The United States and other countries are demanding North Korea abandon its nuclear programs by the end of 2008, it was reported Saturday. (story here)
Or what? This is a pretty silly predicament for a "superpower" to find itself in - in the vernacular of some folks back home, seems the Feds are betwixt a rock and a hard place.
The Bush administration also threatened to impose additional sanctions on North Korea if Pyongyang refuses to accept the demand, the Kyodo News Agency quoted sources as saying Saturday.
Oh yeah, that will do the trick. What foolishness. I was thinking today as I watched the news how silly it is to keep enemies of folks that really cannot threaten us.
Take Cuba for instance. Prior to 1989 you could make the argument that since Cuba was communist and had crawled into bed with the Soviets previously, they were a potential threat - sanctions probably made sense.
Why do they make sense now? Castro does not murder or starve his people - the country makes do with what it has. To be certain he had a high time for a while attempting to be an international revolutionary leader, but no more.
The best policy with Cuba would have been to say to them as soon as the wall fell and the Soviet empire went into cardiac arrest, "our conflict is over". The US could have done that unilaterally - we do not need the permission of a small country like Cuba to say we no longer consider them an adversary. We should have told the Cubans to fill up our humidors with their cigars and that they were free to buy as many non-military goods from us as they please. What would have been the harm in lifting the travel restrictions - letting old expats go home, seeing their kin and tell of how great capitalism was to them?
Castro would have looked pretty silly if he attempted to hold out and still call us a foe.
The beauty of being a superpower ought to include the ability to ignore mosquitoes - eventually they will just go away. I cannot imagine the world heavyweight boxing champion getting all upset because some young wanna-be nobody in a gym wants to fight him.
World politics really ought to be the same way. Just stop making a big deal out of the little guys, ignore them until they actually demonstrate some sort of real threat. Preemption and forward posturing seems to me to invite more hostility than it prevents.
No comments:
Post a Comment