It will fall into chaos as a result of renewed famine and poverty, resulting in military crackdowns.
There will be a military coup that displaces the current leadership, hopefully soon.
It will continue to remain a closed society, technologically dormant and otherwise insignificant.
The leadership will eventually make a misstep, forcing military action from the United States.
I remain unconvinced that a proactive effort to "fix" the DPRK or induce someone else to do so is in big brother's interest, whoever big brother happens to be. Rocking that boat could go all kinds of unpredictable places, many of them not in anyone's interest.Originally Posted by Fuchs
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
That's fine too.
.
Your permission is noted and appreciated.
Have you read any of the material David Maxwell linked to? It provides an excellent starting point for informed discussion. Having watched the peninsula for many years without having actually studied it I found them an excellent way to fill in gaps in my own observations.
As a starting point I'd suggest this one for being quite recent:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6891151/FINA...%20Maxwell.pdf
and this one for being more comprehensive:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6891151/FINA...gy%20Paper.pdf
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Posted by max161
Dave,If you read my work you might see that I cite experts from across the spectrum (even Bruce Cumings who claimed for many years that the US started the Korean War) to include north Koreans. I am expressing my opinions based on my years of analysis and I have linked a cross section of the body of work I have produced over the years. I stand by my research and scholarship and I offer it to the forum for discussion. I will be happy to discuss anything but if you think I am cherry picking experts I would recommend you read my work. I thought the forum would benefit from two current open source articles that seem relevant to the discussion with some commentary and analysis but if you think that is cherry picking then my sincere apologies.
I will read each paper over the next couple of days, and I suspect I have read a couple already, but will double check each link. I'm not faulting your work, my point addresses the larger issue of labeling someone an expert and then blindly following them instead of engaging in critical thinking. We have done that for the past 10 years with the current fight we're in.
In this thread I do think you and Dayuhan are to quick to dismiss ideas that don't fit your paradigm. Dismissing them is one thing, saying it isn't possible is another. A lot of potentialties are possible over time and I don't think anyone on this thread is talking about potential changes within the next year or so.
I like Dayuhan's term of "informed opinion" versus expert. To be clear I agree with most of your points, but I'll still challenge them (to drive exposure of the underlying logic). I do it to myself, so no one else gets a buy either. One opinion I'm sitting on the fence is that reunification is destiny. I'm also not convinced it would be a thing for regional security over time. I like the Koreans also, but they're not exactly a peace loving people.
Bill,
I do not think I have suggested blindly following any so-called expert. I think I have suggested throughout my comments that we need to study the situation on the Peninsula and that many of the comments seem to suggest similar thinking that we have done over the last decade in regards to Afghanistan and Iraq in which we have not sought to understand the nature of the problem and the history and culture of the people and countries involved. Most of the discussion as been US and western centric and I have tried to try to provide some views from the Korean and Chinese perspectives.
I think you and I are in violent agreement that critical thinking is required and I have tried to provide some of my critical thinking that I have done over the years. And I have never considered myself an expert on Korea but a student of the Korean problem trying to learn about and understand the nature of the problem and suggest some alternative strategies for dealing with those problems.
Dave
David S. Maxwell
"Irregular warfare is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge." T.E. Lawrence
No I haven't and not about to now... maybe over the weekend.
It would be interesting to hear from you a little more on this previous statement of yours:
You can - and probably will - play with the definition of "fix" but the fact remains that without the support of China NK would fold in a matter of weeks/months.... even if China was "the key", that would get us nowhere, because the Chinese have no interest whatsoever in trying to "fix" the DPRK, and that's not something any outside influence is going to change.
I would be interested to hear why a stable North Korea closely allied to China would not be in the Chinese interest? Want to take a shot at that?
As to your rather interesting comment that it all hinges on the NK armed forces I would ask you how long do you think they would last - as an effective force - if they were to be deprived of pay, food, winter clothing, fuel, weapons, ammunition?
I've been on the receiving end of this sort of "influence" and know that no matter how strong the spirit is - which actually strengthens in the face of such adversity - such deprivation will reduce the armed forces to a mere shell... they will probably stick together only for self preservation but will have no ability for any significant military action other than perhaps a spirited last stand (a la Gen Custer).
Please try to answer this yourself and not refer me to what Maxwell has written.
Dave,
I read all your articles except for “Beyond the Nuclear Crisis: A Strategy for the Korean Peninsula, April 2004” which I intend to get to. You were correct to be defensive towards my previous comments because you did a great job of including contrarian expert opinions in your informative articles. However, unless you’re misreading my comments, or I’m misreading yours, it seems we agree on more than we disagree on in regards to the Korea problem.
One assumption I question is that North Korea will execute the final option if faced with regime threatening internal instability. Granted I have no idea what North Korean leaders are actually thinking, but it seems to be a bit of a reach that they believe their military would be successful in uniting the peninsula. There is always a danger in applying western logic to an eastern problem, but it seems more probable that they would focus internally and ask China for a bailout package, which I believe would be in their interest to do so (cheaper than containing a failed state on their border.
It seems unlikely that there will be a citizen revolt if the KFR can retain control of its military, and the military is willing to use force against its citizens. The military would have to lead the rebellion, and do so they would need assurances of external support or believe that other military leaders would join in. That is hard to conceive how they would organize such a revolt in a hyper paranoid society where everyone is a state spy.
I found your proposed strategy to convince the KFR that it will survive as a means of deterring attack brilliant. That would provide needed time for longer term strategies involving information operations and economic engagement to erode KFR’s control to work. You pointed out that North Koreans are interfering with South Korean elections (seems to be a norm for other nations to interfere in elections, we have a long history of doing so in the past), and they want the party that supports the Sunshine policy to win. Obviously nK supports it, and while it may help nK achieve their objectives in the short term I suspect it would be more effective at undermining the regime over time than a harder stance.
