First off, I never implied anyone should invade to liberate the north, that is a reach on your part. My point goes back to my original point, the U.S. and other nations openly oppose DPRK's WMD program, but are relatively quiet about the human rights abuses in North Korea. Expanding the focus of pressure to include human rights does put China and other supporters of North Korea is tougher position diplomatically to continue to support an oppressive government. Failure to gain support through their normal cycles of provocation because the world is tiring of their treatment of their people puts them in a position where they'll be more likely to adapt changes over time. This would potentially increase the stability of North Korea and the region. A lot of countries are tired of the U.S. determining who can and can't have nuclear weapons, so that is hardly a high moral ground issue that resonates.I'm not sure lack of concern is the operative constraint. What would you want the South Korean government, or anyone else, to do to liberate the north?
What world are you writing about? I seem to recall some rather lofty and unrealistic policy objectives for both Iraq and Afghanistan. Again you're the one saying liberate the North, I'm looking for strategies for changing the behavior of the regime in the North, not replacing it. Change is already happening in North Korea, so I'm leary of the experts who continue to believe the legacy system will continue forever without a military intervention. It is evolving now and the world should explore ways to shape that evolution.There's nothing wrong with a moral aspect to policy objectives, but all policy objectives, moral and otherwise, are constraint by a limited range of realistic policy options. Liberating the north and raising the population's standard of living to that of the south is a lovely and moral objective, but without a realistic strategy for achieving the objective, what's it worth
In simple terms I'm recommending widening our aperture and getting in front of the problem instead of our continuing ### for tat. ### for tat may be the appropriate short term response to hold things in place, but it is inadequate for longer term shaping actions and activities.
Originally Posted by sapperfitz82
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