[Chosun Ilbo] The U.S. Defense Department is said to be seriously considering the inclusion of a regime collapse scenario for North Korea in the Quadrennial Defense Report to be delivered to Congress early next year. The QDR preparation team, led by Defense Under Secretary Michèle Flournoy, is studying how the U.S. should deal with 11 different scenarios, including loss of control by the Pakistani government over its nuclear weapons arsenal and a military confrontation between Taiwan and China. The fact that the possibility of regime collapse in North Korea is being studied under the QDR, a blueprint for defense policy, signals that the prospect of sudden changes in the North has become part of the U.S. government's official agenda.
This year, the U.S. government has been putting the same amount of focus on how to deal with sudden changes in North Korea as it does on the North's nuclear weapons and missile programs. During her first trip to South Korea in February, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed concern about the succession to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. "If there is a succession, even if it's a peaceful succession, that creates more uncertainty, and it may also encourage behaviors that are even more provocative," she said. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg proposed talks with Chinese officials to discuss how to deal with the succession in North Korea. Beijing is said to have rejected Washington's offer due to fears of agitating Pyongyang.
But China is not neglecting the issue. Quite the opposite: it has been steadily increasing troops along the border. It could use them either to intervene directly when North Korea undergoes sudden change or to take the issue to the UN and block South Korean efforts to unify with the North. Japan has also quietly been preparing for some time to deal with a crisis in North Korea.
The U.S., China, Japan and other powers now have no choice but to treat an emergency situation in North Korea as a major consideration. Kim, who had disappeared from public eye for almost two months last year due to a stroke, is now attending official events again, but nobody can say with certainty for how long the 67-year-old leader will wield absolute power.
South Korea would face a national emergency if something happened to Kim, causing North Korea to spiral into chaos and its nuclear weapons and missiles fall into the hands of opportunists. The U.S., which believes its national security depends on preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, will be on high alert. Unexpected changes in North Korea are like landmines buried under the political situation in Northeast Asia and could affect the lives of 75 million Koreans on both sides of the border.
But we are unprepared. A draft operational plan prepared by South Korea and the U.S. for sudden changes happening in North Korea was downgraded by the Roh Moo-hyun administration, which was afraid of incensing North Korea. But whether we like it or not, regional superpowers have already begun preparing for sudden changes in North Korea. If the regime should collapse, we would not be able to use that opportunity for our benefit and end up entrusting our fate once again to the hands of other countries.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2010 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Commies
#1
Not just SEOUL = SOUTH KOREA ....
To wit,
WMF > US SPECOPS DIRECTOR MAXWELL: US MUST PREPARE CONTINGENCY PLANS IN CASE OF NORTH KOREAN REGIME COLLAPSE, US + UN MUST NOT TAKE FOR GRANTED THEY WILL BE RECEIVED AS "LIBERATORS/SAVIORS" BY THE KOREAN PEOPLE.
VERSUS
* SAME > NYU PROFESSOR NUBIN LI: THE "US HAS RUN OUT OF AMMUNITION". US FEDERAL RESERVE'S EFFORTS TO INTRODUCE QUANTITATIVE/MONETARY EASEMENT POLICIES WILL IMPROVE LIQUIDITY RATIOS BUT IS NOT ENOUGH TO PREVENT US LOAN OR CREDIT DEFAULT.
AND
* SAME > CPLAN ADMIRAL ZHAO ZHAOZHONG: US OR US-LED MILITARY ATTACK ON IRAN IS UNLIKELY DUE TO AMERICA'S INABILITY TO ECON AFFORD OR SUSTAIN A LONG-PERIOD, EFFECTIVE MILITARY CAMPAIGN
[conventional]AGZ IRAN, US IS ENTERING AN UNCERTAIN PERIOD OF STRATEGIC OR GEOPOL DORMANCY, CONSERVATION OR RESERVATION AGZ RESORT TO MILITARY FORCE TO ENFORCE GOVT. FOREIGN POLICIES, + FOCII IN FAVOR OF NATIONAL ECON DEVELOPMENT, RESOLUTION OF US-WORLD ECON TROUBLES.
#2
OOOOPSIES forgot SAME > THE RYUKYUS IS OKINAWA IS YONAGUNI [+ also Taiwan]: JAPAN'S RISING "RETURN TO CHINA" SENTIMENT, OKINAWA MOVEMENT. THE USA IN 1971 GAVE ONLY "EXECUTIVE POWER" OER ADMINISTRATION OF OKINAWA TO JAPAN, NOT SOVEREIGNTY.
