I might have my criticism on the DPRK but making their NUCLEAR PROGRAM a TOP PRIORITY, STATE POLICY (NON NEGOTIABLE UNDER ANY CIRSCUMSTANCES) isn’t one of them.
Funny thing about that is they did negotiate on it, and then the US started fucking with them even harder in the exact same way they did with Iran over its deals about nuclear energy and refinement. It’s only at that point that the DPRK doubled down on actually achieving it ASAP and really came to understand that even post Cold War the US could not be negotiated with because any deal they struck would just be ignored by the US anyways.
Famously they negotiated a nuclear deal with Clinton that would have replaced their home grown and weaponized nuclear industry with an internationally monitored peaceful use only one, but when Clinton brought that deal back to Congress they refused to ratify it. From 96 to 03 they tried to keep it alive but George W killed it more or less when he was declaring the DPRK part of the “axis of evil”. From then on the DPRK has been pretty single minded about pursuing nukes and that shift has been proven right by every other country the US signed a nuclear deal with getting screwed over.
I used to be more critical of North Korea directing so much of their national output towards their military. My idea was that this was a false economy, and that building up their civilian sector would have expanded their national capacity at a pace where they would end up with more military capacity.
I see now that:
They actually did make an effort to do that. but the collapse of the communist bloc and US sanctions made a long period of economic contraction inevitable.
The North Korean state would have likely been invaded or bombed if it had not maintained a credible military deterrence. It’s notable that they have never been the target of serious military action since the Korean War ended.
I might have my criticism on the DPRK but making their NUCLEAR PROGRAM a TOP PRIORITY, STATE POLICY (NON NEGOTIABLE UNDER ANY CIRSCUMSTANCES) isn’t one of them.
Funny thing about that is they did negotiate on it, and then the US started fucking with them even harder in the exact same way they did with Iran over its deals about nuclear energy and refinement. It’s only at that point that the DPRK doubled down on actually achieving it ASAP and really came to understand that even post Cold War the US could not be negotiated with because any deal they struck would just be ignored by the US anyways.
Famously they negotiated a nuclear deal with Clinton that would have replaced their home grown and weaponized nuclear industry with an internationally monitored peaceful use only one, but when Clinton brought that deal back to Congress they refused to ratify it. From 96 to 03 they tried to keep it alive but George W killed it more or less when he was declaring the DPRK part of the “axis of evil”. From then on the DPRK has been pretty single minded about pursuing nukes and that shift has been proven right by every other country the US signed a nuclear deal with getting screwed over.
I used to be more critical of North Korea directing so much of their national output towards their military. My idea was that this was a false economy, and that building up their civilian sector would have expanded their national capacity at a pace where they would end up with more military capacity.
I see now that:
They actually did make an effort to do that. but the collapse of the communist bloc and US sanctions made a long period of economic contraction inevitable.
The North Korean state would have likely been invaded or bombed if it had not maintained a credible military deterrence. It’s notable that they have never been the target of serious military action since the Korean War ended.
My criticism of the DPRK is that president KJU wears a leather jacket and liked KDE more than GNOME at one point because of his apple brain.
Everything else is unimpeachable Ws.