Cacto: I didn't even bother to read your entire article. Just going by the title, I'm going to say this: it's easy for you not to care; you're in Australia. Who gives a shit about Australia? If it wasn't for "Crocodile Dundee", "Mad Max", AC/DC and Men at Work nobody would even know it still existed 9yes, I'm well aware that those things are 20 years out-of-date; that's exactly my point).
Try feeling that way when you're sitting on one of the bullseyes.
Do you really want unstable, pissant little countries with tinpot, crazy tyrants in complete charge to have the Big One? Or is this just another example of your patented dry, somewhat aloof, sarcastic "Down Under" wit?

I'm not so sure about the satellite mineral-tracking sci-fi stuff... I mean, were that possible, wouldn't the whole problem of "does Iraq/Iran have WMD?" be a non-issue? We'd already know and where they are. We'd not need weapons inspectors, either. Besides, the limited geology I have (only a mere 6 hours, I admit) doesn't really lead me to believe a mineral can be accurately tracked from space -- radioactive or not. There would have to electronics involved (transmitters, precisely).

I'm a little hazy on it myself. Been a while since I heard about it. I think you can supposedly hide nuclear materials under lead or stuff like that, and can spot them because they're a different colour under some sort of light or something? Science isn't really my speciality (if you haven't guessed).

Do you really want unstable, pissant little countries with tinpot, crazy tyrants in complete charge to have the Big One? Or is this just another example of your patented dry, somewhat aloof, sarcastic "Down Under" wit?

I've always been a fan of tinpot crazy tyrants. They make the world a more interesting place, because at least you know they're evil. Far worse are the nameless, faceless legions of the democratic bureaucracy, who do evil simply because it's more efficient. Perhaps I'm just a hopeless romantic, but there've been too many piss-ant tyrants knocked off by more sober colleagues/competitors for me to believe that Kim Jung-il or the Ayatollah would be followed blindly unto the grave. Maybe twenty years ago for the Ayatollah, but not today. And especially not in the Byzantine politics of North Korea.

As for your last question... a little from column a, a little from column b.

And sure Australia is irrelevent, but you're choosing to comment on a known Australian's blog. That's a choice you made - I didn't seek you out. Perhaps my title was provocative, but boring titles are, well, boring. So to sum up my argument.... meh.

Perhaps the same reason you're so upset about individuals having the right to nuclear weapons as well. Perhaps in Australia, people are not allowed to protect themselves from both criminals and oppressive governments, but in the United States, we are given that right. Therefore, you of all people should support my right to nuclear weaponry.

If you're a sovereign lording it over your own country, go for it. You have my full support. But I don't think the USA, which apparently surrounds your happy little dictatorship/democracy/republic/whatever, will permit your ownership of nukes. They may even invade. So it's probably not really wise to do it unless you, like the Axis, have hundreds of thousands of soldiers under arms.

Individuals surrender their right to force in return for the leviathan's protection. So your subjects, having surrrendered their right to force to you, would be unable to pursue nuclear programs on their own bat. But you have every right to do so. Whether your immediate neighbouring countries will tolerate it is another matter - they might unite to destroy the threat, or they may simply annex it and be done with the whole deal.

So, you won't be criticizing anything it does? If you will, then doesn't that mean that we could bitch about how the Axis of Evil has nuclear weapons?

I don't think I said I agreed with the theory. It just amuses me that for a group of supposedly conservative people, there are a lot of pinkie lefties here when it comes to IR. You're practically a Marxist, messybuu, from your comments here!

Oh and Dave - they're letting him go around the city because the Indonesian people don't believe the police will treat him properly. So by letting him swan around under supervision, the police are showing they're not abusing him. Indonesian politics is kind of complicated at the moment, and the police are notoriously open to 'suggestion'. At least they're not beating him up or something.

"Of course one could reply that Iran and North Korea are evil nations, full of monkey-men and maniacs hell-bent on reaping havoc throughout the civilised world"
Sorry and excuse me but what on earth makes you say something so untrue? Hell bent? To use that term one would think there would be some evidence. Are you basing your thought on the fact that neither country has been 'reaping havoc throughout the civilised world'? Are you that caught up in the drama that your think North Korea and Iran have a secret war room where they have the maps of 'civilized' nations all ready to be redrawn to their expansionist mentalities?

I don't think I said I agreed with the theory. It just amuses me that for a group of supposedly conservative people, there are a lot of pinkie lefties here when it comes to IR. You're practically a Marxist, messybuu, from your comments here!

So, you don't necessarily agree with the theory, but you're using it to defend North Korea's and Iran's production of nuclear weapons? Is it that you only disagree with it when it applies to the US?

