Word: kim
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Michael Armacost, a former U.S. ambassador to Japan who is now a visiting professor at Stanford University, does not believe the Kims are working on a deal. "I've never been fully convinced," he says, "that people invest that much money and effort in a program they're going to bargain away." The diplomatic fog, he thinks, has all been cover for a determined bomb program. Norman Levin, a senior analyst at the Rand Corp., believes North Korea is bargaining, but not about economic aid or diplomatic recognition. The issue is securing the succession of Kim Jong Il, who does...
Perhaps the best-informed analysis comes from a Western diplomat who recently visited Pyongyang and talked with senior government officials including members of the Kim family. This diplomat describes the North Korean attitude as a siege mentality, desperate to maintain itself, fearful of attack. He does not think Kim Il Sung is looking for an economic payoff or playing a self-aggrandizing game of brinkmanship. Rather he is obsessed with assuring the survival not just of the regime but also of the very country he created. The diplomat compares Kim's quest for nuclear power with French President Charles...
...Kim really believes his survival is at stake, what can the U.S. and the U.N. do to make him halt his nuclear program? Possibly nothing. Kim must be aware that the West's demands will not stop once he ends production. Seung Soo Han, South Korea's ambassador to the U.S., says that his government is as intent on learning whether the North already has the plutonium for a bomb as in stopping Pyongyang from making new weapons. "Our ultimate aim," he says, "is to make the Korean peninsula nuclear free...
Most experts say Kim is not crazy, but shrewd and calculating. He may not risk destruction by launching a war, but he may not give in to sanctions either...
...succeeds in imposing a sanctions regime, it will have to remain in place for a long time, until the Kims, their government and Stalinism in North Korea have died out. In Europe, Clinton was reviewing options with his foreign policy aides, trying to anticipate moves for next week and next month. If Kim Il Sung is staking the survival of his regime and his nation on the building of a nuclear arsenal, sanctions are not likely to change his course. And for Bill Clinton and the other world leaders who see nuclear proliferation as a deadly peril to the world...