Blackmail is an ugly word but there is no other way to describe North Korea’s behavior over its nuclear plans. This week’s announcement that it will withdraw from six-party talks on disarmament in reprisal for UN criticism of its controversial rocket launch earlier this month is not the first time it has stormed away from the negotiating table and threatened to reactivate it nuclear weapons program. It has regularly employed the tactic to extract money from the US, South Korea and Japan.
Blackmailers never stop. They always want more. North Korea has been no exception. Over the past 15 years, it has successfully manipulated the Americans, South Koreans and Japanese into agreeing to provide billions of dollars of funds, food, energy, even nuclear reactors, in return for promises not to develop nuclear weapons.
But all the while it has continued the program. For the past seven years there has been a continuing cycle of nuclear brinkmanship — first negotiations involving the North and South Koreans, the Americans, Chinese, Russians and Japanese resulting in offers of aid in return for an end to the nuclear weapons program, followed by threats by Pyongyang to restart them and demands for more aid; then fresh negotiations. So it has continued.
The Chinese and the Russians, even the Americans, have taken the view that negotiations will work. But will they? North Korea is a basket case. It has nothing to sustain itself with. There is no economy to speak of (if the claim that the rocket launch was a bid for space is true, which no one believes, the North has to be accused of criminal extravagance when it cannot afford to feed its own people). All it has is the power to threaten.
It is the ultimate mafia state. Nor can it stop the blackmail; it has nothing else to bargain with. It has nothing else to ensure the necessary flow of funds to keep the regime going.
Only Moscow and Beijing can prevent this ending badly. Sanctions can work; they brought down the apartheid regime in South Africa. But to work they have to be unanimous. If China or Russia is not involved, sanctions become meaningless. Washington certainly does not have any leverage over Pyongyang other than by attacking it — which it certainly is not going to do at present. The future is another matter.
The danger is that if China and Russia continue their soft-softly approach, it may soon be too late to avoid such a future. Nuclear blackmail is not ordinary blackmail. It is not like repeating threats to reveal compromising photos.
Every time North Korea wants to force the Americans, Japanese and South Koreans to pay, it has to up the stakes. That involves developing its nuclear program. But that means, at some point, that it will have an effective, deliverable nuclear weapon. Or at least it will pretend it has (three years ago it claimed to have tested a nuclear weapon although there has never been any evidence of that). It is a sure road to conflagration.
Pyongyang is inherently belligerent — as belligerent as Israel, if not more so. It has threatened war against Japan; against South Korea, many times over. Last year, it threatened to reduce it “to debris”. The US, Japan and South Korea may opt for negotiations now but in the final event they will not allow it to acquire real deliverable nuclear missiles.
Immigration reform in US
Even in a bad economy — especially in a bad economy — getting undocumented immigrants on the right side of the law only makes sense, said New York Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
The Obama administration said last week that it would begin a major push for immigration reform this year. The country’s two big labor federations just announced that they are joining forces to support that effort, which includes a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. That’s double good news. The administration is saying that it will keep its promise to fix the broken system, even if it means pushing the hottest of hot buttons: Legalization, the dreaded “amnesty” that sets the Republican right wing ablaze and makes many Democrats quiver.
American labor rejects the false claim that fixing the immigration system will somehow hurt American workers. The country has suffered mightily in the meantime. American workers and businesses continue to be undercut by the underground economy. The economic potential of some of the country’s most industrious workers is thwarted. Working off the books — and living in constant fear of apprehension — they earn less, spend less, pay less in taxes and have little ability to report abuses or to improve their skills or job prospects.
The ingredients of reform are clear: Legalization for the 12 million, to yield bumper crops of new citizens, to make it easier to weed out criminals and to end the fear and hopelessness of life in the shadows; sensible enforcement at the border that focuses resources on fighting crime, drugs and violence; a strengthened employment system that punishes businesses that exploit illegal labor; and a future flow of workers that is attuned to the economy’s needs.
