Solving a nuclear crisis for dummies

Most people aren't too concerned with international conflicts, but seeing as how it's my major, I tend to deal with them quite a bit. Also, by virtue of the fact that it's my major, my professors have a lot of first hand experience in dealing with such things.

For example, my Asian Political System professor, Dr. Han Park. He's ethnically Korean, born in China, and a U.S. citizen. In the world of political negotiations, he's a pretty big deal. He just got back from North Korea where we was involved with informal, upper-level negotiations with the North Korean government about their nuclear program. He just spent the whole class telling us all about it, which is cool because we don't have to take notes, and it's actually interesting. He's going to be on CNN International at 1:30 today, and Wolf Blitzer's show tomorrow.

He's a smart guy and all, but sometimes he just doesn't make sense. He's adamantly anti-war, but at the same time is completely against genocide, dictatorship, human rights abuses, etc. He'll admit that sometimes war is the only way to stop these things, but apparently Iraq, North Korea, the Sudan, etc. aren't QUITE bad enough to justify it. Meanwhile people are starving to death, being tortured and hacked to death by machetes. But I digress.

Anyhoo, in listening to him talk, I came up with my own way to solve the whole thing. But for those of you who haven't been paying attention, I'll give you a little recap of the whole situtation.

The U.S. was at war with Korea back in the 50's. It's called the Forgotten War, but I don't remember why. The war never officially ended, so we could technically go blow the crap out of North Korea without even mentioning it, and just be like 'What? It was just a ceasefire...' But that's not going to happen.

After the war and the split between North and South Korea, the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung ruled for like 40 years. As seems to be strangely common in Asian countries, they thought he was pretty much a god. That's never good.

So he kicks the bucket after like 40 years and his son, Kim Jong Il takes over. Again, they think he's a god, or at least they're forced to. Thing is, the guy is a total nutjob. He's sex-crazed, an alcoholic, has delusions of grandeur and a Napoleonic Complex. Do you have any idea how short you have to be to have a Napoleonic Complex in Korea? (Fun fact: if you want to sound smart, refer to North Korea as 'the DPRK'. The official name for North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It's kind of ironic though because it's neither democratic, a republic, or for the people.)

At any rate, he wants North Korea to be important around the world so he spends the vast majority of what little money the country has on the military. They have about a million standing army personel, which is the equivelant of the US having a 12 million man standing force, or roughly 25 times of what we have now. In other words, it's pretty big.

Long story short, they pull out of the treaty that says they won't pursue nuclear weapons. We tried making an agreement under Clinton that would've prevented them from doing that, but they lied about it and so did we, so it never really went anywhere. So now they've got the bomb, they're really pissed off at us, and that makes us nervous.

So what do we do? Here's my plan: nothing. Just let them have at it. Here's why: if they start going nuclear, Japan is going to drop the whole pacifist thing and get their own bombs, and so is South Korea. That's going to make China nervous, and they'll increase their own arsenal. Taiwan really isn't going to like that, so they'll get their own program. Not being able to compete in a regional arms race, North Korea will pull a USSR and collapse under its own weight, and they know this. Truth be told, North Korea has no intention of building any more bombs or even testing/using the ones they already have. They're just holding out for as long as they can to get the best deal.

China certainly doesn't want an arms race because things are going to good for them economically right now for them to screw it up. And since China is North Korea's only friend in the world right now, they have an incredible amount of sway, and since it's in China's best interest to save the communist government of North Korea, they're not going to let Kim Jong Il do anything stupid that might rock the boat.

So all in all, we just need to sit tight and call their bluff. If China knows what's good for them, they'll take care of it.