12/30/2023 0 Comments Shamyla this american lifeThe Map of Death, him posing with the disco ball, that all seems very calculated, an attempt to show the world and the people of North Korea that he is in charge and he's not going away. All the tests seem well-planned out, like the countries before that have pursued nuclear weapons. Ruthless and determined to stay in power, but rational. From everything he's seen, Kim Jong Un seems to be pretty rational. Jeffrey says he does not stay up at night worrying about North Korea launching a nuclear missile at a US city. In a way, where you stand on this issue comes down to the question, how crazy do you think Kim Jong Un is? Which is a strange idea, but it's worked so far, and presumably it would be the same with North Korea. You build them precisely so that no one will use them. But the other view was, no, these are an entirely different category of weapon. One was that, hey, these are just bigger bombs. Nobody does that.Īfter nuclear weapons came along in World War II, there were two views. But what kind of government trots out before its citizens and says, hey, you know this really tough problem that terrifies you? We don't have the slightest idea what to do. And I think he kind of knows that they don't actually know what the heck they're doing. And I think the reason he was taking it pretty well is because he's a government official. I was kind of beating him up, and he was taking it pretty well. Maybe there will still be some problems with it, but I don't think you've got a couple of years, chief. And it's like, in a couple of years, they could have a thermonuclear weapon on an ICBM. It's like, no, I think we'll give it a couple of years and, you know, we'll see where we are. And he was sort of saying like, well, we're going to have to give sanctions some more time to work. I mean, there have been so many at this point. I had a big conversation with a Japanese government official about this, where we were talking about, oh, I don't know, some missile test. I actually had a big argument with- I shouldn't call it an argument. And then earlier this year, North Korea released an even more remarkable photo- Kim Jong Un posing with this shiny thing. The photo is well-known in analyst circles. If you zoomed in, you could see these lines that terminate at cities in the US, presumably the ones North Korea would like to be able to strike with nuclear missiles. And in the background, on the wall, was this map. It was taken inside some military facility. A few years ago, North Korea released this propaganda photo. North Korea has been pretty clear about what it wants to be able to do with its bombs. But they've gotten better and done more tests since then. Jeffrey says his reaction at the time was, they are the worst ever at this. When North Korea did its first nuclear test in 2006, it was basically a dud. Jeffrey says Kim Jong Un believes that, as long as he has nukes and missiles to launch them, no one will mess with him. North Korea, understandably, has said no. There have been attempts at negotiation over the years, but usually the US has insisted that North Korea give up its nukes, basically wanting to go back to those days before North Korea had a bomb. They took him to this huge building as long as a football field. The North Koreans actually had him over a bunch. They certainly had them by 2010, when a US weapons scientist, Sig Hecker, was invited over for a visit. In 2002, the CIA said North Korea was building centrifuges, big spinning tubes that could enrich uranium. On the North Korea side, it looked like they might still be working on a bomb. There were also delays building the new reactors, which were to be paid for mostly by South Korea and Japan. We were slow in fulfilling our part of the deal. But some Republican members of Congress felt like we were appeasing what was a brutal regime, so ending sanctions was a nonstarter. And we'd try to resume normal economic and diplomatic relations. North Korea would also get fuel oil to tide them over until the new reactors could be built. In exchange, they would get two new nuclear power plants, a different type that would make electricity and would be harder to get plutonium out of for bombs. North Korea would shut down its nuclear reactor that could produce plutonium for bombs. The US- this was the Clinton administration- and North Korea had negotiated something called the Agreed Framework. Jeffrey points out it's always easier to get someone to give up something that they don't have yet. This was before North Korea had nuclear bombs. Jeffrey says our best chance to stop this was probably in the late '90s. How did we get here? This was a half hour discussion, but I'll distill it down for you. We'd reach some agreement with North Korea, or we'd do something before things got this bad. I had always imagined we'd figure something out.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |