George Washington University’s National Security Archive has posted several recently declassified documents—including CIA and State Department intelligence reports—on the viability of the North Korean regime:
A CIA panel of experts concluded in 1997 that North Korea was likely to collapse within five years, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive. This “Endgame” exercise of former U.S. policymakers, intelligence officers and outsider experts warned that the North Korean regime could not remain “viable for the long term,” with the majority doubting the “current, deteriorating status could persist beyond five years.” Citing the “steady, seemingly irreversible economic degradation in the North,” the panel concluded that “the current situation in North Korea appears beyond corrective actions that do not fundamentally threaten the regime’s viability.”
Of course, that was in 1997. Anyway:
For Clinton State Department officials, Kim Jong Il and his advisers faced a daunting challenge: “To successfully recover and rebuild from a devastating decade of decline, North Korea’s leaders must make gut-wrenching decisions” regarding how wide-ranging and fast to pursue economic reform and government transparency, with the choice apparently reduced to one between an inevitable fall into economic and political chaos, or the prospect of destabilizing change. (Document No. 19) Given this choice, and Kim Jong Il’s fierce determination to hold to power, many saw the North’s fall as inevitable, if not imminent.
If Kim Jong Il’s hold on power is as tenuous as some would believe, then sanctions may be viewed as the diplomatic equivalent of controlled demolition, or as some would put it, regime change. Did “wishful thinking” about North Korea influence the Bush administration’s refusal to engage in direct talks with Pyongyang, while similar assessments of the North Korean regime’s stability prompted South Korea’s and China’s efforts to moderate harsh U.S. positions? No doubt, these perceptions of North Korea’s sinking fortunes, and by implication Kim Jong Il’s motivations and objectives in pursuing nuclear weapons, have affected and continue to color U.S. and allied strategies and tactics for responding to Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
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7 Comments
Expert idiots. The US has always underestimated South Korea’s willingness to prop up the nK regime and prevent its collapse at any cost.
$500 million for a Nobel Peace Prize goes a long way.
Without Kim Dae Jung and the Sunshine Policy, the prediction would have come true.
Yes, this is all an invention of a leftist South. Congratulations boys, you cooked your own goose.
Without Kim Dae Jung and the Sunshine Policy, the prediction would have come true.
$500 million for a Nobel Peace Prize goes a long way.
Expert idiots.
While the think-tankers may be expert idiots, usual suspect commentators of the Hole make for just simply idiots.
Even if Sunshine had never happened, NK would have remained far from collapse all along just on the Chinese Yalu border trade and the Yakuza black-market money transfers alone. Then what?
Fundamental assumptions of the NK collapse theory is strongly modelled on what happened in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Loss of a major, superpower protector state and the rise of popular revolt which led to the toppling of the old order.
Of course, this is an analysis based upon an incongruous analogy. China happens to be NK’s benefactor state, and they never fell; on the contrary, China is rising and economically prosperous like they’re never been in the post-European imperialism era, and wields international, diplomatic clout. Furthermore, the NK version of totalitarianism makes all other former Soviet satellites seem pathetic in comparision. The think-tankers also grossly underestimated NK will and determination. As a nation, NK has evolved, in natural-selection sense, to be a hardy survivor in an environment filled with hostile forces.
None of the Western European regimes were perpetuating their counterparts in the east.
The predictions of the DPRK’s demise were produced mid-famine and before there was any significant aid coming from South Korea and when Chinese aid hadn’t fully recovered from the early 1990s cuts that some analyst say helped trigger the famine.
It is reasonable to assume that South Korea has helped prolong the regime, but not accurate to assign full blame to Kim and Roh — not least because US aid under the Agreed Framework added up to about $1 billion, a third of which was disbursed by the Bush administration. Seoul governments before the Sunshine boys also feared the cost of unification once the bill for the Germanies became clear.
The reality here is that the two countries who would be most able to exert the kind of influence that might topple Kim Jong-il are the ones least likely to take that move because they have interests that they see as more important than keeping nukes out of his hands.