Hillary Clinton fed up with North Korea

Secretary Clinton slammed North Korea yesterday. At Thursday's Senate hearing, she stated that given recent developments (such as North Korea's April 5 rocket launch and its withdrawal from six-party talks), the United States was not going to give the Hermit Kingdom any economic aid unless it returned to the discussion table.

She said, "We have absolutely no interest and no willingness on the part of this administration to give them any economic aid at all." She also said, "We are very serious about trying to make it clear to the North Koreans that their recent behavior is absolutely unacceptable."

Although noting that North Korea's return to talks appears "implausible if not impossible," she did hold out a bit of an olive branch: "That money is in there in the event, which at this point seems implausible if not impossible, the North Koreans return to the six-party talks and begin to disable their nuclear capacity again."

Really, though, does this strategy of giving North Korea aid in exchange for disarmament have much chance of success? Last fall, Kim Jong Il's former teacher (from when Kim was a teenager) wrote an article for FP, "The Secret History of Kim Jong Il." Kim's former teacher had this to say: 

Kim has managed to extract resources from wealthier and stronger states by manufacturing crises and generating international instability. His brand of nuclear blackmail is a virtual guarantor of bottomless international aid for the world’s most militarized society.