In addition to these soft power approaches I agree with your suggestion that we should also take active measures such as sinking a couple of their submarines and then not taking credit for it in response to their sinking of the ROK frigate. It would send a clear message and if the attack wasn’t claimed it would give nK the option of not responding to maintain their legitimacy.
I still think we (the global community) should put more pressure on the KFR for their massive human rights violations. Currently outside of a relatively few nK watchers these atrocities get little fanfare compared to say Sudan, so the North Koreans are given a lot of freedom from world opinion to continue these abuses unabated. Instead of us coming across as a power for the betterment of the human race, we instead focus on telling nK they can’t have nukes, which paints us as a hegemonic power telling other states what they can and can’t do. World opinion may or may not mitigate their behavior, but we won’t find out unless we try. World opinion won’t change KFR’s ethics, but I suspect it will cause them to question the value of continuing to conduct such activities if they feel other nations are being pressured by their populations to take some sort of action against North Korea. Of course the situation in Syria and elsewhere calls that assumption into question.
While not making the WMD issue, we should do everything possible using all element of DIME to curtail their WMD programs, but focusing solely on WMD is like declaring war on terror, war on drugs, and war on IEDs. Many greats successes have been made in all these efforts at the tactical level, yet drug trade remains very profitable, IED attacks are proliferating at an ever greater rate, and of course terrorism will persist. We need a strategy that addresses the problem not a symptom of the problem, and that is what you’re advocating.
Everything below is my opinion. Just imagine the IMOs in every paragraph.
Fuchs introduced the term "fix" (post #34), and I cannot say with certainty what he meant by it. I would guess that anyone proposing to "fix" the DPRK believes that the the Kim dynasty should either be removed or persuaded/compelled to adopt policies deemed suitable by whoever is doing the fixing. Not saying there can't be another interpretation, but I can't think of one at the moment.
Loss of Chinese support would certainly be a major blow to the Kim dynasty. Whether or not they would fold, and when, is of course uncertain. I suspect they'd hang in longer than you think. That's largely an academic concern, though, because the Chinese policy of not allowing the regime to fall has been a constant for decades. It does not look likely to change any time soon, and it's very doubtful that any outside influence will change it.
It's often supposed by those who haven't been watching the peninsula for long that because China is the DPRK's sole ally and supporter, the DPRK is therefore totally subservient to China and must do whatever the Chinese tell it to do. This has not actually been the case: the Kims have not always followed instructions, and cannot be relied on to do what the Chinese want. They can do this because they know that preserving the dynasty has a central place in Chinese policy and they believe that the policy will continue even if they do not always follow the Chinese playbook.
That could of course change: the Chinese could reassess their policy of keeping the Kim dynasty in power, or the dynasty could push Chinese patience to the point where the policy is abandoned, or some combination of the two could occur. While these things could happen, it's not likely that any outside power can make them happen. So far the Chinese have shown no indication that this policy is likely to change, and the Kims have been fairly astute in their assessment of what they can get away with.
While the Chinese could probably sink or totally cripple the Kim dynasty, they have a clear and long-standing policy of preventing that. They don't want the dynasty to fall. While the Chinese could in theory use the threat of sinking or crippling the regime to compel whatever policy changes the Chinese might think desirable, that threat is largely blunted by that same policy: the DPRK regime does not believe the threat will be carried out. I do not believe the Kims will adopt any policy they see as a serious threat to their absolute dominance even if the Chinese tell them to.
The question is not whether that outcome is desirable, but whether it can be achieved. If the DPRK goes out of control, nobody anywhere will be able to predict the outcome with any certainty, and there's a very good chance that a stable North Korea closely allied to China would not be the outcome. The existing order is not exactly stable, but neither is it completely out of hand. It is not controlled, but neither is it completely beyond influence or allied to China's actual or potential antagonists. If that order is disrupted anything could happen, the outcome would be beyond prediction or control and could easily be much worse for the Chinese.
So far the Chinese seem to feel that sustaining the existing order, whatever its deficiencies and irritants, is preferable to the risk involved in trying to disrupt that order. That may of course change, if the Chinese decide that it should. I do not think any outside power has the capacity to significantly affect that decision.
They're not at war in any active sense, so they could probably last until they could no longer squeeze their needs out of the populace. if pressed too far, they might dispose of the regime and take over themselves... again, the Chinese are unlikely to push to that point, because of the consistent policy previously referred to.
Any nation or armed force that allows itself to depend on an outside power for its sustenance is asking for that kind of pressure, but it's not likely that the DPRK armed forces will face it any time soon. Since they are not actively engaged in combat, what need do they have for significant military action? Even if the Chinese were putting the squeeze on to try to compel some policy change, the squeeze would come off if the DPRK were under attack... unless of course you're hypothesizing an attack by the Chinese, a very farfetched scenario.
In short: Chinese policy to date has been based on preventing either war or regime collapse. That policy could change, but it cannot be changed at the instigation of any imaginable "us" and there's no sign that it's likely to change any time soon. While other powers should watch out for and be prepared for potential Chinese policy changes, the most likely eventuality, and the scenario on which primary plans are based, should be that Chinese policy is likely to remain pretty much as is for the near to medium term.
Last edited by Dayuhan; 09-06-2012 at 12:55 PM.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Yes, the whole idea of "fixing" North Korea is very vague. I would like to understand what this actually means in terms of an end state. Only then can we really examine whether China possesses the capability to bring about that end state and, if so, whether the US and Western Powers possess the capability to compel China to act.
Supporting "time-limited, scope limited military actions" for 20 years.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks