For sometime now, I have been greatly interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and America's part in our relationship with Israel. This last semester, I took a class over American Foreign Policy and one of the requirements was a 9 to 10 page paper of a foreign issue of our choice. I chose the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that led me to several newspaper sites that I still check on a regular basis out of habit. For those of you who are not interested in Foreign Affairs, I might suggest you wait for a new posting.
As mentioned above, I was introduced to many newspaper sites that helped me in the writing of my policy brief for my AFP class. I check three on a regular basis -- The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and AlJazeera -- and when I began to do so this morning I found an article on the JPost that greatly intrigued me and caught my eye. For anyone politically inclined, they may have noticed that Chinese President Hu Jintao was invited to the White House by our President for a visit. It seems as though North Korea was served as the main course.
For those of you who may remember, Pyongyang sank a South Korean ship in disputed waters in the fall of last year and little to nothing was done. In November, Pyongyang shelled a South Korean island. This meeting/dinner between the two Presidents (American and Chinese) was to discuss what each country might do to bring all nations concerned back to Six-Party Talks.
New York Times article:
As mentioned above, I was introduced to many newspaper sites that helped me in the writing of my policy brief for my AFP class. I check three on a regular basis -- The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and AlJazeera -- and when I began to do so this morning I found an article on the JPost that greatly intrigued me and caught my eye. For anyone politically inclined, they may have noticed that Chinese President Hu Jintao was invited to the White House by our President for a visit. It seems as though North Korea was served as the main course.
For those of you who may remember, Pyongyang sank a South Korean ship in disputed waters in the fall of last year and little to nothing was done. In November, Pyongyang shelled a South Korean island. This meeting/dinner between the two Presidents (American and Chinese) was to discuss what each country might do to bring all nations concerned back to Six-Party Talks.
According to JPost they got their information from the New York Times for their article, not truly doubting JPost but knowing some might, I looked up the article on the NYTimes which came out in todays paper. Both articles say the same thing: if China does not step up its involvement (i.e. reprimanding Pyongyang for their sinking the Cheonan and their shelling of a South Korean island) the US may be forced to redploy American forces in Asia. The official who gave this information to the NYTimes, is choosing to remain anonymous. Which brings to mind the question, just how accurate is this information?
If the information is by chance true, here is my humble opinion -- is our President our of his mind?!?!?! The last thing we need to do right now is tick China off. Let us not forget that China holds most of our debt at this point and if they were to call in that debt, America would be dead in the water. Now if by chance we were not stretched out so far in the Middle East, we could potentially back up that threat of redploying troops to Asia. However, we are stretched out to far in the Middle East and since it is likely that we will still be involved there for sometime, this gives China enough time to continue it military build up. This would present further problems for the US if we were forced to back up this threat.
I have posted the URLs to the two articles where you may browse at your leisure.
New York Times article:
Jerusalem Post article:
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