Are we sure it's for Kim and not Vaclav Havel? Just asking.

Kim Jong-Il was a despot and a dictator and his country suffered terribly during his rule, there's no doubt about that. However, as is sometimes the case in diplomacy, there may be non-obvious reasons why a bit of pandering to a dictator makes more sense than would initially appear.

Here's the ugly secret about North Korea: nobody has any idea how to successfully de-escalate the situation, so everyone tries to preserve the status quo. This allows the north to play off Russia against China against the US against South Korea. It has been a disaster for the people of North Korea, and pretty lousy for everyone else involved as well.

North Korea has had over 50 years to dig in entrenched positions along the DMZ. These are heavily fortified and (most importantly) are well within artillery range of the South Korean population centers in and around Seoul. The estimates made by the US military consistently show an attack by the North killing at least 200,000 - 300,000 civilians in the South in the first 48 hours, with many of those deaths coming in the first 5 minutes. In an actual war, the North would lose decisively in a matter of days, but the damage they could inflict in the initial attack would be a disaster.

But wait, it gets worse. We know that North Korea is capable of building and testing a nuclear device. Despite the hyperbole you hear (mostly about Iran right now) there is a huge difference between a nuclear device (a machine capable of creating a nuclear explosion under controlled laboratory conditions) and a nuclear weapon capable of being used on an enemy under fire. Except in North Korea's case. It's well known that they have spent decades building tunnels under the border and it's not too big of a stretch to imagine that they could have one or more nuclear devices already in place within range of Seoul. If this is the case, the potential death toll would be well into the millions.

So, what's the responsible thing to do in this situation? The obvious one is to try to encourage China to sit down with the new boy king and tell him that their experience with engaging with the outside world, at least economically, has been much more successful that what case before. They might even be successful in making some aid conditional on ratcheting down the crazy a couple of notches.

In the meantime, all the rest of the world can do is try to reduce the risk of an attack. Clearly, a change in leadership opens the chance of instability in the North. Gritting your teeth and lowering the flag to half mast then looks like a reasonable choice.

The UN is like the Mafia of Nations.

Really? I didn't think the Mafia was that bad.

BTW, for those with an interest in how ordinary North Koreans live I recommend Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. A truly heartbreaking book.

The UN's greatest strength is its greatest weakness.

You see, the UN pretends that people like Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein are the legitimate rulers of their blighted countries. It has to. Otherwise those countries will leave the UN and the whole purpose of the UN (providing a world forum in which all nations can talk out difficulties instead of going to war) will collapse. By giving a veneer of legitimacy to third-world kleptocrats, the UN provides a forum in which the weak can pretend to be speaking as equals to the strong.

Of course, the "revolutionary" mass murderers and their apologists use UN recognition to prove their legitimacy as rulers; and then mistake it for real legitimacy, often joining UN panels on human rights and equality and frequently proposing flimsy resolutions that they and their fellow tyrants use to condemn those who disagree with them, furthering bolstering their own "legitimacy."

The world's "so open-minded their brains have fallen out" pop-culture progressives mistake the peurile ramblings of the third-world flavor of the month for the legitimate voice of the "oppressed" and fete him as a deliverer ... until the sufferings of his people explode into revolution; whereupon said progressives throw in behind whichever illerate thug seems likely to win the resulting civil war and impose the next version of a "socialist democratic republic" or a "workers' paradise" on the country - all the while proclaiming solidarity with the very same people whose sufferings they ignored while basking in the self-righteousness of being against capitalism while amassing a fortune themselves.

Meanwhile, they quietly burn the pictures of them cavorting at the birthday bash of said dictator or his equally loathesome offspring.

Sad to say, this has no evidentiary value: The people who love the UN the most are also least aware of the suffering of the Norks.

Do we need the UN now that we have Twitter?

Meh, call me a cynic, but politics is war is politics.

Yeah, NK is a fucked up place to live.

But politics is a nasty game that hasn't changed since on caveman lorded his tribe's resources over another to get his way. Our tools, not our rules, are what has changed.

Yeah in some wonderful little fairy tale the world would unite and remove evil thugs like that and then we'd all sing kumbiyah together and trade s'mores recipes in a thousand different languages.

But reality means, much as I dislike the UN for its general idiocy, that some level of gamesmanship and pretense is necessary. Everybody knew Stalin was evil, and not many were all that fond of Franco or or Mao, but its a wasteful gesture to be dismissive of these men while they or their successors wield power.

In fact, it is arguably better to make use of the pretense, because that gives no ready reason for nations in such a grip to step up the crazy a few more notches. Let them have the pretense of respect from some ambassadors, it costs nothing, and it doesn't slow down the counter operations that injure them even the slightest.

