Ego gratification.

• Author: Schindler, Sol
• Position: North Korea - Essay

Albert Einstein once remarked that a sign of insanity is repeating continually a failed process and expecting the next procedure to be successful. He was not thinking of the past thirty years of negotiations between the United States and North Korea but his remarks are nevertheless pertinent. North Korea has violated every agreement it has made with the United States consistently and with clear intent and it has now reached a point where it no longer wishes to negotiate about virtually anything. As Kim Jung Un has stated they will not give up their nuclear weapons even if we offered them billions of dollars. Those who used to intone negotiate with complete devotion now do so with little conviction. We have reached an impasse and no one seems to know quite what to do. True, we have sent two (not one but two) stealth bombers to South Korea and have inched some naval defense facilities closer to the South Korean shore but our administration has made no pronouncements on the situation. We have, as everyone knows, an infantry division with supporting elements, and air force and naval elements posted there, and they are on their usual alert.

There are within our society those who because they find it difficult to see evil in anyone consider China our friend. After all we owe them a great deal of money, they have bought hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of bonds from us, and we buy a great deal of junk from them, and they are paying hard cash for an increasing number of American and Canadian firms. They would suffer financially if the American economy were to collapse; therefore, they have to be on our side, so to speak. Equally embarrassing to the Chinese, they feel, would be the collapse of North Korea. Refugees would come flooding over their border with consequent unrest and disorder in the neighboring provinces. This last argument is not that convincing. Because of the Chinese restrictive birth policies young Chinese bachelors have difficulty in finding young women to marry - there are very few of them. Consequently any marriageable Korean woman who sneaks across the border is welcome with open arms. In general terms the Chinese can seal the border if they follow their usual procedures: announce publically and widely that the border is sealed, and then publically shoot or imprison those guards known to have accepted the most bribes to allow people in. This has been past practice and can be resumed easily, and the border will then remain...