7/05/2006
A break from usual programming..
This morning I woke up to read this news about North Korea launching missiles in "tests" in the middle of the night. This distressed me for two reasons 1) they are aiming at Japan and 2) who knows what North Korea are capable of. Thankfully the "tests" failed and the missiles either exploded on take-off or fell into the sea off Japan. The whole North Korea problem never registered with me when I was younger but since moving to Japan, it is impossible to miss because news coverage of relations with North Korea /the kidnapees problems/ NK`s possible nuclear arsenal is constant and scary. It freaks me out to have such a loose cannon so close by and it bothers me that nobody seems willing to try and do much about it.
The skeptical part of me wonders if the reason the US/UK governments are less interested in getting involved in the North korea issue than they were with solving the problems in the Gulf is the fact that NK doesn`t have any natural resources that they would like to gain control of. It is also true that one of the reasons the Japanese government continues to positively support the presence of US bases on the Japanese mainland despite the fact they are incredibly unpopular with locals is that the US presence is seen to protect Japan to a certain extent as the US military is far better funded and equipped than the Japanese self-defence force. Were the threat of NK to be removed, the Japanese government would no longer be able to justify US presence and this would lead to problems between the two countries.
Who knows what the real reasons are and I know that I don`t really know enough about the history of the problem to comment sensibly so I am just flinging out random thoughts this morning but I have always wondered at the fact that Bush/Blair were so willing to go into Iraq because of the "possibility" of weapons of Mass destruction being present but on the other hand, there is proof that NK has been building a nuclear arsenal for some time now and yet nothing is being done. Could this be a hint that they knew all along that Iraq was never a real threat but the reason they are afraid to attack NK is because they are? Conspiracy theories abound these days and I always wonder what is really going on behind the scenes that none of us know about! I have always thought it would be cool to be a government interpretor so you could get to sit in on the big meetings where a few men try to negotiate for peace/ a better understanding. It would be even cooler to be one of the people trying to negotiate but I don`t think that is going to happen any time soon!
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1 comment:
Hi Midori,
I am in total agreement with you about the Iraq vs. North Korea situation and I just posted a comment in Jenn's blog about it too. I've been saying the same thing to my family for months -- if this Iraq war was really all about nuclear capabilities, then why isn't anybody concerned about North Korea -- and nobody seems to have a good explanation or theory about this.
As far as the presence of US military bases in Japan, I was told in my university program at Suzuka Kokusai Daigaku that one of the provisions of the Japanese constitution is that the US will come to their aid if they are ever attacked. So I would say that we are constitutionally obligated to assist Japan in the event of an actual attack by North Korea... although it seems to me that their current aggressive behavior should be more than enough of a reason for the US to get involved on Japan's behalf if that is what the Japanese government wants. However I am also skeptical like you, and it seems to me that governments in general love to make promises that they can't necessarily keep, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the US government waffling if that became an issue. I would hope that would not be the case in the event of further aggression by North Korea though, because seeing as how the US is apparently sworn to defend Japan, I would like to see that promise kept.
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