This does need to be considered. It is impossible to understand why
this state is still standing. Present extreme noise could well be
the sound of desperation as the regime attempts to extort a band-aid
to last a little while longer.
We all understand that the South Korean military is not going to be
surprised. The risk is that the North sets of a nuclear device were
it could cause real military damage. Yet that would barely slow the
South down.
From that starting point, there are a wide range of strategic options
all of which lead to collapse and reunification. Let me rephrase
that. Collapse is reunification in this case. From that perspective
it is inevitable. There will be zero popular support for an
independent North Korea.
That is what killed the dreams of the East German regime.
In fact an irresistible flood of humanity pouring into China would
likely break the spell. The spectacle of the Chinese attempting to
stop it and sending escapees back would become ridiculous. The
matching spectacle of the North jailing most of their citizens would
be just as bad. And at some point someone is going to say enough is
enough.
While all this went on, the bulk of the North Korean Army would have
to stand to alert on the southern border. If they moved to seal the
Chinese border, they would have to visibly weaken their south.
It has become clear that the military threat of the North is real
enough, but also unsustainable. It could be that we are dealing with
a slow motion regime collapse here.
The new leader is not a stupid man, unlike his father, and may be
fighting to control and manage the collapse as best he can. My one
serious concern is that several generals were removed when he came to
power. That suggests that a political battle was lost then and
there. Recall the Japanese war clique that gave us the Pacific War
and shudder.
Right now the war option has given itself a free hand to attack the
South and it will not be an accident.
Korean Unification:
Do Not Be Surprised If It Comes Soon
Paul Roderick Gregory
The most significant
geopolitical events of the past half century have been unanticipated.
Not that we did not expect them, but they were supposed to happen in
the distant future, not now. The North Korean regime could collapse
in the same unexpected way, leaving shocked politicians, diplomats,
and pundits to fend with its consequences.
While it is comforting
to believe that predictable rational calculation and self interest
determine the course of human events, the timing of the most
significant changes in the world order is heavily influenced by
chance, personalities, emotions, and miscalculations. We expect the
two Koreas to muddle along in a shaky equilibrium that will result in
the end of the Hermit Kingdom in the distant future. A collapse of
the North Korean regime in the near term would send pundits in vain
searches of past writings for hints they saw it coming.
Unfolding events in
the Koreas and their respective mentor states, the United States and
China, resemble the run ups to the collapse of communism in the USSR
and Central and Southeastern Europe and the reunification of the two
Germanys. Few foresaw that both would collapse as abruptly as a house
of cards. The intelligence community did not foresee the end of the
USSR – an intelligence failure greater than its
weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco. Likewise, it will likely
categorize the near-term collapse of the North Korean regime as a
“highly unlikely” outcome.
The “fundamentals”
explain why regimes change and collapse, but they tell us less about
the all-crucial “when.” If the Soviet and East German political
and economic systems had been sound, they would be with us today. The
North Korean fundamentals could not be more terrible – a closed
society unable to provide its population with subsistence, but it has
survived as such for decades.
Mikhail Gorbachev had
no intention of setting in motion events that would lead to the
collapse of the USSR and its client states. His goal was to repair
the Soviet system not end it. Gorbachev would not have begun
Perestroika had he known its consequences – one of history’s
great miscalculations. Reagan was the first American President who
believed that a near-term Soviet collapse was possible, and he did
not hesitate to say so. It fell to Reagan’s successor, George Bush,
to actually manage the disintegration of the Soviet Union, after his
first incredulity wore off.
The leadership of
the German Democratic Republic also intended to save East-German
communism with salami-sliced concessions, which kept growing
larger and larger to their dismay. The East German politburo had
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl as their counterpart. When the
opportunity presented itself, Kohl was there with instantaneous and
irreversible reunification. Kohl did not dither when the opportunity
presented itself.
