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.