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With increasing alarm, we continue to witness the
escalating tension between North Korea and the United States and its regional
allies. Sure enough, the rhetoric being used seems outright hostile; were it
only a case of one not being afraid of barking dogs which don’t bite the issue
would be little more than business as usual in the Korean peninsula. Thus the
real question to be asked here is, primarily, whether this brewing crisis
differs in any way from previous ones and, more importantly, what are the motives
and aims of the key actors. We will begin our analysis with a brief history of
the Korean peninsula and continue onwards with a presentation of the current
key players. As always, I will remind the reader that the study of
international relations is not fortune telling and that problems between states
are always complex and multi-faceted. There is rarely if ever a simple black
and white solution nor can one assume full rationality of the actors. As Robert
McNamara, secretary of defense under JFK and Lyndon Johnson, very astutely
observed about the Cuban missile crisis (1962): “I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out.
It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at
the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational;
Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction
of their societies. And that danger exists today.”[1]
The Korean peninsula had been inhabited since ancient
times with various kingdoms rising and falling, but actually came into the global
arena so to speak with the Mongol invasion of 1231. After seven major campaigns
and 39 years of struggle the Koreans finally pledged their allegiance to their
Mongol overlords. After the decline of the Mongols, the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries saw, through the efficient stewardship of the Joseon dynasty, the
flourish of the Korean kingdom. During this golden age there was a significant
advance in the arts and sciences in areas such as printing, astronomy, calendar
science, ceramics, military, geography, cartography, medicine and agriculture.
In some of these areas the innovations accomplished where unparalleled by develolpments in the
rest of the world.
The end of the 16th century saw the
invasion of Korea by Japan which in the end caused the intervention of Ming
China. In the early 17th century, as the Koreans where struggling to
rebuild they were again invaded, this time by the Manchu. After stabilizing its
relations with China, the Korean peninsula enjoyed about two hundred years of
relative peace. Despite this external respite, the Korean peninsula gradually
slipped into decline and austere isolationism, earning the nickname in the
early 19th century of the “hermit kingdom”. The steep decline of the
Chinese dynasties during that era was followed by the meteoric rise of Japan.
After the successful outcomes during the Sino-Japanese war (1894 – 1895) and
the Russo-Japanese war (1904 – 1905), the Korean empire was increasingly drawn
within the Japanese sphere of influence eventually leading to the outright
annexation of Korea in 1910.
The Japanese rule (1910 – 1945) was an era which
combined brutal repression with attempts to impose Japanese culture. Korea was,
in effect, handled little differently than how the European powers of the era
treated their colonial empires. As World War II was reaching its final stages
in 1945, the Soviet Union, in accordance with provisions agreed in the Yalta
conference[2],
invaded and swiftly secured the northern part of the region. As elsewhere in
the world, the rising tensions between the two superpowers quickly led to the
dissolution of the inter-allied trustee council and eventually, to the
formation of two separate states of which only the southern one was
internationally recognized. In 1950 the northern invasion of the south quickly
escalated into what is now known as the Korean War (1950 – 1953), a brutal
conflict which led to over a million dead, featured the involvement of all
major powers of the era (USA, USSR, China) and brought us to the brink of
nuclear weapons use. The 1953 armistice put an uneasy, temporary end to the
conflict. It must be pointed out that no formal peace treaty has ever been signed
between the two nations which technically, are still at war with each other.
This, in effect, is a brief history of the region which
gives us a useful basis upon which we can base our current analysis. We will
begin by trying to paint a picture of North Korea as an actor of the international
stage. Using existing tools of analysis, we will begin by stating that North
Korea is governed by a personality-cult dictatorship. Communism and Marxism as ideologies
have absolutely nothing to do with the God-like cult which continuously impresses
the divine nature of the leading dynasty. To make a rough approximation,
imagine combining the teachings of Confucius which emphasize obedience of the
individual and conformity with the reign of fear, paranoia and terror that Stalin
indulged. The closest analogy that we ever had in Europe would be that of
Nicolae Ceausescu who tried to emulate the personality cults of Mao Zedong and
Kim-Il-sung.
