Chinese Approaches to Contingency Planning in a Collapsed North Korea by Annie Kowalewski - Georgetown Security Studies Review

Multilateral contingency planning regarding the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) remains largely underdeveloped, but any effort to stabilize the region after a complete collapse of the DPRK will require cooperation between the United States, China, and the Republic of Korea (ROK). This article will consider Chinese approaches to contingency planning and how the United States can cooperate with China in a crisis scenario post-conflict.

China will inevitably be affected by the humanitarian costs of a collapsed DPRK, the security of DPRK’s nuclear material, and any large US-ROK force mobilization on the peninsula. As such, China has increased border patrols and surveillance along the Sino-DPRK border to monitor potential crises and increase its first-response capabilities. One humanitarian concern in Chinese contingency planning documents is mass migration into Chinese territory that may destabilize the Jilin/Liaoning provinces. China would need to manage an influx of refugees with a different ethnicity to that of the Han Chinese, but also integrate thousands of unskilled workers into its economy. Moreover, current estimates suggest that there are nearly 100,000 people currently imprisoned in camps where infectious disease remains rampant The liberation of these camps thus opens the door to massive health concerns. These humanitarian and health challenges threaten to destabilize Chinese domestic stability.

The second focus is securing DPRK’s nuclear weapons and material. Potential crisis scenarios in this field range from ensuring the nuclear material does not leak to accidental launches to transfers of nuclear technology to dangerous groups. Lastly, Chinese documents regularly note the potential for the US-ROK to “take advantage” of a weakened peninsula to change the status quo and encircle China…

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Latin America’s Socialist-Islamist-Narco-Terrorist Alliance by Clifford D. May - Washington Times

At the U.N. last week, President Trump had harsh words for the “socialist dictatorship” that has impoverished Venezuela. He railed against “Islamist extremism” and “radical Islamic terrorism,” the former a supremacist ideology, the latter a weapon being used to mass-murder Muslims, Christians Yazidis, Jews and Hindus. He took note, too, of the threat posed by “international criminal networks” that “traffic drugs, weapons, people.”

What may not have occurred to Mr. Trump or most of his audience: the extent to which these evils are now being combined.

No one personifies this poisonous cocktail better than Tareck El Aissami, Venezuela’s 43-year-old vice president. Mr. El Aissami comes from a Lebanese-Syrian family with ties to Shia jihadi groups in Iraq. He also has been linked to a list of South American drug traffickers. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, he was appointed to the No. 2 government job in January by Venezuela’s dictator, President Nicolas Maduro.

One month later, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Mr. El Aissami, saying he “played a significant role in international narcotics trafficking.” At least some of his assets — estimated at around $3 billion — were frozen.

Investigators also revealed that he had issued hundreds of Venezuelan passports to members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and to operatives of Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanon-based international terrorist proxy. That may be one of the reasons Mr. Trump on Sunday added Venezuela to the list of countries from which immigrants and visitors should be restricted.

Penetrating Latin America has been an Iranian and Hezbollah project for decades. They have been recruiting allies and agents in the Lebanese Shia diaspora communities, setting up “cultural centers” and mosques, establishing media outlets and “educational” institutions, sending missionaries to preach and convert, and selecting individuals for indoctrination and training in Iran…

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