Diplomacy: The art of saying "nice doggie" while looking for a rock.

Someone tell me why the UN still exists? It sends in neutered peacekeepers to places like the balkans and Rwanda with no real mandate than .to be a presence. Screw nk, let it rot in its own hell and isolation. They have a nuke? If they actually do something author they will cease to exist, end of story.

> Yeah, NK is a fucked up place to live.

> But

(other stuff followed)

Hey, this new guy can't be "supreme leader" yet. Our guy hasn't hurried over there to bow to him yet.

"So, what's the responsible thing to do in this situation? The obvious one is to try to encourage China to sit down with the new boy king and tell him that their experience with engaging with the outside world, at least economically, has been more successful than what came before. They might even be successful in making some aid conditional on ratcheting down the crazy a couple of notches" Factual Interjection @9:50 AM

I don't think that's going to work. Deng Xiaoping had a compelling reason to change China's course after Mao kicked the bucket. He knew that dynasties had fallen and all of China had plunged into centuries of chaos before, and that the same thing could happen to the Communists. Giving the people some economic opportunity was the only practical way of forestalling this. China is still a police state today, but North Korea takes the totalitarianism to a whole different level of insanity. It's simply impossible to run an entire continent-sized country of one and a half billion people as a supermax prison the way the Kim dynasty runs their little country of a couple of million people.

In short, Chinese communists loosened up over the past few decades because they had to - it was the only way for them to stay in power. North Korea didn't, because they didn't have to. They have a much smaller pot to keep the lid on.

Keep in mind that Dear Leader signed agreements with China, among other countries, not to test nuclear weapons or launch ballistic missiles, then went right ahead and did it anyway. He slapped China in the face in front of the whole world, and China let him get away with it. Why?

Martin, because China would bear the brunt of the resulting waves of refugees and instability. China provides a huge amount of oil, food, etc, to NK because they're scared of the alternative. A bit of posturing from Dear Leader was the least of their worries. They didn't fear an attack from them, so from their point of view, who gives a damn if they have a few questionable missiles and nukes? China didn't give a shit in the first place, I suspect they knew the agreement wasn't worth the paper it was written on. But they don't care.

China have always been the only country with the leverage to actually make NK change course. But it's not in their interests, so they don't do it. The Chinese government plays hardball when it comes to realpolitik.

Which as you rightly pointed out, is the reason they loosened up their economic system - it was do it or die. They saw what happened to the USSR. So we have the world's first successful totalitarian capitalist country (large country, I exclude Singapore for being too small).

May you live in interesting times.

The obvious one is to try to encourage China to sit down with the new boy king and tell him that their experience with engaging with the outside world, at least economically, has been much more successful that what case before. They might even be successful in making some aid conditional on ratcheting down the crazy a couple of notches.

Dream on Christopher. See above. Your analysis is correct as far as it goes - the threat of devastation of the ROK is what stops diplomats from provoking NK. But that was true 20 years ago too, and now they have nukes as well. "Containment" and diplomacy worked out well there didn't it? So how long to wait? Until their missile delivery systems actually work?

At some stage someone will have to say "full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes". And the longer it's left, the worse it will get.

Think of it like cancer. Catch it early and you get a nasty course of radiotherapy, but you recover. Later, it's WWII in your body.

And in this case, I think a bit of symbolic snubbing along with some behind the scenes "start fixing things and we'll start treating you like a normal country again" would have been more than justified. A missed opportunity there.

The obvious one is to try to encourage China to sit down with the new boy king and tell him that their experience with engaging with the outside world, at least economically, has been much more successful that what case before. They might even be successful in making some aid conditional on ratcheting down the crazy a couple of notches.

Dream on Christopher. See above. Your analysis is correct as far as it goes - the threat of devastation of the ROK is what stops diplomats from provoking NK. But that was true 20 years ago too, and now they have nukes as well. "Containment" and diplomacy worked out well there didn't it? So how long to wait? Until their missile delivery systems actually work?

At some stage someone will have to say "full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes". And the longer it's left, the worse it will get.

Think of it like cancer. Catch it early and you get a nasty course of radiotherapy, but you recover. Later, it's WWII in your body.

And in this case, I think a bit of symbolic snubbing along with some behind the scenes "start fixing things and we'll start treating you like a normal country again" would have been more than justified. A missed opportunity there.

Are we sure it's for Kim and not Vaclav Havel? Just asking.

Posted by: DrMaturin at December 29, 2011 9:50 AM

From what I've heard, Havel was not as popular in the Czech Republic as some might think. Too liberal for them.