The death of a vicious dictator is normally a cause for cheer. In the case of Kim Jong Il, however, there is little to be happy about. The state that he created, and that will now be ruled by his son and other family members, is built on three rotten pillars. First, the nation gets hard cash through illicit activity such as trade in narcotics, bribes from America and her allies to stop its provocations, and the sale of nuclear and ballistic know-how to anyone willing to buy. Second, it represses its people, forcing them to work and to rely on the Kim family for subsistence. And finally, it relies on its nuclear-weapons program as the ultimate guarantee of survival.
This is the house that Kim Jong Un has inherited. We will doubtless soon hear from Kim-family apologists that we ought to proceed with caution. Doves in the United States will tell us that the younger Kim is perhaps someone we can deal with, that we should wait until he consolidates his power and see if he is more reform-minded.
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These arguments were used in different guises during the 17 years that Kim Jong Il was in power. The American people were told that a stable and confident Kim Jong Il could be persuaded to abandon his relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons. Whenever we had the regime on its heels — when the Bush administration began to apply real pressure on Kim during its first term, for example — we eased off in the hope that a deal was just around the corner. Conciliation and wishful thinking have gotten us nothing. Confident of North Korea’s status as a nuclear power, the Kim family has taken its provocations further in recent years. Most significantly, it murdered South Koreans in cold blood on two occasions in 2010.
We have been afraid of provoking Kim, and afraid of China’s reaction. Now it’s time to make them fear us. Rather than wait and watch events unfold, we should exert maximum pressure on the Kim family now. We should conduct military exercises around the peninsula, we should fly over their nuclear sites with stealth aircraft, and we should demonstrate that we can reach out and touch the regime anytime and anywhere. We should freeze the assets of the Kim family wherever they may be. We should shut down Kim’s criminal enterprises by stepping up our patrols of ships that leave the peninsula. We should give our allies in South Korea all the military capability necessary to defend themselves and strike back at the North should they once again be hit.
We should do all this before Beijing and Pyongyang have time to hatch a plan that solidifies the status quo. The status quo is dangerous, far more so than patiently and relentlessly working to bring down the Kim regime. For once, instead of waiting to see if a new dictator is “someone we can work with,” we should show the dictator what it will take to work with us. It should be clear that unless the Kim family gets rid of its nuclear weapons and its organs of repression and crime, we will work to remove it from power.
We should avoid being militarily provocative. North Korea bases its military-first ideology on the fiction that America is going to attack them at any time. We should do nothing to reinforce that fear. That would only strengthen the regime and legitimize Kim Jong-un's rule (be it figuratively or not). What if N. Korea launches an attack? Not an all out strike, which would be suicidal for them, but a limited attack on Seoul or one of the Yellow Sea islands? What can we do then? Not much, unless you want a full-on war and the attendant occupation/rebuilding, with a humanitarian crisis that would make us pine for the days of Iraq circa 2004-5. We can make sanctions more effective if we can stomach the Chinese reaction, N. Korea's benefactor. China isn't helping us right now. Pressure is needed on the regime, but it needs to be smart, mainly economic, and not military.
I agree with you. The U.S. needs to not go around looking for dragons to slay. The South Koreans want us to do nothing and this is primarily their problem. I say end all subsidies to the North Koreans and prevent them from dealing in illegal narcotics and nuclear weapons; but otherwise the status quo on the Korean peninsula should continue until the North Koreans themselves throw off their oppressors.
You are absolutely correct. The plan laid out in this editorial is one dimensional and foolhardy. The end result of it would be exactly what it seeks to prevent, the solidification of power in Kim Jong Un.
If you really wanted to destabilize North Korea, the only way to do it would be caricature their new leader as a sellout to America. This could be done through a strong sanctions regime to get them begging for negotiations, and a heavy PSYOPS campaign to exploit this as weakness in their leader.
The majority of the North Korean people are so brainwashed that this is the only way to divide them against each other. People make far too much of the comparison to Stalinism. North Korea is much much more similar to the mindset of Imperial Japan, albeit without the Imperialist part. Remember, we had to get the Emperor of Japan to address his people and accept our occupation before a lot of them would turn against a government that had so ruined their country.
