Welcome back to our North Korean soap box opera. Boy howdy has it erupted! It’s daunting really to think about covering these events in one blog entry. In fact, it can’t. For one, are we really sure if the detonation was actually nuclear. How could you really begin to calculate the threat until you know what potential harm the DPRK packs? This weeks events could signal anything ranging from an effort by Kim Jong-Il to cling to any kind of international importance by feigning nuclear capability thus swinging the attention Iran has been grabbing with their nuclear program back to the Korean peninsula or the North Koreans are on the brink of possessing a nuclear arsenal capable of striking Seattle, Washington. Second, there is so much international political posturing going on, it’s difficult to parse the politics from the policy.
Today, since I’ve been blessed with a day off, I’m going to do my best to filter this weeks North Korean news cycle and ground it in the context of this blog. First off, a Neocon approach to this situation is a poor choice and isn’t even on the international bargaining table. The Bush Doctrine has been dry docked by the very leadership who glorified its necessity only a few years ago. Second, the presence of the DPRK and Kim Jong-Il, is very much a globalist story that is necessary to engage.
U.S. national security depends on a stable North Korea. This, friends, is what a true nuclear threat looks like and guess what, no form of U.S. unilateral action is going to swing North Korea into a stable, open society. The threat of nuclear attack by a nation-state’s ballistic missile is sluggishly telegraphed because it takes so damn long to develop one and a state can not fully conceal their rocket tests nor their nuclear test blasts. This is why Bush threatening the United States in the Fall and Winter of 2002-2003 with the immediate threat of an Iraq nuclear attack was gross hyperbole.
The two Korea’s are still legally at war. It was not wise, some commentators have called it adolescent, when George Bush called the DPRK a key element of an ‘Axis of Evil’. The rhetoric of military aggression may have felt good to puff up the chest of a nation recently shook by 9/11. Yet, the swaggering display of arrogance Bush has languished in since calling out his enemies of choice has created heightened international tensions.
Ian Bremmer comments: “Another reason Pyongyang will never verifiably renounce its nuclear program is that the men who rule North Korea believe it is their only absolute guarantee against a U.S. invasion. No treaty was ever officially signed between the two Koreas ending the Korean War. For Americans, that’s a footnote of history. For North Koreans, its a central fact of life. Pyonyang was spooked when Geroge W. Bush included North Korea as part of an ‘axis of evil’ in his 2002 State of the Union Address. And when bombs began falling on Baghdad the following year, the regime saw its worst nightmare in living color. The DPRK will never voluntarily renounce its nuclear weapons program because it fears the Bush administration intends to topple statues of the Great Leader in Pyongyang.”
Remember that 1/5 to 1/3 of the DPRK’s GDP goes towards maintaining its military which includes 1 million soldiers massed along the 38th parallel.
The Bush administration has polarized the issue with North Korea, as they have done with Iran, making it all that more important for those countries to act quickly and defensively in their self interest due to our political military pressure.
The U.S. and the North Koreans are in a diplomatic log jam. The Bush Doctrine is absolutely useless in this case nor are our leaders looking to implement their preferred ideological treatment. Since this blog was created to speak out against the Bush administration and the Republican party’s handling of foreign affairs over the last six years, let’s restate that ideological treatment:
“The ‘first objective’ of U.S. defense strategy was ‘to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.’ Achieving this objective required that the United States ‘prevent any hostile power from dominating a region’ of strategic significance. America’s new mission would be to convince allies and enemies alike ‘that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.’”
Options range from “taking preemptive military action to head off a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack to ‘punishing’ or ‘threatening punishment of’ aggressors ‘through a variety of means,’ including strikes against weapons-manufacturing facilities.”
This policy was good enough to get the Iraq war started and to justify half of our open tax expenditures to be spent on the military. However it has failed terribly at moving Iraq from the left side of the J-curve to the right side of the J-curve. Who has paid the biggest price for this bad policy in Iraq? The Iraqi people to the tune of hundreds of thousands of lives lost without any kind of prospect for a stable government solidifying in the near future.
Since we are truly talking about nuclear weapon proliferation on the Korean peninsula, this makes this a global issue of utmost importance. So let’s reposit the policy this blog supports: “The countries on the right side of the J curve have a collective political, economic, and security interests on working together to help move left-side states through instability to the right side of the curve. But they must recognize that the most powerful agents for constructive, sustainable change in any society are the people who live within it.”.
If there is one country that has the political leverage to act decisively or even unilaterally, it’s China. China is the only country with warm diplomatic ties with Pyonyang and the Chinese are reluctant to intervene. They are even reluctant to pass sanctions against North Korea through the U.N. Security Council. A failed North Korean state means a refugee crisis for China so they will try to prop up North Korea as much as they can through policy. The Chinese government has enough people to care for with a current mainland population of 1.3 billion, with the population of China projected to be 1.4 billion in 2010 and 1.6 Billion in 2020. An extra 22 million North Korean’s is a weight they do not want to bare so they will allow Kim Jong-Il to keep that responsibility.
The three countries that are most threatened by North Korea are South Korea, Japan and China with Russia thrown into the regional mix. What’s at risk? One of two major pressures influence the situation. North Korea collapsing creating a humanitarian crisis in the region plus a tremor to the international financial markets is a real fear. If this happens, their entire weapons cache is vulnerable to non-nation-state entity’s. Or, a near bankrupt North Korea adding a nuclear arsenal to their already extensive military establishment also adds a nuclear export to help bolster.
The U.S. objective in the short term is to contain the North Korean military arsenal and in the long term we must open up the North Korean culture so that it will eventually lead to regime change from within. We must compel the regional players China, South Korea, Japan and Russia to work with us in achieving these goals.
How do you open a North Korean society so that the people who are cared for by the state don’t suffer tremendously? How do you aid North Korea without funding their military? How does the United States engage the situation while leaving its entire military package at home? Quite a challenging mix.
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