Also, I don't see how I'm a Marxist, unless you're purposely ignoring what Marxism was about (i.e. capitalism and what not).

Individuals surrender their right to force in return for the leviathan's protection. So your subjects, having surrrendered their right to force to you, would be unable to pursue nuclear programs on their own bat. But you have every right to do so. Whether your immediate neighbouring countries will tolerate it is another matter - they might unite to destroy the threat, or they may simply annex it and be done with the whole deal.

Maybe in Australia, but as I said, in America, we have the right to arm ourselves in case of an oppressive government, so that must mean we have the right to nuclear weaponry.

Maybe in Australia, but as I said, in America, we have the right to arm ourselves in case of an oppressive government, so that must mean we have the right to nuclear weaponry.

I'm sorry, but this line of discussion is completely ridiculous....do you want to have a nuke, messybuu? Would you keep it in your garage or basement? The attic, maybe? I hope you have a nice supply of radiation suits and adrelalin pills. Guns are one thing, nukes are another. Let's get real, people.

Messybuu - don't worry about it. US thinkers have historically used that viewpoint to justify US actions. I think it's ironic that when that viewpoint is used to justify the actions of NK and Iran, it's suddenly unacceptable. That's all. Don't get too worked up.

So, what you're saying is that it's hypocritical for the US to not allow Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons. You're not saying that you condone Iran and North Korea developing nuclear weapons, because if you did, you'd have to condone all actions of the US too, right?

Ummm, okay... but one day you should try and read Hobbes. His views are very influential in the production of IR theory these days, especially in the US. Domestic is different to international in many ways; the theoretical underpinnings of the system is just one area that's different.

How are they different in such a way that they do not allow me to protect myself, even though I have that right?

North Korea is out of touch with the rest of the world. I think This photograph, courtesy of GlobalSecurity.org offers some idea.

John Derbyshire offered this little anecdote in one of his articles:

The other day my son, noodling around with some songbooks on the piano, played “Clementine.” My wife, who grew up in Mao Tse-tung’s China, was delighted. “I didn’t know you had that tune in the West,” she said. Puzzled, I asked her what she meant. “Why, it’s a North Korean folk tune. We learned it at school. It was in a North Korean movie we all saw.”

Far from the least depressing thing about the communist states, but noteworthy none the less, is their utter lack of creativity. What, that is worth remembering, came out of all those years of suffering, cruelty, lies, and murder? What play, what story, what picture, what song? They even had to steal our folk melodies and pass them off as their own. If Rosie is representative, which she probably is, several hundred million people believe that “Clementine” is a North Korean folk song. In North Korea herself, people probably believe it was written by Kim Il Sung.

Derbyshire, in another article mentioned how different North Korea was even from Iran:

North Korea is a very different case. For one thing, the people of the “Hermit Kingdom” are cut off from the rest of the world in a way that Iranians are not, and cannot be. I’m sure you have seen those satellite pictures of the world at night, with South Korea, and even northeast China, ablaze with lights, while North Korea is dark. Darkness — the darkness of utter ignorance about the world beyond their borders — is indeed what North Koreans dwell in. Their state TV and radio tell them nothing. They have no internet and are not permitted to make international phone calls. There are people in Iran reading NRO. I know there are, I’ve had e-mails from them. On one occasion, in fact, when I seemed to have lumped Iranians in with Arabs in an opinion column, I got twenty or thirty angry e-mails from Iran, objecting in the strongest terms to the implication that they resembled Arabs in any way. I have never had an e-mail from North Korea, and do not expect to get one any time soon.

I watched a PBS documentary about two years ago about a British journalist who ventured to North Korea in hopes of catching a glimpse of the lives they lead in that country. I was quite disturbed with what I saw. The beaches are blocked off by six-foot electric fences. Upon visiting a rural family, the hosts had their child perform an homage dance in praise of Kim Jong Il. North Korea is one great big twenty million man cult with a large army and a nuclear weapons program thrown in the mix.

Cacto: I hope you're right, I really do.....but I've seen interviews with North Korean citizens on "60 Minutes" (a TV news show, if you're not familiar). The people interviewed expressed a deep hatred for and fear of Americans, sure that we were just waiting for the chance to come in a take over their country. They said that they would fight us with anything they had; one girl said that, if she had an American within her reach at that moment, she would willingly kill him/her for their Beloved Leader. Does this sound like people who aren't listening to propaganda?