If we were to analyze North Korea under this perspective
we would see that the leader cannot actually escape this divine image that he
has inherited. He has to either play along or perish. Running a dictatorship translates in a situation where constantly the chips are all in on the table.
There is no going home after an election. Fail and your head will be served on
a platter. To this one might add that the North Korean elite is bound to have
noticed the end that befell upon Hussein and Gadhafi, who both abolished their
WMD programs only to meet their deaths by direct or indirect US intervention. Therefore,
the North Korean ballistic and nuclear program should ultimately be seen as
regime insurance. Or, in other words, “try to topple me and I’ll push the
button”. Yes, the North Koreans have used their nuclear program in the past to
bargain for food and oil but these are merely positive side-effects. The real
nature of the program is to ensure the survival of the ruling dynasty. In this
sense, the rhetoric being used by the regime is just for internal propaganda
purposes. The leadership is not only rational but hell-bent upon its survival. Leaving
aside events of chance which always play a role in history, North Korea will
not be the one to attack first because they know full well that this will be
the end of the regime. Instead they are signaling their capabilities as
insurance. And it should be noted that the North Koreans have a redundant insurance regime in place.
Should the US go forward and pre-emptively surgically strike against nuclear
and other facilities the North can go ahead and obliterate Seoul, the capital
of South Korea with a population of millions which happens to be within range
of thousands of pieces of rocket and barrel artillery. To this we should add
their intermediate-mobile based ballistic missiles which can pop a nuclear
warhead in Tokyo in less than five minutes time. North Korea’s backup insurance
plan is anchored upon the huge cost that it can inflict should its primary
insurance plan be tampered with.
Moving along the border, we find China, North Korea’s
biggest benefactor and backer. Some analysts naively believe that North Korea
is merely a puppet, used by the Chinese at will as a thorn with which to
prickle the USA. Historically speaking, if it wasn’t for the millions of Chinese
soldiers which Mao poured in to stave off the northern collapse, the North
Korean regime wouldn’t be here today. Currently, China is by far the largest
trading partner of North Korea, accounting for 85% of its imports and exports
and providing most (in not all) of its oil and vital hard currency reserves.
Without China, North Korea would be dead in the water within weeks. The North
Koreans know full well that China, as a rising contender to the US hegemony, is
deeply annoyed by the presence of American military installations in South
Korea and to a lesser extent Japan. They know that China is alarmed by the
prospect of a unified Korea, friendly to the USA. They know that they, North
Korea, are useful to the Chinese as a buffer state.
One should note however that all these facts do not
mean that the Chinese are either entirely happy with the way things have
proceeded with the North Korean nuclear and ballistic program or that they are
fully in control as puppet masters. China would have preferred to keep things
at a quieter level because North Korea can potentially become a source of major
embarrassment for them. The brazen way with which North Korea has brushed aside
public Chinese statements which urge for caution and restraint are a potential
signal towards other actors that China is just as powerless over North Korea as
they are, causing an embarrassing loss of face for the Chinese. If on the other hand
they were to cut off oil supplies (through a pipeline which runs from Manchuria
to North Korea) and trade relations, this might destabilize the north to a very
dangerous extent. And one does not want destabilized neighbors armed with
hydrogen bombs at their doorstep. At the very least, a Chinese pull of the plug
would create a humanitarian crisis with potentially millions of refugees. In
the end, although China is annoyed with what North Korea is doing, although
they might have wanted lesser tensions in the region, they’re not necessarily
losing any sleep about it for the time being. North Korea is a severe annoyance
for South Korea, Japan and the USA, not for them. What could complicate matters
in the near future would be a move from South Korea and Japan to secure nuclear
deterrents of their own. Should this happen, this would not only be enormously
destabilizing for the region but it would also be damaging for China’s
aspirations towards regional hegemony.
