Anju Links for 28 Feb 08

SUSTAINING THE CHARADE: She can’t pretend that the six-party scheme is working, so Condi Rice wants a timetable for North Korea to comply with its agreements. Had Secretary Rice insisted on and gotten a well-structured deal back in 2005, there would have been some chance to accomplish something, though we should remember that unless non-performance has harsh consequences, deadlines mean little to the North Koreans. Too late, she realizes that the original deal was too amorphous to accomplish much of anything, and if she really thinks she will have China’s full cooperation in defenestrating its own quasi-puppet, I wonder who she thinks she’s kidding. Surely someone as smart as Condi Rice knows this can’t possibly work in ten months if North Korea and China don’t really want it to.

BACK TO EARTH: The Bush Administration, realizing that concerts alone do not a legacy make, attempts to subordinate the superficial to the substantive. These are boon times for superficial ideas. Now that Kim Jong Il has discovered the Clapton Gambit, Condi has her work cut out for her taming the monster she created.

THAT RUSSIAN CARGO SHIP the North Koreans seized off the shores of its missile testing range has been released. In unrelated news, Western diplomats report a unusually large number of shiny Lexus sedans with “2-16” license plates on the streets of Pyongyang.

NO SECOND CHANCE FOR THE FTA: Not that anyone should be surprised, but it looks increasingly unlikely that a Democratic Congress will allow it to advance this year. Here’s why we should celebrate that.

I WAS WONDERING WHEN CHINA would realize that its one-child policy spells demographic disaster and scrap it.