A few points to consider:
1. A resistance insurgency is not an effort by the people to restore the government that was defeated, a resistance is an effort by the people to remove a foreign influence/presence that they believe has no right to be there. This is a critical point we for some reason refuse to understand, and that refusal led us to believe that neither the Iraqi nor the Afghan people would resist our efforts to "free them from oppression." We look to what happened in Germany and Japan post WWII and draw the wrong conclusions. Both those populaces were subjected to long, sustained warfare prior to the defeat of their respective militarize and governments. In Japan we wisely sustained the Emperor, viewed as the core of "legitimacy" or we would have likely faced a major insurgency there. Also, with with China (under natioanalist or communist rule) so near and full of reasonable motivation to exact revenge on a war weakened Japan, we were the lesser of two evils. In Germany all Germans well appreciated that it was far better to subject themselves to the Allies than to be subjected to the Soviets. We were not accepted because we were better than Hitler, but because we were better than Stalin.
If the DPRK attacks and is then pushed back forcing a regime change, or if the current regime collapses and foreigners move in to "build a nation" and "bring democracy" etc it will not be going into a populace that has been subjected to years of warfare, nor will it be going into a populace that perceives this help as the lesser of two evils. By any logical assessment and reasonable understanding of resistance insurgency, the people would resist. Hard.
2. Given the Western programs of "COIN" and our refusal to appreciate that the fighting force of the insurgency is just the tip of a much larger populace iceberg of discontent, we, the Western or even Chinese society going in to mold things in their image, would become the primary supplier of the insurgency through our aid to the populace writ large. China would probably be more effective at this than we would, and US interests would not suffer if the PRC had the lead on dealing with any kind of governmental collapse in the DPRK.
3. We still have a hard time balancing what we WANT with what we NEED. Interests are (should) be based on needs. We have a lot of "wants" in our current national policy. We "wanted" to make Iraq and Afghanistan democracies shaped and valued in our image. We needed those countries not to grant formal sanctuary to terrorist NSAs or to attack our interests and allies. There is a massive gap between those wants and those needs. Attempting to bridge that gap is indeed, a bridge too far.
We should ask sincerely, what do we "need" in terms of the DPRK and our interests, and do our policies and plans reflect those needs, or some much fluffier concept of "wants."
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