Category: Appeasement

North Korea has been stealing trucks, cranes and other equipment from the site of a nuclear power plant where an American-led consortium stopped construction four years ago in a dispute over the North’s nuclear weapons development, the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reported Wednesday. [N.Y. Times] It gets better: “There is even suspicion that the North Koreans used the equipment when they conducted a nuclear test in October 2006 and in May,” the paper quoted a source as saying. North...

The Obama Administration’s new proposal to set up a “liaison office” in Pyongyang may be the most disturbing development of his administration’s entire approach to North Korea. It would, in effect, elevate diplomatic relations between the two governments just seven months after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, and just nine months after it tested an ICBM, all in flagrant violation of multiple U.N. resolutions. Now, after North Korea has made no meaningful concessions on disarmament and even demands recognition...

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Stanford Professor Joel Brinkley argues the President Obama is “wasting his time” trying to improve relations with North Korea: In the months since Obama took office, North Korea has test fired long-range missiles, threatened and belittled South Korea and conducted a nuclear test – even as Washington let Pyongyang know that it wanted to improve relations. Finally, it appears, the administration has had enough. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, attending the July 23 meeting...

You remember what diplomacy was like in the days before it was smart, right? When diplomats let slip undiplomatic truths about Kim Jong Il being a “tyrannical dictator” who subjected his people to a “hellish nightmare?” When Presidents “loathed” their adversaries instead of sitting down and sharing a bong with them? Thank goodness change has come! It says a lot about the North Koreans that they can’t just rise above this and hold the high ground. So does this mean...