North Korea: Qaddafi should have kept his nuke program
The New York Times‘ Mark McDonald reports on a telling, if predictable, response from Pyongyang: North Korea’s official news agency carried comments this week from a Foreign Ministry official decrying the air assault on Libyan government forces and suggesting that Libya had been duped in 2003 when it abandoned its nuclear program in exchange for ...
The New York Times' Mark McDonald reports on a telling, if predictable, response from Pyongyang:
The New York Times‘ Mark McDonald reports on a telling, if predictable, response from Pyongyang:
North Korea’s official news agency carried comments this week from a Foreign Ministry official decrying the air assault on Libyan government forces and suggesting that Libya had been duped in 2003 when it abandoned its nuclear program in exchange for promises of aid and improved relations with the West.
Calling the West’s bargain with Libya “an invasion tactic to disarm the country,” the official said it amounted to a bait and switch. “The Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson,” the official was quoted as saying on Tuesday, proclaiming that North Korea’s “songun” ideology of a powerful military was “proper in a thousand ways” and the only guarantor of peace on the Korean Peninsula.
It’s a safe bet that Qaddafi’s thinking the same thing right now. It also wouldn’t be surprising if Iran, Burma, and other countries in A.Q. Khan’s rolodex are taking a similar lesson from this past week’s events.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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