of the reason for initiating this offensive in Mali.

Without an End
If France has not learned from the US example in nations like Afghanistan or Iraq, then they will learn soon enough that fighting terror groups is utterly different from fighting a conventional war. As the US realized in Iraq, enemy soldiers may be anywhere, and they have no qualms about hiding among the civilian population.

French Army chief Edouard Guillaud said France's air strikes, involving Rafale and Mirage jet fighters, were being hampered because militants were using the civilian population as a shield.

"We categorically refuse to make the civilian population take a risk. If in doubt, we will not shoot," he said.
This honor of the division between militant and civilian is the great weakness of Western nations attempting to eradicate a terror group from a region. Nations such as the US, Britain, and France come to the conflict with rules of war and the terrorists capitalize upon those restrictions. Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian acknowledges the difficulties facing France. "It's tough. We were aware from the beginning it would be a very difficult operation.”

Any five year old will tell you that it is almost impossible to play with someone who refuses to respect the rules of the game. If the experiences of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan are any indication, this holds true not only for Candyland as it does for war. France may maintain the moral high ground in this conflict, but will receive a defeat in return.

Doomsday...

     The Mayan calender caused consternation when it was discovered that the last date on the stone timekeeper was December 31, 2011. The general populace surmised that the end of the ancient civilization's calender meant that the world would end in 2012, the year not found on the calender. A movie was made, and the tale was immortalized (or at least magnetized), on DVD's all around the world.
The Mayan calender is not the only timepiece that may end this year though.
     Just yesterday, the "Doomsday Clock", a large clock face used by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to depict how close the world is to an atomic destruction, moved one minute closer to midnight, bringing the barometer of human fate to 11:55.
     Well, was moved, I should say. The minute hand has fluctuated back and forth over the years, being anywhere between 2 minutes til midnight when the Cold War began, and almost 17 minutes til when the U.S. and Russia signed the START treaty, beginning to destroy nuclear stockpiles. The recent reset is due to several factors, as the co-chairman of the Atomic Scientist board, Lawrence Krauss, says, "Faced with clear and present dangers of nuclear proliferation and climate change, and the need to find sustainable and safe sources of energy, world leads are failing to change business as usual. As we see it, the major challenge at the heart of humanity’s survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate ... and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons — and in fact setting the stage for global reductions."
 
 So a question: is this clock just hype over the nuclear situation of the world, or is the concern real?
     First of all, the mere change of the time on the clock has caused overt amounts of worry and consternation, and though the occurrence has raised awareness, awareness is useless if it is mixed with fear. It is a fact, however, that the world may very well be on the brink of a war. With Iran at some point of the nuclear weapon process, Israel darting suspicious looks at any military occurrence in the Middle East, and with the U.S. still acting in the world as the major keeper of the peace, anything could happen. Russia is sitting back on it's laurels apparently disinterested with the world, yet the laurels it rests upon cover a nuclear arsenal to match the U.S. The end of the world could be right around the corner.
     However, the Doomsday Clock has forgotten one variable to the equation, one that cannot ever be defined. Though the nations involved are large and powerful, the God involved is in control of them all. And while leaders may bluster and threaten, they are powerless to kill and destroy until the appointed time. And when that appointed time comes, they will fight. But, being the end of the world, Christ will return in His glory, and the Doomsday Clock will be reset all the way back to the beginning, though never to tick again.
 
  If the end is near, then so is Christ.