Friday, October 11, 2002
Greetings from Korea. Am staying at the vert high-tech and very wired P'ohang Institute of Science and Technology. Free unlimited internet access!
Just read Nick Kristof's latest NYT editorial (free registration required). Among other things, he makes the following argument/observation:
I used to wholeheartedly repeat this line of thinking. However, more recently I have begun to wonder. Even if one assumes that a conflict in 1994 would have killed one million, estimates of the number of famine deaths in the DPRK since 1994 range as high as two million. Now it becomes a macabre numbers game. How many North Korean lives can/should be sacrificed in order to save American and/or South Korean lives? I am not so starry eyed that I think that American policymakers should regard all human life as equally precious; but to argue that not going to war has saved lives is a bit misleading.
Just read Nick Kristof's latest NYT editorial (free registration required). Among other things, he makes the following argument/observation:
In 1994 the vogue threat changed, and hawks pressed hard for a military confrontation with North Korea. We came within an inch of going to war with North Korea, in a conflict that a Pentagon study found would have killed a million people, including up to 100,000 Americans.
In retrospect, it is clear that the hawks were wrong about confronting North Korea. Containment and deterrence so far have worked instead, kind of, just as they have kind-of worked to restrain Iraq over the last 11 years, and we saved thousands of lives by pressing diplomatic solutions.
I used to wholeheartedly repeat this line of thinking. However, more recently I have begun to wonder. Even if one assumes that a conflict in 1994 would have killed one million, estimates of the number of famine deaths in the DPRK since 1994 range as high as two million. Now it becomes a macabre numbers game. How many North Korean lives can/should be sacrificed in order to save American and/or South Korean lives? I am not so starry eyed that I think that American policymakers should regard all human life as equally precious; but to argue that not going to war has saved lives is a bit misleading.
