Word: brinkmanship
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When Mikheil Saakashvili led Georgia's bloodless "revolution of the roses" to oust Eduard Shevardnadze as President in November, he demonstrated formidable political skills: an ability to excite a crowd, a flair for clandestine organization, a taste for brinkmanship. Now President Saakashvili is using those skills to try and bring Ajaria - one of three breakaway regions - back into the fold. An economically important Black Sea region, Ajaria is run by Aslan Abashidze, a tough, rich autocrat Saakashvili has called a "feudal chief." When the President turned up on Ajaria's borders, ostensibly to campaign for allies running in the March...
...weapons-development program?the North's authoritarian leadership received the clearest message yet of how isolated it has become. Moreover, U.S. officials hope the North's latest displays of intractability will finally convince its only friends, Russia and China, to express their impatience with the regime's bluster and brinkmanship...
...Before it revealed its clandestine program in violation of the 1994 agreement, North Korea's nuclear brinkmanship has been viewed by many in Washington and Seoul as a form of extortion designed to shore up an economy in free-fall. But some U.S. officials now suspect that Kim Jong-il may have concluded that a nuclear deterrent is the key to his survival - a belief reinforced by the fate of Saddam Hussein - and that he's rushing headlong to attain nuclear status regardless of what transpires in negotiations. After all, the nations talking to North Korea to prevent it going...
...which leaves Roh in an awkward position during his White House visit. While campaigning for President, Roh promised to maintain peace on the peninsula at almost any cost, but the North's brinkmanship makes it tougher to argue for dangling carrots instead of wielding sticks. Seoul still wants further discussions and thinks the U.S. might eventually convince Kim to disarm by accepting the North's latest demands for economic assistance. But Washington isn't biting. Even U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, widely seen as relatively moderate, has refused to embrace the North's blueprint. "This proposal is a nonstarter...
...Regardless of the tone taken in Washington, however, North Korea appears bent on ratcheting up the confrontation. Many Korea analysts had long viewed Pyongyang's nuclear brinkmanship as part of a pattern of extortion - acting in a menacing way, and then promising good behavior in exchange for economic assistance. But many fear that Kim Jong Il may have decided that a nuclear deterrent is the only way to ward off the threat of U.S. military action to smash his regime, and that while pressure from neighbors such as China - which is North Korea's economic life-support system right...