I find this Chinese suggestion fascinating:
China's president offered his condolences for the death of Kim Jong-Il on Tuesday as Beijing, fearing instability on its border, called on North Koreans to unite behind their former leader's son and heir.
There was a time when a smooth transition would be assumed. But the Zygote Kim may lack the authority to control the increasingly unreliable security forces. I assume this means that China backs a North Korean faction that stands behind Kim Jong-Un.
This will surely give the Obama administration an excuse to open up the aid spigot in a forlorn hope that finally a reform-minded, reasonably enlightened dictator has emerged from the life-and-death, winner-take-all, communist elites.
And I was just pondering that I should commend the Obama administration for not doing what I expected them to do--reach out to North Korea.
I'm in favor of continuing to talk while letting North Korea die. Oh, and watching them very carefully until they do die, of course.
Let me again bring up what I think is the basic problem of talking Pyongyang into giving up nukes (from the above post):
Oh, and explain to me again why a nutjob who starves his people to build nuclear-tipped missiles logically will give up those nuclear-tipped missiles in order to get money to feed his people. I mean, under the circumstances I'm fairly unclear on why we think any deal would work.
That should give us pause in the power of our talking to change North Korea, shouldn't it? Even when we are dealing with a son of a nutjob?