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean we have the
United States of America, currently serving as the resident regional hegemon. The
United States are at the moment faced with the following dilemma. North Korea
has repeatedly called Trump’s bluff and continued on with rocket launches and
hydrogen bomb tests in defiance of the high end rhetoric being used. As is
often the case, bombastic and populist rhetoric, while useful in temporarily boosting
the leader’s approval ratings, can only cause trouble when executing state
policy. As things stand now, the United States has to either use pre-emptive
force to punish North Korea for its defiance or find a diplomatic pretext (for
example a UN resolution) behind which it will attempt to back down. If the aggressive
stance wins ground then the US is faced with a series of extremely costly
options. First of all, there is no surgical strike which can guarantee the
complete destruction of North Korea’s strategic assets. Should any such assets
survive, it is certain that North Korea will operate on the basis of “use them
or lose them”. This might mean a nuclear mushroom on a city of the west coast,
an eventuality that no one would even want to contemplate in the US
establishment. But even if no mushroom clouds materialize, as I’ve stated
earlier, North Korea has Seoul surrounded by thousands of conventional
artillery pieces and can obliterate that city within seconds. That translates
into the death toll potentially rising up to staggering six figure numbers.
Therefore, although the US might end up not paying any direct cost, the
potential damages to its allies (South Korea and Japan) can be horrendous. The
diplomatic solution will certainly mean loss of face for the administration and
that’s the price that one has to pay when constricting policy options with
tweets and hollow words. My personal analysis is that the USA will let the
matter slide because they cannot afford the cost that a pre-emptive strike can
potentially entail. My only cause for concern here is the erratic and
irrational behavior of its commander in chief. As is well documented in
history, major wars have erupted in the past due to chance events and
leadership miscalculations. As Bismarck had once prophesized, world war one
began because of a “silly thing in the Balkans”.
Moving on towards the other players in the scene, we make
our first stop in Russia which happens to share a tiny part of its borders with
North Korea. Russia is more than happy to watch this entertaining scuffle as it
provides a source of annoyance towards the American hegemon. It must be noted
that immediately after the second world war, the Soviets where the biggest
patrons of the newly formed state providing extensive supplies in equipment and
specialized personnel. Although nowadays Russian influence within North Korea
is nowhere near where it was during the days of Stalin, the Russians are
nonetheless eager to exploit this thorn in the American side. With bilateral
relations with the US sliding down the drain, the Russians are more than eager
to utilize such events for public relations gains. And, as with the Chinese,
they have very little skin of their own in the game. North Korea is targeting Japan,
South Korea and the US, not Russia.
Finally, we have South Korea and Japan. Both countries
stand to face enormous costs should military options be engaged and this is
especially true of South Korea. The problem that they are facing is one that no
nation wishes to face. If they continue appeasing the North Koreans, they will
continue to extort more and more “humanitarian” resources which everyone knows
are used to prop up the military and the ruling elite. If they confront the
North Koreans or if others (China, USA) do this in their steed, they are the ones who
potentially face the complete destruction of their countries and economies.
Right now, South Korea and Japan are betting their chips on the military alliance
they have with the US. They are hoping that the North Koreans realize that if
they were to be harmed, the full military might of the US would come crashing
upon them. This notion is not particularly comforting for the both of them as
it is well known that it is not prudent for a state to base its security and
survival upon the actions of a third actor. The most destabilizing policy
action that they could undertake would be to begin plans to acquire nuclear
weapons of their own. This would open the Pandora’s Box of nuclear
proliferation with unimaginative consequences for our world.
My belief is that North
Korea will forever alter the status quo by successfully completing an ICBM
rocket launch thus offering verifiable proof of their nuclear deterrent
capabilities. Once that milestone has been achieved it becomes pointless for
the US to undertake any pre-emptive strikes as even the slightest chance of
failure on their part can translate into enormous direct costs for them. Once the news fade
from the public scene everyone will be more than happy to let China handle the
problem in the usual way, i.e. providing oil and supplies to prop up the regime
in exchange for peace and quiet. This scenario can be destabilized by random
events such as famine and crop failure in the North, or a decision to bomb
their nuclear and ballistic installations by a bellicose US administration. The
most dangerous situation of all would be a destabilized nuclear armed North
Korean regime with warrying factions vying for power. As it is right now, it is
assumed that the current Kim is keeping an iron grip upon the higher echelons
of power but this is just that; an assumption. It is assumed that “the button”
is held firmly within his grip but were it not to be the case things could get
extremely dangerous very quickly. A war in the Korean peninsula could
potentially involve all major powers (China, Russia, US) and cause untold
damage and destruction.