The two Koreas
represent a tinder box in search of a random spark. Both have new and
untested leaders, each intent on reshaping the relationship between
the two countries in their own way. Both appear unwilling to tamp
down the rhetoric or be seen as caving to the other side. Kim Jong Un
must prove his credentials to the military. Park Gyeun Hye needs no
coaxing after witnessing an endless string of concessions as rewards
for outrageous behavior. An agent of the North murdered her mother.
The North blew a civilian airliner from the sky, torpedoed a military
vessel in open water, trades in nuclear technology, and shelled a
city in sight of Inchon Airport, only to receive slaps on the wrists.
China, the North’s
mentor, cannot accept a reunified Korea and must make do with its
maverick client. The United States is tired of playing the
North’s blackmail game and must at least show its seriousness by
the positioning of military resources in the area. Neither China
nor the United States know how to pour water on the Korean tinderbox.
They are limited to symbolic actions that have little effect on
anything.
In this volatile
setting, tensions stretch to their limit. Both sides stake positions
from which they are loathe to retreat. One mistake or wrong
calculation sets into motion events that cannot be stopped. All hope
that someone will blink, but there is no guarantee that this time we
really will not go over the brink.
The collapse of the
Soviet Union rested on major miscalculations: Gorbachev thought he
could preserve the Soviet system with minor economic tinkering and
bold political change, which included the decision not to use Soviet
troops in Eastern Europe. His alarmed Politburo colleagues launched
an ill-conceived coup that did not include credible allies just as
Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian Republic. It did not
help the coup plotters’ cause that they drank themselves into a
stupor and did not anticipate that their special forces were
unwilling to fire on peaceful demonstrators. In all, the Soviet
collapse was a comedy of chance and miscalculation from start to
finish.
The German Democratic
Republic collapsed with its Politburo’s limpid sacrificial firing
of General Secretary, Erich Honecker, its failure to fire on the
growing masses of peaceful demonstrators in Leipzig (to the
demonstrators’ amazement), and their leaving an exit hole through
Hungary unplugged. The final collapse came in keystone-cops fashion
with the misinterpretation of a Politburo decree as stating that the
Wall was open. Yet another comedy of miscalculation and confusion.
We do not know the set
of circumstances and miscues that could begin the end of the North
Korean dictatorship. A Northern provocation on the sea, in the air,
or on the ground could be met by a South Korean response of equal or
greater magnitude, initiating an escalating game of chicken.
The North Korean people, who are more knowledgeable about life in the
West than the regime understands, could rise up in riots, strikes and
protest, which the army refuses to suppress with force. Or the famed
Northern military could prove as inept and disloyal as Saddam’s
Revolutionary Guard, as they rush headlong to lay down their arms to
their Southern brethren. “Reformist” Northern generals could
suddenly see the light and create a Gorbachev-like government.
As Romanian dictator
Nicola Ceausescu learned as he stood before the firing squad: Support
for a dictator is ephemeral, fickle, and fleeting. It can by ended by
one jeer from a crowd. Kim Jong Un risks a similar fate, whether he
understand it or not.
We overrate the
stability of one-party states. We think they cultivate deep-rooted
sources of stability, but their ultimate fate depends on
personalities and the calculations they make.
In June of 1989, the
Chinese leadership decided to put down the reformers’ protests,
throughout the country but principally in Tiananmen Square. Forces
within the leadership favored liberalization and democracy, but they
lost the argument. This outcome was not preordained. It could have
been altered by one random event. If the tank had squashed the
solitary man standing in its path in view of the world, a different
sequence of events could have unfolded, and we would today have a
quite different China.
I am not predicting
the imminent end of the odious Hermit Kingdom. Instead, history shows
that major change usually catches us off guard. Major geopolitical
changes open a new frontier beyond which we have never gone. In the
case of Korea, it could lead to immense loss of human life, if
mishandled. But if the collapse of North Korea is similar to other
collapses, it would be quick. Coping with this new frontier provides
an opportunity for leaders to emerge as statesmen rather than
politicians as they confront the challenge of the enormity of the
task.
Do we have such
leaders among us?
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