* SAME > OZAWA:DAOYUTAI HAS HISTORICALLY NEVER BELONGED TO CHINA. China's Daoyus Islands = Japan's Senkaku Islands, as disputed by same.
#4
To be fair, they're facing some hellish problems, namely that banks' and households' balance sheets had to restored to solvency again before the economy can begin to grow. The predictable result is that we are enduring an extended economic time-out in which banks aren't lending and consumers aren't spending.
But the failure to anticipate this obvious and predictable situation, and craft economically appropriate policies to deal with it successfully, falls on Barry's doorstep.
His failure was no surprise, given that this vain and shallow little man has never managed a budgetary cycle or negotiated credit terms in his life.
Can we please, please have a political class that has some basic experience of simple financial operations?
Goldilocks has played a trick on America. Growth is not warm enough to prevent hard-core unemployment climbing to post-war highs and sticking at levels that corrode the body politic, but not yet cold enough to overcome the fierce resistance of the Fed's regional hawks for a fresh blast of stimulus.
...This is the worst possible prescription. What is needed is fiscal austerity (slowly) before debt spirals out of control, offset by easy money or real QE for as long as it takes. This formula rescued Britain from disaster in 1931-1933 and 1992-1994.
Damn the rest of the world if they object. They have been free-loading off US demand for too long. A weaker dollar will force the mercantilists to face some hard truths. So keep those helicopters well-oiled and on standby.
#2
When you can be defeated in argument at the public square by Glenn Beck, you know you've got a problem. Defeatism always takes hold when you know you're going to loose your job. Buh-bye elites.
#3
The problem is that they are trying to force the economy to continue forward without decline, while all the market forces are forcing decline. They're gonna lose.
Instead, they should be working towards mitigation and soft landing, followed by recovery.
The trouble is that the longer they try and hold out against the inevitable, the worse the crash is going to be.
When Hoover was trying to fix the depression, the Democrat congress did everything in their power to stop him, making things much worse.
For their part, when Clinton was busy destroying the economy, the Republican sweep actually saved his chancre-covered rear end, for which he took all the credit.
This time, with a Republican victory, they are going to once again try to save the economy by thwarting Obama, and once again, Obama will try to take credit for it.
#4
The solution is obvious, cut spending and entitlements. Reform spending and entitlements in areas you can't cut. Cut the size of government in general and pass a lot of responsibilities back to the states (who should pass a lot of stuff down to the counties).
Problem is, like Japan, no politician wants to deliver blood sweat and toil news to the people.
#5
"easy money or real QE" - yes, we do need to get banks lending again. But how?
Most of the banks are broke. They are still refilling the vast holes in their balance sheets. Regardless of their accounting tricks and this country's lax reserve requirments, many of the biggest banks-- esp Citigroup-- are de facto insolvent.
The only thing that would work now would be something that is directly tied to HIRING-- eliminating the payroll tax altogether, for instance. Also, taking on some portion of health care cost burden from the employer.
Is that socialist? Who cares? Reduce taxes, please the GOP; let the state absorb some employer healthcare costs, please the Dems.
But g0ddamnit, get some consensus, cease with the national pi$$ing match already and MOVE FORWARD. Get this nation's big employers to stop sitting on their trillions in cash hoards (CSCO
#7
C!sco, Appl3 etc are sitting on tens of billions-- just these two companies + G00gle have over $100 billion in cash-- and they are not doing significant hiring here in the US. Add in the cash hoards of the rest of the non-hiring Fortune 500 and you have trillions of dollars that are neither being invested nor being used to hire people.
Where is that money going? To the Fed, of course, parked in purchases of treasurys. In other words, funding our shambolic government which then turns around and lends it to a corrupt financial sector which uses their own trillions to speculate on proprietary trading activities and to con investors as to the soundness of their balance sheets.
But neither the banks nor the big corporates are doing anything to stimulate real growth int eh real economy, and the GOP doesn't seem to have any better clue than the Dems as to how to get these colossal players off the sidelines and into the game again.
"Instead, they should be working towards mitigation and soft landing, followed by recovery."
Unfortunately, this is not the way modern pols operate.
