Did the U.S. provoke N. Korea intentionally?

Thom Hartmann just discussed this article from Newsweek International on his show. Believe it or not, it didn't make the U.S. edition...yet. It's a must-read:


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15175633/site/newsweek/

By Selig S. Harrison
Newsweek International
Oct. 16, 2006 issue - On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would "respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations."

Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country's access to the international banking system, branding it a "criminal state" guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.

The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence. Whatever the truth, I found on a recent trip to Pyongyang that North Korean leaders view the financial sanctions as the cutting edge of a calculated effort by dominant elements in the administration to undercut the Sept. 19 accord, squeeze the Kim Jong Il regime and eventually force its collapse. My conversations made clear that North Korea's missile tests in July and its threat last week to conduct a nuclear test explosion at an unspecified date "in the future" were directly provoked by the U.S. sanctions. In North Korean eyes, pressure must be met with pressure to maintain national honor and, hopefully, to jump-start new bilateral negotiations with Washington that could ease the financial squeeze. When I warned against a nuclear test, saying that it would only strengthen opponents of negotiations in Washington, several top officials replied that "soft" tactics had not worked and they had nothing to lose.

It was no secret to journalists covering the September 2005 negotiations, or to the North Koreans, that the agreement was bitterly controversial within the administration and represented a victory for State Department advocates of a conciliatory approach to North Korea over proponents of "regime change" in Pyongyang. The chief U.S. negotiator, Christopher Hill, faced strong opposition from key members of his own delegation at every step of the way.

We didnt provoke Japan before WWII, they had invaded China, Mongolia, Korea
FDR started economic sanctions against them for Japans aggression.

for another war. We had become very isolationist after WW1. And Japan had imperial intentions. London was being bombed, and we still wouldn't join the fight. It took Pearl Harbor for us to join in, and from what I've read, we had a 7 point plan (which we followed) to provoke Japan into attacking us so that we could declare war with the blessings of the American public.

We objected a little to much to the Rape of Nanking?

....and will continue to be provoked by BushCo until the neocon fascists have their excuse to use nuclear weapons against N Korea or Iran or someplace else in the world.

Bush talked out of both sides of his mouth at todays press conference saying he wants diplomacy to work while all the time blocking all discourse to effective diplomacy and he wants N Korea to stop their nuclear weapons tests while at the same time keeping all military options wide open and maintaining a hard line against N Korea on economic sanctions and yet saying he, Bush, does not want to see N Koreans starving to death.

Why did no reporter at the press conference scream "Bushit"?

It's the only tactic the little shrub knows how to use.

Cutting off his country's access to the international banking system must have been perceived as a grave threat to his economy and international trade (which amounts to food - mostly gifts -and oil imports from China) and exports of .... if they don't export nuclear weapon technology and missiles, I don't know what they export. It's not like the people of NK benefit from a lot of international trade, so it would be hard to make the argument that they suffered from this.

I haven't heard anyone argue that NK is not involved in counterfeiting, money laundering, etc. just that we should ignore that because they might be provoked and forced to impoverish their people to devote more of their spending to nuclear weapons. Was there a faction in the Treasury Department that intentionally timed this to undermine the denuclearization process? Obviously that is possible. It is hard to choose sometimes from among the Bush is a boob, Bush is a master devious strategist, or sometimes government departments do what they are supposed to do.