12 December SWJ Roundup

I thought I would respond to Dr. Victor Cha's Washington Post editorial today on the 5 myths about north Korea (since Korea has been so newsworthy lately!)

Dr. Cha makes some excellent points well worth considering. I find much with which to agree.

I do have to mention a couple of things. First, there is little hope that there can be any kind of meaningful reforms. Kim Jong Un, or whomever ends up succeeding Kim Jong Il, has to continue the Kim Il Sung model otherwise the legitimacy of the regime will be subverted and collapse. Reforms cannot be made unless the Kim Family Regime were somehow eliminated. Unfortunately that is kind of a catch-22 because it is unlikely that there could be any leadership emerging from the chaos and conflict that will occur when the regime is eliminated. I think we really need to understand this. The many calls I have heard that there will be a military junta or some kind of coalition formed from among the remaining elite. If the Kim Family Regime is eliminated that means the elite is eliminated and furthermore, the north Korean system has been devised and worked extremely efficiently over the past 60 years to prevent any kind of coups, junta, conspiracies, or opposition coalition from emerging in any form. Therefore the kind of power struggle that people envision for jockeying for leadership is unlikely to occur and what we are likely to see are those that have physical power (e.g. commanders of fielded military units) "compete" for resources to ensure their own survival. We are more likely to see the rise of warlords in the form of Army corps commanders and internal conflict among them as they try to maintain their personal security and use their military capabilities to ensure that.

I think Dr. Cha is right to recognize how little real influence China has over the north. China is between a rock and a hard place as well. I concur they want the status quo because what comes after is too complex and dangerous to fathom. However, because of that China has little ability to compel the north to "change its behavior" (and its behavior is rational as Dr. Cha describes - I would say it is a "rational" national security strategy with "Kim Family Regime characteristics." China could cut aid (food, fuel, and military) to try to compel the north to change its behavior but in so doing it would very likely cause the regime to collapse. It could cut off the flow of Department 39's illicit goods and resources from flowing through China but this would cause the loss of all hard currency and the ability to the Regime to continue to "buy off" the senior leadership and maintain their support, thus resulting also in likely regime collapse.

But where I disagree with Dr. Cha is that I think China is posturing more for reunification in the long run than any of the countries in the Region and the US. I think China has a plan that is going to result in their ultimate desired end state. They do not want north Korea as a province or rump state or vassal state - they do not want to have a buffer state. They want good relations with the South (and the reunified Korea) in order to continue the economic benefits they have from trade. They also want access to natural resources. But most importantly the Chinese end state is US forces off the Asia land mass and a reunified Korea that is a dynamic trading partner with the China with friendly relations, means that there is no security requirement for US forces on the Peninsula (or so the Chinese will make that case to Korea). As I have mentioned many times China is taking out these 100 year leases in the north for vast deposits of natural resources and they will work hard to ensure that a reunified Korea honors those leases. They will intervene when the regime collapse to prevent the likely spillover of refugees. But they will not want to deal with the internal problems of the north. They will continue their long standing rhetoric that they have no territorial expansion designs and have the utmost respect for sovereignty. They will be forced to intervene for their own security (to include preventing nuclear weapons from falling into ROK hands as well as the exposure of Chinese complicity in the north's nuclear program) but will want to withdraw as rapidly as possible and leave the headaches of managing the problems and reunification to the South. But with their move to leave will be the pressure they mount on the ROK to ensure there are no foreign forces on the Peninsula. They recognize that the north's existence as a "buffer state" cannot be sustained indefinitely and while regime collapse will be a significant and immensely complex threat to everyone in the region, it also presents China with the opportunity to achieve its desired end state: US forces off the peninsula, with access to natural resources and continued economic growth through trade with all the regional players. Again, I think China has the clearest long term vision for the Peninsula and is preparing now for the eventual reunification of the Peninsula under the ROK.

As Dr. Cha also points out, President Lee is the only one who is really talking strongly about reunification (though President Obama has as noted in the June 2009 Joint vision statement). President Lee is working to inform and educate and prepare the Korean people for reunification but of course he faces tremendous difficulties because of what I would term the schizophrenia of the Korean people: on the one hand in their hearts and emotionally the Korean people want reunification. On the other, in their heads and when thinking objectively they do not want it because of the enormous costs to the Korean people to reunify. The ROK is in a catch-22 here. But as President Lee said on the Blue House web site, reunification is closer than people might think.

Apologies for a comment nearly as long as the article.

Dave,

That's interesting, and makes a lot of sense. A couple of comments jumped out at me.

For context, as the US stepped up to replace the Brits as the big dogs in the neighborhood, we found ourselves struggling with the same "big dog problems" that had been so easy to criticize before when just watching, but in the doing found ourselves as just more poorly trained, less experienced versions of the Brits. They found our struggles amusing, and satisfying after years of listening to our criticisms, I suspect.

This brings us to China as they too seek to become a "Big Dog" and begin to inherit big dog problems. The Chinese study the US closely, and like the US in our age of growth are very business minded and not too worried about morality (Like how we "stole" the AP oil market out from under the Brits by offering the Saudis 3x the profits and assuring them we had no right to question the morality of their slave ownership. The Brits had demanded an end to slavery and the same miserly profits they were giving the Iranians) to build their influence and economic network.

Today the US gets "stuck" to bad positions because it is good for business. I've long felt, for example, that we do not "fight for oil" in the Middle East, so much as we fight for sustaining the current distribution of oil profits. Changes in government lead to changes in contracts, so better to sustain a corrupt or abusive government in power if that is the easiest way to sustain those contracts.

This brings us to China's growing concern with North Korea. Like the US - Saudi relationship, they are increasingly finding themselves shaping their foreign policies to support their economic ones. A good CCIR on this would be one that looks for critical economic positions between China and North Korea that are vulnerable to significant change upon a major change of governance in North Korea. Understanding these issues well will be critical to also understanding the decisions China makes and how to best leverage their support and avoid their opposition to our own policy goals.