Witness the response of our political class to globalization of labor markets. Instead of having the cojones to recognize the issue and be honest with the public about the consequences and then work towards a "mitigation, soft landing and recovery" from those economic consequences, they did the most cowardly and cynical thing possible - look the other way regarding illegal immigration and hope that said illegal immigration would be the means of dealing with globalized labor markets. Result? Epic fail.
I see no reason why the response to the economy and its woes will not take the same cynical and emasculated path, given that the political class, not just the prez and congress but the entrenched public sector lifer bureaucrats, have no desire to stick their necks out and tell the citizenry the hard truth about what must happen to fix things.
lex #7
"But neither the banks nor the big corporates are doing anything to stimulate real growth in teh real economy, and the GOP doesn't seem to have any better clue than the Dems as to how to get these colossal players off the sidelines and into the game again."
The banks and the big corporates never stimulate the economy during these types of times. That can only be accomplished by small and medium sized businesses. If you are waiting for big business, big banks, and big financial firms to lead the way out of this, you'll be waiting until the sun burns out.
And more credit isn't the answer either. As a small business guy, I can tell you that neither me nor any of the other small business owners I know are all that hamstrung by the lack of lending. WHat we REALLY need is less taxes, less threat of whimsical future taxes, a reduced regulatory burden, and government agencies which understand that many regulations desgin for bigt companies with whole departments dedicated to compliance may not be appropriate for a small business who cannot even dedicate someone full time to compliance issues.
To that end, the way to get us off our butts is to greatly reduce the overt taxation and also reduce the covert taxation (regulatory burden) on small to medium sized businesses. Right now, most regulations passed for huge businesses are applied in a like way to small ones who are less able to comply. Pass no regulations on the little guys going forward and reexamine any existing ones which were designed fo companies with thousands of employees to see if they really make sense when applied to smaller firms.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/07/2010 18:31 Comments ||
Top||
#9
The banks and the big corporates never stimulate the economy during these types of times. That can only be accomplished by small and medium sized businesses.
The worst economic number I have seen is that US self employment numbers are at a 10 year low. Which means small business is doing worse than any other sector.
#1
A comment from the cited blog post: Can you imagine Gen. George S. Patton taking orders like these without ripping off the insignia of his rank in disgust, and resigning his commission?
I would like to see one -- mind you, one -- high-ranking soldier who values his country and his sacred honor more than his career and his pension.
#2
I don't note that anyone cares to point out that a few Generals are concerned about the lives of their troops they've been entrusted with and may actually think that endangering anyone of them is not worth the some cheap display of lower primate bravado by someone sitting comfortably thousands of miles away. Please accompany any notification officer when he has to tell a mother/father, wife/husband or daughter/son that their loved one is no longer with us. Been there, seen it, done it. If we're going to die at least make it for something other than some self serving adolescent fit.
#3
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. General P ought to be worrying about killing terrorists, not a Church exercising its right to freedom of expression in Florida. Typical meddling in affairs in a totally different jurisdiction under some sort of guise of 'winning hearts and minds' PR or psyops. Gimme a phucking break. Its a war, go the hell out on a limb and kill some terrorists, quit babysitting, and earn your pay. You've been given BILLIONS of dollars to work with, we want to see some shit destroyed blown up and our enemies driven before us. I am sick to death of this PR campaign war. We can do clean up afterwards.
#4
Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard will be awarded the M100 media prize today in Potsdam, Germany for his "unbending engagement for freedom of the press and freedom of opinion, and for his courage to defend these democratic values despite threats of death and violence".
Chancellor Merkel will give the keynote speech, and she won't be wearing a Burka.
Should that ceremony be cancelled?
Should the German police arrest Westergaard instead and deliver him to the Afghans for "trial" and execution?
#5
Islam reminds me of the frightening 2 yo childhood phase where some kids literally bang their heads against objects when having a tantrum, until an adult comes along and picks them up, (still kicking and screaming) and diverts their attention to something beside giving themselves a concussion. You can let the child bang away, but in the end, you're going to have to stop them or they will destroy your home and their own skull. Appeasement is not the way to go.
#6
I'm not going to criticize Petreus or his generals for saying what he has to say to minimize threats against the troops. Speak soft and carry a big stick is not a bad idea. Just be ready to use the stick at all times. Which maybe he isn't and Obama isn't.
No they can't have our earth and water or our toys. Better they know sooner than after they nuke one of our cities. Some kids on the block never realize that stealing our toys is not going to get them the outcome they are desiring, which is more toys.