I take issue with your statement that North Korea bases its "military first" ideology on the fiction that we are going to attack them. Rather, they use this fiction to internally justify an all-inclusive military posture which they use to subjugate their slaves, the people of North Korea.
The "fiction" you refer to is entirely for the benefit of the North Korean people, who otherwise might question why they have to starve so that their government can pursue nuclear weapons. The N.K. government does not believe we're about to attack them; what the editors propose is that we make the leaders aware that we COULD attack them if we chose to do so.
Dictators and thugs respond only to the threat of force or its actual use - pretty words that aren't backed up with superior military power mean nothing. If N.K. and China believe that we might destroy N.K. to protect ourselves from their nuclear weapons, we'll have a lot more leverage at the bargaining table.
All the more reason for "regime change" in America, though, of course, the policy of wishful thinking goes way back. Some years ago I met an old friend who had become a successful foreign service officer, fluent in Korean and present in North Korea, when Jimmy Carter pulled his self-serving stunt with the Kims. I expressed my exasperation at the futile, self-defeating US policy of "negotiating" with thugs known never to keep their promises. He didn't even attempt to dispute my premise but replied, "Negotiate is all we can do." The argument is that the alternative to appeasement is a devastated South Korea. Thus, Christopher Hill, of whom my friend no doubt approved, lives on his undeserved pension, we in Japan face the threat of nuclear missiles from the crazy Koreans.
Yes, we should do everything you suggest. But as long as that clueless blunder is in the White House, we won't. More likely is another round of bowing and apologizing.
That idiot has traveled to every corner of the globe except North Korea to apologize for America's shortcomings as he sees them. I'm sure he's sad that ol' Kim jong died before he had a chance to bow and fawn over him.
Iran was ripe for regime change in 2009 with an organic grassroots movement taking to the streets and we did nothing. What is the liklihood that the hope and change reset crowd would undertake any difficult project in the midst of a campaign?
The chance of our overthrowing the Kim dynasty without overwhelming military force is precisely nil. Yet the actions proposed here are those which would raise the possibility of violent confrontation - something none of us could possibly welcome.
And to do so would also be seen as a challenge to China. Do we really want to be doing that right now?
Best case scenario of what your propose is to get them back to negotiating about their nuclear weapons, but they're never going to give that blackmail material up because, without it, they have no way to induce us to give them anything. So you wish to increase the possibility of violence for something without issue anyway?
Ultimately, communist North Korea will implode and that is likely to be dangerous enough. Isn't it enough for our national interest if they sit quietly in the corner until that blessed event?
We shouldn't go doing anything we aren't willing to back to the hilt if we miscalculate, and do we really need yet another military confrontation?
Yes - we SHOULD have contained Hitler - as we contained the Soviets. Waging war against one evil dictator, using the power of another evil dictator was the height of cyncism and folly. Hitler was going to retire in 1951. The Cold War lasted until 1989.
The reason Korea remains divided is because China uses the North as a buffer. So there's not much point in making military threats. They wouldn't be credible unless either A) they are made jointly with China or B) we make it clear we will fight the Chinese as well if need be. I don't see either proposition as likely.
"Reform" is similarly illusory. It's the threat of nuclear weapons that brings in Danegeld from the west. The current system enriches the leadership. The only people who suffer are the ordinary people of North Korea, and the leadership of the "People's Republic" doesn't care about them. Ironic, isn't it?
I suspect the status quo will continue until the Kim family completely fouls up the country, at which point it will become a dependency of China. But I don't see North Korea becoming free or part of South Korea while the Chinese dominate the country, and I see no way to stop them doing so.
While I concur with your prescription for ratcheting up the pressure on these Stalinist dinosaurs with nukes, The Messiah and his band of happy accommodationists won't even consider the option. Instead, they'll mouth pointless platitudes about the need for 'stability' and 'constructive engagement,' etc. Meanwhile, Hell on earth persists for the 23 million citizen-prisoners of that despicable regime.