If 60 minutes in the US is anything like the one in Australia, they probably spent several days tracking down people who would say those kinds of things. Or of course it could well be that all North Koreans are like that. But surely extermination is not the answer? Because if all NK people are like that, you will have to kill all of them in order to be safe from their ire. And that will either take a first strike or a lot of messy wetwork.

Surely it's better to take the low-risk chance of them suddenly turning insane and launching nukes over the certainty of terrorism for the next 50 years as surviving cells of North Koreans launch attack after attack in the name of their beloved leader?

How are they different in such a way that they do not allow me to protect myself, even though I have that right?

I've already tried to explain. Read Hobbes or nearly any decent IR textbook about neorealism or neoliberalism and you'll see what I mean. Unfortunately I lack the skill to explain it to you any better.

Interesting anecdotes about NK, Diamond. But unfortunately that's all they are. Without hard evidence there's no proof that kind of behaviour is widespread, or is done for any reason other than out of fear.

Actually, it was a report contributed frm the BBC, I think it was. The reporter looked Middle Eastern. It was really about how the Diary of Anne Frank has been recently allowed for use in NK schools, and how they are twisting it for anti-American propaganda purposes. They're being told that the US is just like Nazi Germany, with concentration and death camps, racial pogroms and such. The students and people interviewed seemed to think that the book isn't even allowed inside the US. People listening to their propaganda, Cacto.

Interesting. I hadn't heard about that at all. In fact I don't really know that much about NK, apart from the fact that it's a brutal dictatorship with a heavily repressed populace who makes good use of Australian expertise in the fields of water security and sanitation. I also know that they are popularly demonised in the western press, which makes me suspicious of just how bad it really is; if the press says everyone's a mindless drone, then maybe it's not so evil after all - the western press was wrong about the Germans and the Japanese after all.

I'm not willing to pass judgement until I know all the facts, and I thank you for bringing some very interesting ones to my attention. It's not really backpedalling though. You mentioned that North Koreans listened to propaganda and might all be heavily brainwashed, so I brought that to its logical conclusion and countered that causing the downfall of the regime (by using military force to halt programs) would only result in creating an entire country of anti-western terrorists.

You'd have to either reeducate them (possibly in concentration camps?) or kill them. If they are as fanatical as you have suggested, death will be the only practical choice. So frankly rather than see the deaths of many millions of people I'd rather simply let NK go on its way, and wait for the inevitable revolution to topple the brutal government. Food aid used strategically would make this more likely (see the 10-year war in Europe for details). Perhaps you'd have another Russia, but then again the US was able to prevent a nuclear holocaust emerging from the fall of the USSR, so it should be easy when the number of nukes is in the 10s rather than in the 1000s.

I have to say that you, cacto, are one of the best examples on JU of the closed-minded, stubborn, cynical liberal.

That's probably a good assessment of my personality, but it's a shame you based it on what I write. I don't always (rarely?) write exactly what I think. It's much more interesting to play devil's advocate and try and understand not just what others think, but why they think it. But you are fairly accurate - I'm very stubborn, perhaps a little cynical and don't believe in having an open mind, because with an open mind all the wisdom and knowledge will fall out, and I would become little more than a leaf blowing in the breeze; very zen, but hardly useful.

So...I'm not sure, from this particular post...are you now in favor of letting them have nukes or not? I mean, first you're saying that people don't listen to propaganda, now you seem to think they just might....which is it?

To be perfectly honest I couldn't care less either way (you might have guessed this from the title). I don't think the entire leadership of North Korea is criminally insane. There's always a canny political operator to exploit weakness, especially in a potential nuclear crisis. I don't think he would have any trouble toppling Kim if it became necessary. Kim's a pervert, and the propaganda machine can work both ways (even if perhaps noone entirely believes it).

As for whether propaganda works... this isn't something I've studied that seriously. I know it does work on basic concepts - it's relatively easy to mould children - but it's more difficult on adults, and far more difficult when there is access to outside sources. So from what you've said already it probably is effective in NK. But that's largely irrelevent. What the populace believes is only important if you need their help, and if you try and persuade them that there is something when there is nothing (ie that there is enough food), they'll begin to view other more advanced information with suspicion. How much they believe, and how much they claim to believe (especially when the secret security services are watching) probably don't match up that well.

Perhaps you'd have another Russia, but then again the US was able to prevent a nuclear holocaust emerging from the fall of the USSR, so it should be easy when the number of nukes is in the 10s rather than in the 1000s.

