Hat tip to OneFreeKorea, for pointing out this piece from NRO by John O’Sullivan:
The deal just keeps getting better for Kim Jong Il
Rudyard Kipling put it well a century ago:
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:—
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.The Dane in this week’s crisis is Kim Jong Il, the grand panjandrum of North Korea. Last week there was modified rapture in the chancelleries of the six great powers engaged in talking to Kim—Japan, China, Russia, India, South Korea and the United States—because they had negotiated a brand new compromise with him.
But can Kim be trusted to keep his side of the bargain this time?
Well, it’s true that this deal is so good for him and the North Korean government that he really doesn’t need to cheat. Kim gets to keep his rocket programs and his chemical and biological stockpiles; he gets normalized relations with the U.S., which means the removal of North Korea from the State Department’s list of “terrorist nations”; and he gets international respectability. What reasonable despot with a despicable human rights record could ask for more?At the same time he may not be able to stop himself cheating. He knows that the U.S. government, anxious to parade its sole diplomatic achievement, will be keen to turn a blind eye to any violations of this agreement. So he can probably cheat with impunity.
This is nothing more than the Carter/Clinton/Albright debacle being resusitated and propped up as a Diplomatic solution to the crisis with North Korea. After all, it worked so well last time. Rather than to continue with the very successful policy of choking off Kim’s access to congac and caviar, and banks to launder his drug money and counterfeit dollars, the Diplomats want to go back to appeasing him, in the hope that he will keep his word this time.
As Kipling pointed out, the moral is plain:
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:—
“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame.
And the nation that plays it is lost!”