Posted by max161
Agreed, yet...Ironically the alliance military forces do two things: on the one hand they do deter attack from the north and at the same time they provide the justification for the regime's key internal political orientation which is the military first policy which is the basic justification for why the people must sacrifice and suffer to protect their nation from aggression. Sure it would be a nice thought to remove US forces or reduce the threat but the irony would be that it would lead to internal regime friction as the justification for the military first policy would be removed. The elite would then likely be challenged and it could end up back to the only option the regime has left when faced with internal threats and that would be to execute its campaign plan to reunify the peninsula. And of course it would be more enticing if the ROK-US alliance was weak and there were no US forces on the peninsula.
I understand all the foreign policy theories of negotiations and how we think we should deal with the north from certain theoretical schools of thought but the most important thing is to understand the real nature of the regime and deal with it as it really is and not as we would wish it to be. We have tried many negotiating tactics from 4 party to 6 party talks - direct ROK - north Korea (which have happened in public and private over decades) and the north reverts to its same pattern of action as it has for 60 years. We have had many diplomats who have thought they could negotiate agreements with the north in good faith but the north continues to break them because it suits them to do so (and we end up giving them concessions again and again over the years).
I realize we have to deal with the world we have, yet it seems ironic that we have policy shapers in the Capital region calling for U.S. intervention in Syria which more than likely would empower extremists who would further destabilize another important region of the world, while we completely ignore the humanitarian disaster in North Korea and instead focus almost solely on their WMD program. I tend to agree that the status quo is probably the best solution for the states in the region for now, but it is a crying shame the best solution condemns a few million people abject poverty and no hope for a better tomorrow. On the other hand the Syrian economy was expanding (and of course so was the gap between the haves and have nots), and while the people weren't free to practice religious extremism their life wasn't all that bad. Assayd is was not Qadaffi, but obviously his response to the revolt has put in a positon with few options to reduce the tensions using anything resembling a political solution.
One more thought, while we preach soft power, in reality we leverage our coercive power more often than not. It seems that if we implement sanctions that result in punishing the affected population we can still call it soft power if it is intended to result in freedom, nuke free countries, etc. In reality when you say we have given North Korea several chances, that is true but it has been always been a carrot and stick approach, and the threat of the stick was always there. No where near the extent you have, I have also been watching the regimes behavior for a long time, and I agree we with to deal with the reality of the situation, but also think there will be opportunites to reframe our approach if we remain open to them.
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