---cacto

But one thing I don't think you're considering is that, at the fall of the Soviet Union, we had a friendly Politburo and leader in Gorbachev, and then another friend in Yeltsin. The transition was relatively smooth and beneficial to both sides.
With NK, it would not be the same. If Kim, who hates the US, really is the only one with his finger on the button (and, since he controls everything, he probably is), then there are going to be some big kabooms. And even if we are only talking about "in the 10s", that's too many. You're still talking millions of lives lost in minutes and more down the road from radiation poisoning and injuries.

So frankly rather than see the deaths of many millions of people I'd rather simply let NK go on its way, and wait for the inevitable revolution to topple the brutal government. Food aid used strategically would make this more likely (see the 10-year war in Europe for details).

---cacto

If I'm getting you here, you think that the people will eventually just tire of repression and push it away, right? Well, they've had the same brutal government, passed from father to son, for what? Going on 60 years now?
http://clinton.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/kim/

I mean, they even went to war for the father, and a bloody war it was (as many or slightly more US casualties in 3 years than in the 11 years we spent fighting in Vietnam). If they haven't tired of it by now, will they anytime soon? I doubt it. And we had been feeding them and giving them medicine and oil for some time...that was part of the Clinton-Albright deal to keep them from pursuing their nuke program. Didn't seem to work, huh?

You won't *ever* see that happen. If they are as brainwashed as they seem to be they will not change and overthrow him.

In which case overthrowing him ourselves will only create a situation a million times worse than Iraq - if everyone's a partisan, you'd have to kill them all. The media would have a field day and the US government would probably fall. That's a big price to pay for a massive increase in world terrorism (as politically useful as that can be).

With NK, it would not be the same. If Kim, who hates the US, really is the only one with his finger on the button (and, since he controls everything, he probably is), then there are going to be some big kabooms. And even if we are only talking about "in the 10s", that's too many. You're still talking millions of lives lost in minutes and more down the road from radiation poisoning and injuries

So you really think Kim is the one with the power in NK? Any reason to believe that? Surely he's too insane to be trusted with anything more than figurehead status. I would have thought that the country was ruled in reality by a junta of military figures; certainly not Kim. I think you'd still have to really push him to make him launch nukes if he was in power though - to the best of my knowledge the psych assessments of him that i've read don't indicate paranoid psychosis, so he'll have to feel really threatened to fire them off anyway.

I don't think we're going to agree on this though; you seem to want to destroy the nukes even at the cost of a first strike, while I'm prepared to let several million die (roughly the same number) on the off-chance that the situation can't be contained without violent intervention.

If I'm getting you here, you think that the people will eventually just tire of repression and push it away, right? Well, they've had the same brutal government, passed from father to son, for what? Going on 60 years now?

Not just think; know. It usually takes up to two generations for brutal dictatorships to be overthrown. In South America the US faced the unusual problem of it happening a few times a decade. If the populace is nearly-fed and can see the upper class lording it over them for no apparent reason, they're going to ask, "where's the pork?" It's just something people do.

I mean, they even went to war for the father, and a bloody war it was (as many or slightly more US casualties in 3 years than in the 11 years we spent fighting in Vietnam). If they haven't tired of it by now, will they anytime soon? I doubt it. And we had been feeding them and giving them medicine and oil for some time...that was part of the Clinton-Albright deal to keep them from pursuing their nuke program. Didn't seem to work, huh?

Yeah, that was a stupid plan. Far better to have offered the aid on the requirement that it go to the peasantry. I haven't a clue what the Clinton administration was thinking when they figured they could prevent a country that felt threatened from developing nukes. It's just not going to happen. And in case you haven't noticed, the NK peasants have been tiring of it. That's why relations between SK and NK were softening quite considerably up until the 'Axis of Evil' comments. NK knew it had to change or face serious unrest; family reunions were just one side-effect of this.

One minute I'm a cynic, the next I'm an idealist - what next? That's very John Kerry-like of you, and most unbecoming. I base my opinions on my cynical approach to human nature, and that leads me to think that NK would wither and die if it wasn't hated so intensely from outside.

By the way - thanks for supporting that first strike. When the clouds of fallout hit Australia due to prevailing winds I'll be sure to remember your name with real thanks.

One minute I'm a cynic, the next I'm an idealist - what next

Okay, you got me...you're an idealistic cynic. Howzat?
You do have an extremely cynical view of things, as we've already touched upon.
But as far as the NK situation goes...you have a little brighter outlook than most of us. But, as I say, you're not exactly in the line of fire, so you're free to have those views without any real danger to yourself or those you love.

By the way - thanks for supporting that first strike. When the clouds of fallout hit Australia due to prevailing winds I'll be sure to remember your name with real thanks.

No problem; take a nice, deep breath before you say it, though.