Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Tough talk was no substitute for policy, however. As Washington ratcheted up the pressure, so did Pyongyang, a longtime master at playing a weak hand brilliantly. North Korea threw out international inspectors and restarted its weapons program, once again reprocessing plutonium from spent fuel rods. Pyongyang even upped the ante by hinting that it had a uranium-enrichment program paralleling its plutonium one. And it chose to end eight years of a self-imposed moratorium on missile testing on July 4, 2006 - American Independence...
...Three months later it exploded a nuclear device, joining the élite club of seven other known nuclear states. Years of "warnings, threats, sanctions, muscle-flexing and half-hearted diplomacy" had made North Korea more, not less, dangerous. Chinoy quotes one U.S. policymaker comparing Washington's policy toward Pyongyang to "a six-year old playing checkers," with no ability to look beyond the next move...
...With the U.S. bogged down in Iraq, and both China and South Korea adamantly opposed to military action by Washington, the U.S. eventually found itself with little choice but to talk seriously to Pyongyang. The appointment of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State in the second Bush term and Christopher Hill as the chief U.S. negotiator brought in a team that was intent on a deal and willing and able to push the neocons to the side to get an agreement...
...insights into Washington's dance with Pyongyang, Chinoy's impressive effort ultimately falls short. The book was written even as events continued to unfold at a rapid speed, giving the final section a jumbled feel that is at odds with the more measured bulk of the text. More serious, though, are the flaws in Chinoy's analysis. Chinoy has visited North Korea more than a dozen times in the past two decades and is clearly engrossed by the country. Indeed, it is revealing that the first photo in the book is of Chinoy meeting Kim Il Sung...
...human spirit so ruthlessly that Mao's Cultural Revolution, by contrast, looks like a dinner party. Yet the country's appalling record on missile and weapons proliferation, its illegal-drug sales and counterfeiting and its abysmal human-rights record here are implicitly just the antics of a misunderstood regime. Pyongyang's extortionate tactics with Kim Dae Jung, the South Korean leader who tried to coax it out of isolation, are also glossed over. In Chinoy's zeal to castigate the neocons, there is a subtle subtext that the North is a more or less normal country being prevented by silly...