The AEI’s Nick Eberstadt breaks looks at North Korea’s latest shakedown attempt and Pyongyang’s policy of “international miltary extortion.” Here’s just a sample:
Plainly put, North Korea’s survival strategy is a policy of international military extortion. North Korea’s rulers have concluded that it is safest to finance the survival of their state through the international export of strategic insecurity and military menace. Consequently, the leadership, as a matter of course, strives to generate sufficiently grave international tensions, and present sufficiently credible security threats, to wrest a flow of essentially coerced transfers from neighbors and other international targets sufficient in volume to assure the continuation of what Pyongyang describes as “our own style of socialism.”
Be absolutely sure to read the rest on your own… some good stuff in there.
(HT to Kimchee GI)
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[...] The goal of North Korea is regime survival, and I agree with Nicholas Eberstadt here (h/t Marmot): Pundits often observe that Pyongyang is intent, foremost, upon regime survival. While incontestably true, this “insight” is also utterly superficial, insofar as all governments regard their own survival as a paramount priority. What distinguishes North Korea’s quest for survival are the peculiar and punitive conditions that must be satisfied in order to prolong Kim Jong Il’s rule. (emphasis added) [...]
[...] The goal of North Korea is regime survival, and I agree with Nicholas Eberstadt here (h/t Marmot): Pundits often observe that Pyongyang is intent, foremost, upon regime survival. While incontestably true, this “insight” is also utterly superficial, insofar as all governments regard their own survival as a paramount priority. What distinguishes North Korea’s quest for survival are the peculiar and punitive conditions that must be satisfied in order to prolong Kim Jong Il’s rule. (emphasis added) [...]