North Korea's Brinkmanship

North Korea...How to Deal with a Difficult Adversary!

North Korea's recent detonation of a nuclear device has again threatened peace in Asia.Even Mrs . Hillary Clinton and her "soft power" approach recently stated " no one can possibly figure out how to deal with North Korea." North Korea believes if it threatens, bullies and scares the West and Korea and Japan, that the United States will be forced back to the negotiating table and re-start diplomatic talks.
But one only has to look at the North Koreans since the end of World War II.
The North Koreans backed by Russia declared a communist state shortly after World War II. They started a police state with a one family dictatorship. The Soviets,as documents now demonstrate, pushed North Korea into a covert action that led to the Korean War. The United States responded and several years later and almost 56,000 d US military deaths defeated the North Koreans and forced a stalemate. Since then both Korea and Japan have prospered while North Korea has spent billions on arms, nuclear technology and a multi-million person military. All while their people starve and have no freedom. Since the end of the Korean War every President has tried to engage the North Koreans. More recently, during the Clinton Administration the USA have supplied the North Koreans millions in dollars, food and oil. When George Bush became President he cancelled all of Clinton's largess as the North Koreans never gave in on anything-they funded terrorism, massive drug trafficking and exported nuclear technology to Iran, Pakistan, Libya and Syria. After 6 years of diplomatic negotiations, President Bush thought we had reached a deal with the North Koreans. The North Koreans agreed to eliminate their nuclear program. The US honored its agreement and removed North Korea from the terrorist list of nations; the USA also started shipping food and oil to North Korea' starving millions. Then out of nowhere North Korea reneged on all agreements demanded more oil fuel, money and food and started belligerent rhetoric against South Korea. It test-fired a new missile and detonated a nuclear weapon underground.
What is the ultimate goal of North Korea? Their goal is to continue to extort the United States Korea and Japan. The North Koreans want a continuing flow of oil, food and money-without really downsizing their nuclear weapons programs. North Korea believes it will win as the USA Japan and Korea do not want either a strong nuclear North Korea or a war.
It seems Mr. Obama, even with his soft power approachto clench- fisted communists will neither give in to North Korea or put up with the North Korean brinkmanship. America's new policy will probably be to ignore North Korea and continue to isolate them in the West. Both Russia and China are no help. They are afraid to criticize North Korea or to impose harsh sanctions. They are diplomatically useless.They are not friends of the United States or peace.
Whats the likely future scenario? Either the North Koreans will eventually"give in" and have a regime change from within or the North Koreans will attack South Korea.
For sure they will continue to develop nuclear weapons and new long range missiles that threaten both Japan and the United States.

The only course for Mr. Obama to take as this stage is to :

1. Ignore the North Koreans threats and continue economic sanctions.
2. Build up additional naval forces in the area and
3. Pressure Russia and China to control the raging mad dog they created in North Korea.

The North Koreans out of desperation could attack South Korea. The North Koreans have an aging and very ill leader,the population continues to starve and the fuel crisis is at an all time high. In North Korea we are dealing with a unreasonable, non-compromising communist leadership ,ignorant of the West and feeling abandoned by Russia and China except Russia and China's weak support against sanctions.
The danger for the West is that North Korea's missile development is improving and its obvious they have nuclear warheads or are close to having the ability to create in a short period of time a number of nuclear weapons.
A war now could further damage the world's economy,destroy China's prosperity and manufacturing exports to the West, damage the US economy as well as completly undermine the economy and national security of America's allies South Korea and Japan.

The CIA Flap and Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House has accused the CIA of misleading her-in fact, lying to Congress and the intelligence oversight process. Then Ms. Pelosi flip-flopped and said the CIA has only mislead the Congress during the Bush years. If you review her actual statements, she said " the CIA misleads us all the time."
The Republicans are using this to embarrass her and the administration.In actual fact, most Democrats don't like the CIA. Just ask Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Dodd, Kerry, and a host of others that loathe the CIA.
The CIA was always regarded as "the bad boys" of government, a term coined backed in the 1950's . During the Church hearings in the 1970's certain abuses were leveled at the CIA regarding assassinations, dirty tricks and not informing Congress of its activities. Since Frank Church and Otis Pike held hearings tremendous oversight has been put on the CIA. I wrote about it in my history of the CIA. Today theremany committees, the President's Oversight Board, PFIAB, internal controls and Senate and House staffers that monitor almost all CIA activities including covert action.Both the House and Senate have committees that must approve each clandestine activity. So do the host of lawyers inside the CIA. In addition private watchdog groups have been set up and they constantly litigate againt the CIA as well as deluge the government with Freedom of Information requests. Thats why in fact most of the CIA has been defanged and is often ineffective.Today the CIA has to fight two battles-one against terrorism and one against our own governmnet leaders. To be sure Ms Pelosi is nothing but a leftist spawn, but worse she's stupid!. She damages the effectiveness of intelligence as well as embarrasses the nation by calling the CIA liars. The CIA staffers document every meeting and also probably tapes the meetings. It is Ms. Pelosi that is the liar.

More national security gaffes by the Obama Administration

NATO

Ivo Daalder has been appointed Ambassador to NATO Headquarters at Brussels, Belgium. Daalder, a Professor who was born in Holland and a national security advisor during the Clinton years has plans to REMOVE all US nuclear weapons from Europe. How dumb can we get!. This policy is supported by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State, Mrs Clinton. This policy will undermine and destroy NATO and give the Russians the major nuclear weapons advantage.Other countries like France support the US giving up our nuclear weapons. Its another way to undermine NATO and the US influence in Europe.Both Russia and France want the US out of Europe.

China

After a long awaited decision on Obama's policy towards China, the Obama Administration announced that it does not really see China as a threat!. However the new Chairman of the Joints Chief strongly disagrees.China has plans to build a blue water navy and wants to push the US out of the Pacific. It seems the Obama Administration along with its ridiculous "soft diplomatic policy" on Iran and Cuba has also projected its soft policy to China.Obama will most likely back off of supporting Taiwan and will not protect China's expansion into the shipping lanes or building a Blue Water Navy to rival the USA.

Iran and Cuba

Both have slapped the USA hand that was offered by Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama must be a glutton for punishment as he plans to push ahead to give in to both Iran and Cuba on a number of fronts. Israel-Obama recently told the Israeli leadership that they must make peace with the Palestinians before we can settle issues with Iran. I always thought it was the other way around---get Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions and this could lead the way to peace between the Palestinians and Israelis.I think Mr Obama must have attended the Karl Marx School for Diplomacy!

Soft Power to the Obama Administration means appeasement to our adversaries and abandonment of our values and friends.