Obama’s message for North Korea in visiting Burma: Let’s make up

I think the President said the right things but, he probably knows full well that the north will not respond to the comparison with Burma.  But this is quite a conclusion from Mr. Fisher:

For these reasons, it’s difficult to see how North Korea might follow the same path as Burma to opening, reform, and friendship with the United States. But the strongest case for Obama’s offer to Pyongyang might not be that it’s likely to work, but that no one seems to have any better ideas.

There are some who have come up with other ideas (perhaps we cannot judge whether they are better until they are implemented).  But some of those other ideas are complex, politically challenging, and require a long term commitment to come to fruition.  And every idea that is proposed is always faced with the risk of potential war or collapse or a combination of the two and that creates an almost strategic paralysis when dealing with the Korea Question (e.g., the division of the Peninsula as per para 60 of the 1953 UN Armistice)

V/R
Dave

Obama’s message for North Korea in visiting Burma: Let’s make up

By Max Fisher , Updated: November 19, 2012

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un applauds during a military parade. (Ed Jones / AFP/Getty Images)

On Monday, President Obama visited a medium-sized Asian country known for its international isolation, brutal military dictatorship and flirtations with nuclear weapons. If that sounds familiar, you are not alone in seeing some parallels between the reforming autocracy of Burma (also known as Myanmar; more on that distinction here), which Obama became the first-ever sitting U.S. president to visit, and North Korea.

Before the trip, I wrote that Obama’s bracingly fast-paced detente with Burma sends the message to other rogue states that the Obama administration is willing to let bygones be bygones, to work with ruling regimes instead of pushing its leaders into international criminal courts, and to even reward regimes that take positive steps. I assumed such a message would be implicit, but it turns out to have been quite explicit. Here’s Obama addressing Pyongyang directly in his speech today at Yangon University in Burma (emphasis mine):

And here in Rangoon, I want to send a message across Asia: We don’t need to be defined by the prisons of the past. We need to look forward to the future. To the leadership of North Korea, I have offered a choice: let go of your nuclear weapons and choose the path of peace and progress. If you do, you will find an extended hand from the United States of America. 

In 2012, we don’t need to cling to the divisions of East, West and North and South. We welcome the peaceful rise of China, your neighbor to the North; and India, your neighbor to the West. The United Nations — the United States will work with any nation, large or small, that will contribute to a world that is more peaceful and more prosperous, and more just and more free. And the United States will be a friend to any nation that respects the rights of its citizens and the responsibilities of international law.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/19/obamas-message-for-north-korea-in-visiting-burma-lets-make-up/

(Continued at the above link)