#1
Most of the problems he is objecting to are clearly on "the other side of the line", as far as the legitimate interests of government and society go. That is, they go to the personal freedom, no matter how stupid, that people can exercise, no matter what government thinks.
For example, he cites the Mormons, and their previous intolerance of black people *in their church*. Despite his outrage, this is called "freedom of association", for which government and society have no, zero, legitimate role in altering, with the exception of criminal associations.
That is, there is no compelling or even reasonable need for government or society to force you to associate with people you don't want to associate with. And this can be based on race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, body odor, favorite sports team, anything or nothing.
As far as what parents do with their children, it is long established that children are in effect chattel of their parents, no matter what Hillary Clinton thinks. Parents can involuntarily incarcerate their children until the age of 18, and some do, if they want to. And the children have no right to Habeus Corpus.
Only when there are terrible and obvious consequences of putting the child's life at risk, or exposing them to damaging abuse, does the state have the authority to intervene. Getting lethal herpes from a diseased Mohel is unfortunate, but is still not the state's business.
Pre-adolescent marriage and female circumcision is, however.
The state does have a police and regulatory interest in "public health" and "child welfare", and transmission of infectious diseases to and among infants and children is on the list. Nanny Bloomberg's anti-fat strictures should not be. Marriage age and FGM should be.
With all that said, I take Hitchen's secular point to be that western democracy is the superior method to addressing these issues as opposed to religious law, of whatever kind.
#3
Pretty bad example you chose, Moose. Of all the areas in which an intrusive and corrective role for the federal government, and American society more generally, might be justified, certainly the area of combatting racism is the least objectionable.
Public health and child welfare: these are persistent concerns. The extraordinary damage wrought by slavery, Jim Crow and a century of bitter, violent racial strife: this was a national crisis, in many ways THE paramount national crisis of the American republic. We forget now, but the cost-- social, economic, political, moral-- to America of the broken and scandalous American race system was enormous and could no longer be sustained throughout a Cold War which was fought as much on moral groudns as realpolitik ones.
Damn straight that we should intervene in churches (or mosques, or temples of any kind) that preach race hatred or blatantly racist doctrines. The islamists' hate doctrines are precisely why the Victory Mosque in NYC is so disturbing. No one else gets a pass, either.
#4
Lex - I agree that it's a bad example, but I'll join Moose if the concern is the extent to which there must be absolute silence about freedom of assembly, or the 4th amendment right against seizure. Rand Paul got into some trouble for trying to raise this issue, but the left has framed the "civil rights" argument such that there is NO acceptable alternative argument to the "public" accommodations cases.
The alternative argument is that "private" racial restrictions should be shunned, campaigned against, given no legal sanction, but should not be illegal. But what is the difference between public racism and private racism? Official power?
What does that mean? Does it make a racist church, not a church under US law?
I've always wondered how the US Government can have diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia given the 1st amendment prohibitions. The Vatican I can understand, given its secular functions, but I don't see such distinctions in KSA. That, and what is the arab word for secular anyway?
#5
Hmmph. Hitchens would have been better off writing about he taming and domestication of religious behavior- not faith. Sloppy language on his part, but I have noticed that his thinking isn't always clear on this subject.
#7
what is the difference between public racism and private racism?
Not a lawyer here but if your institution serves a large public audience (as opposed to a handful of family or friends) AND receives significant and specific public benefits - for example, tax exempt status, as is the case with a religious institution, or a business permit, as is the case with, say, a country club - then you absolutely cannot promote racial hatred or racially discriminate.
Pinochle game in your private house? Curse and slander all you like. Ain't nobody's bidness etc.
Church, country club, school, restaurant, etc? You're serving the public, and the public has every right to ensure you don't whip up race hatred, this toxic chemical that nearly destroyed our society.
My $0.02, anyway-- again, no lawyer here, just applying sense and a knowledge of history and social dynamics.
#8
Lex - that's a nice summary of the public accommodation cases from the mid-60s, and how the 64 civil rights act worked.
The interesting questions get into the clash between those laws and the 1st amendment treatment of religion. Is a racist church legal? Does it get a tax break?
I think Hitchens is trying to find how our history answers these questions, and how Islam is not yet responsive to that. Whether it will ever be responsive, or whether it can be responsive, as presently constituted are the obvious follow ups. I'm doubtful myself.
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