The man who has elevated “outside-the-box thinking” to an art form contributes another bang-up post on North Korea over at Parapundit, this time on the possibilities of regime collapse and those working behind the scenes to ensure that said collapse doesn’t happen. As always, Mr. Parker’s post is well-linked and you should read it in its entirety, but here’s an appetizer to get you interested:
An unverifiable US deal with North Korea would leave the regime firmly in control of its suffering people with the United States and other countries serving basically as enablers of that suffering. As it stands now both South Korea and China are firmly in the category of countries willing to serve as enablers of a horrible totalitarian regime. Will the United States join them?
Now go check out the rest.
4 Comments
One wonders what the wet dream is of conservative bloggers like you and Kevin at IA: Korean War II? A collapsed Nork regime with millions of starving refugees flooding surrounding countries, and an unstable North Korean Army armed to the teeth?
The status quo isn’t so great either. The North blackmails its neighbours for money and fertilizer using manure of its own, while its citizens continue to live in Hell on Earth.
But which realistic outcome that you and Kevin are hoping for is any better?
Realistic, like in paying blackmail money to a regime that, if history has shown us anything, will use that money to upgrade its armed forces, develop WMD, proliferate missile technology (and possibly worse) and all the while be quite content to watch its economy continue in its steep decline just as long as (increasingly foreign) money is flowing to the right people? The status quo is not only “not so great,” but it’s also untenable - eventually, the North’s own internal contradictions will catch up with it provided its neighbors do not keep it on permanent life support, and even then all one is likely to accomplish is to allow North Korea to become an even bigger mess when it finally does decide to give up the ghost. “Encouraging” reform in North Korea is out of the question - the DPRK is not China, and paying it off is NOT leading to substantial changes in North Korea’s socio-economic structure; in fact, it’s having (and will continue having) the opposite effect. Yes, everyone would like to see North Korea make a “soft landing,” but most analysts that I have read discount that possibility as highly unlikely, given the nature of the North Korean regime, and by pumping cash into the place, all one does is pass the problem along to another American and South Korean administration to handle.
Few people are calling for us to directly distabilize the North Korean regime, and fewer still are calling for the Americans to invade the country. The “wet dream” that we conservative bloggers have is that we simply stop helping the regime survive, because as long as it does, the problems associated with it will not only continue, but worsen.
The US is, of course the North’s largest contributer of aid while at the same time the biggest receiver of snide comments (although we may be in a close race with the “Japs” on that score).
Why should we be such a sugar daddy? Let them go the way of Cuba and see if Juche really works.
Corsair, I suspect that the Chinese and South Korean food aid does not pass thru the World Food Program. So I’m guessing the US is not the biggest food aid provider to North Korea. I’ve read that China provides 40% of North Korea’s food and 70% of their oil (or do I have those numbers backwards?).
It would be useful to find some comprehensive data on food aid to North Korea.
Marmot, As for direct destabilization: depends on what one means by that. As you know I certainly think we should be making a huge push to reach the North Korean people with information about the outside world and it is certainly the case that such information would be destabilizing to some extent and that is why I advocate doing that. I’ve also argued for a major effort to get North Korean refugees out of China and also to reach North Koreans who are living abroad to give them information and try to get them to either defect or work against their own regime.
I want to have a clear conscience on the day after some terrorists have nuked some American city 10 or 20 years from now where I can at least say to myself that I made as many suggestions as I could think of for things to do that might help delay that awful day.