Checking Kim

The Bush administration is not being apocalyptic over North Korea—but that doesn’t indicate a lack of seriousness on the subject. This is not the Clinton administration, after all; these guys know how to think strategically, how not to leak, and how to focus their foreign-policy activity on something other than the frenzied daily news cycle. What, then, are they thinking?

Administration principals seem to be starting from four core assumptions. The first is that the North Korean regime seeks a crisis atmosphere, the better to extort lucre from feckless (or clueless) South Koreans and Japanese, and to divide the U.S. from these two traditional allies. Second, Pyongyang wishes to turn what is and ought to be managed as a regional problem into a bilateral U.S.-North Korean affair. They wish this because only the U.S. can supply what the North Korean regime most wants: a guarantee against the twin nightmare of becoming East Germany and the Ceausescu family. Third, while the evidence is imperfect, it is prudent to assume that North Korea has two nuclear devices that can be delivered against both South Korean and Japanese targets. Fourth, the North Korean rulers are exactly who they say they are: Communists. This means—or have we already forgotten?—that they can be trusted to lie and deceive as required, and not care particularly about the welfare of their citizenry.

About the Author

Adam Garfinkle

Mr. Garfinkle is editor of The American Interest and author, most recently, of Jewcentricity: Why the World Praises, Blames, and Uses the Jews to Explain Nearly Everything (Wiley, 2009).

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The Bush administration is not being apocalyptic over North Korea—but that doesn’t indicate a lack of seriousness on the subject. This is not the Clinton administration, after all; these guys know how to think strategically, how not to leak, and how to focus their foreign-policy activity on something other than the frenzied daily news cycle. What, then, are they thinking?

Administration principals seem to be starting from four core assumptions. The first is that the North Korean regime seeks a crisis atmosphere, the better to extort lucre from feckless (or clueless) South Koreans and Japanese, and to divide the U.S. from these two traditional allies. Second, Pyongyang wishes to turn what is and ought to be managed as a regional problem into a bilateral U.S.-North Korean affair. They wish this because only the U.S. can supply what the North Korean regime most wants: a guarantee against the twin nightmare of becoming East Germany and the Ceausescu family. Third, while the evidence is imperfect, it is prudent to assume that North Korea has two nuclear devices that can be delivered against both South Korean and Japanese targets. Fourth, the North Korean rulers are exactly who they say they are: Communists. This means—or have we already forgotten?—that they can be trusted to lie and deceive as required, and not care particularly about the welfare of their citizenry.

About the Author

Adam Garfinkle

Mr. Garfinkle is editor of The American Interest and author, most recently, of Jewcentricity: Why the World Praises, Blames, and Uses the Jews to Explain Nearly Everything (Wiley, 2009).