Don't Panic! August 14 2003
Your war questions answered
Are we any closer to resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis?
There's something weird going on in North Korea.
Instead of recklessly escalating to a showdown with the United States over their nuclear weapons program, a policy that I've come to rely on when writing this column, the North Koreans have agreed to participate in multi-party talks, which is what we've been demanding all along.
I'm still trying to figure out why the most reliably kooky kooks in the world are all of a sudden acting sensibly. Maybe they figured out that it's best not to tussle with a country where someone is considered qualified for high office because they starred in Predator.
Or perhaps, North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jung Il (the son of former Dear, now Dead, Leader Kim Il Sung) was watching the news recently and saw what happens when our military gets its hands on the crazed sons of crazed dictators.
Maybe they didn't make the bunker door big enough, can't get the nuclear weapons out, and now they're stalling for time.
Whatever the reason, North Korea agreeing to multi-party negotiations is a victory for us and for the White House. Up until now, the North Koreans always wanted negotiations with us, they just wanted them to be one-on-one, mano-a-wacko with the United States. Their irrationale was that since it's the U.S. that's threatening their security with Axis of Evil talk and threats of pre-emptive strikes, that the U.S. was the only country with which they needed to negotiate.
To its credit, the White House stood firm. Their response to North Korea's demands was "You can't bully us into one-on-one to talks. Who the heck do you think we are? Democrats?" Our thinking is that an agreement signed by the U.S., North Korea, and all the important countries surrounding it has a much better chance of sticking than a U.S.-North Korea-only agreement. Remember, Clinton struck a one-on-one deal with them back in '94 and they broke it.
The kinky six-way that the red commie North Korean bastards agreed to will probably take place in September. Joining North Korea and the U.S. at the negotiating table will be South Korea, Japan, Russia and China. South Korea, Russia and China share a border with North Korea and thus have a keen interest in what explodes there. Japan, though separated from North Korea by the Sea of Japan, is within easy pinko missile range. It would greatly prefer that those missiles not be nuclear-tipped.
Once again, this writer has been excluded from all the negotiations. I suppose they just can't handle the truth, man. Nevertheless, my inexpert analysis, spidey-sense and woman's intuition are telling me that the pivot man (or Lucky Pierre) in the kinky six-way talks is gonna be China. Historically, China has been North Korea's best ally. When the U.S. opened a few cans of Whoop-Ass on North Korea during the first half of the Korean War, it was the Chinese who joined in and saved Kim Il Sung's hide.
Times have changed though. China is no longer about spreading communism throughout Asia. They're good decent capitalists now and they don't want their commercial interests messed up by some stinking war on the Korean peninsula. They also have a military/strategic interest in making sure that North Korea doesn't become a nuclear power. If North Korea goes nuclear, so might Japan, or China's archenemy/brother Taiwan.
So, yeah, we're a couple of steps closer to solving the North Korean nuclear crisis, if only because negotiations take us a couple of steps back from the brink of war.
Don't worry though — the North Korea we all know and hate hasn't given up all of its wacky ways just yet. They just issued a statement calling our Undersecretary of State for Arms Control "human scum," a "bloodsucker," and "beastly." There are also reports that they're selling missiles to the nuke kooks in Iran. Scariest of all, last month North Korea's official news agency reported that it is marketing an herb called "royal blood-fresh" that cures, among other things, giddiness. Preventing giddiness. Now that's evil.
