Should We Push for Regime Change in North Korea?
Tags: Asia, nuclear weapons.
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Nicholas Guariglia thinks so:
Things on the Korean peninsula are heating up by the hour. This latest round of nuclear and missile tests should come as no surprise, given President Obama’s non-response to North Korea’s missile provocations several weeks ago. This time, however, Pyongyang detonated a 20-kiloton device — the ground shook 130 miles away — which is an estimated 20 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb North Korea tested in 2006.
Predictably, the international community bemoaned with platitudinous reprimands — Obama: “gravely concerned”; the United Nations: “deeply worried” — and even more predictably, North Korea responded by threatening war against South Korea, disavowing the 1953 armistice, and swearing to continue production of nuclear weapons. Surprise, surprise…
…Having spent way more time in “diplomacy school” than anyone’s mental health should allow, I can personally attest: active diplomats, retired diplomats-turned-professors, and aspiring would-be diplomats refuse to recognize that some things in this world fall outside of their professional purview. Could we imagine any other profession — say, anesthesiology or lumberjacking — making that same bold claim about itself?
Kim has made a mockery of our diplomacy with him for nearly two decades. He soaked President Clinton for all he was worth, clicking champagne glasses with Madeleine Albright all the while perfecting the art of plutonium production. During the Bush administration, Kim reneged on every preliminary agreement before the preliminary agreement could get its trousers off. And now he’s manhandling Mr. Obama to the point of embarrassment…
…Enough is enough. Kim Jong Il has proven he will stop at nothing to produce and proliferate nuclear weapons, and that is a no-no. Diplomacy has failed. Talking for the sake of talking is not working. Serious powers ought to be emphasizing results, not process. “Soft power” is a problem cured by Cialis — not a national security strategy for North Korea. It’s time we started working to bring that twisted, Lilliputian, Chia Pet miscreant down.
Within the linked article are suggestions on ways and means of bringing Kim down – including allowing Japan to build nuclear weapons, a course of action which does not commend itself to me (call me paranoid, but I like a rich, powerful Japan which lacks nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers…just makes certain there’s no desire in Tokyo for a re-match). My view is that Kim’s regime is moribund already and we don’t need to push it to extinction – it totters that way, already. With Kim’s apparent selection of his youngest son as successor, we see the opportunity for a change…will the third Kim be able to exercise the ruthless power necessary to keep a starving population under subjection? I’m betting he won’t be able to do it – the sort of sick inhumanity required to maintain a Stalinist regime is very hard to transmit from one generation to another, and I’m figuring it can’t be done to a third generation in North Korea.
While I don’t expect the NK regime to collapse immediately upon the elder Kim’s demise, I do believe that the NK leadership will take stock and try to figure out a way to feather their nests, and then allow the regime to fall. It will be a complicated dance which will require the cooperation of China (and, likely, a complete US withdrawal from Korea), but the thing can be managed – once the elder Kim is dead. We hope, of course, that Kim will be sent for final judgment in a short span of time – but that might still be years away. Meanwhile, our job is to ensure against NK exporting nuclear capability or thinking that it can blackmail us with nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
This does call for diplomacy – but not the way Obama and Co view diplomacy. Diplomacy isn’t just talking and making nice. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Russia and England were at loggerheads and war was imminent. England had various demands which Russia had to accept or war would result. Russia was thinking that England was bluffing. The German Chancellor, Bismarck, wanted to find out if England really was – and so Bismarck went to meet with the British Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli – and talked and talked for hours…just relentlessly pressing Disraeli to come clean and admit that it was all a bluff, that England wouldn’t go to war…over and over again, Disraeli carefully and patiently kept re-stating the British position – Russia backs down, or there will be war. After a long while, Bismarck was 100% convinced that England wasn’t bluffing and advised the Russians – who couldn’t sustain a war against Britian – to back down. Peace secured – but only at the forthright and stout assurance that if one side didn’t back down, there would be war. We must tell NK to back down, at the threat of war, and make China understand that we are serious – NK gives up the nukes, or we fight. Once China is convinced we are deadly serious, they’ll get NK to cool it. End of crisis – and then we just wait for Kim to kick the bucket.
We’ll find out swiftly if Obama has any real sense of diplomacy – or whether he’s just another Chamberlain who thinks you can shake hands with barbarians and get them to love you.
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10 Responses to “Should We Push for Regime Change in North Korea?”
Caucus of Corruption
Liberals seem to define ‘diplomacy’ as “drop trou and grab ankles’. Remember their shrill hysteria at the very PROSPECT of confirming one of the most effective diplomats of our time. John Bolton, because some ditz whined that he wasn’t ‘nice’ enough to her when they met in a hallway, and he was described as ‘mean’ and ‘abrasive’ and so on? The most effective diplomats not only know what the hell they are talking about, they have the courage and character to convey firmness and resolve and toughness.
The Libs seem to prefer the giddy groupie mentality of an Albright, and that is what scares me when they blather on about “diplomacy”. They seem to mean a state-sanctioned surrender rather than tough negotiating.
But then it’s hard to negotiate when negotiating is so often a case of “If you don’t do this, we’ll do that” and in the background is the administration grinning and shaking its head and mouthing “No we won’t…”
No negotiation can succeed if the other side knows—as all of our opponents now know—that one side’s only real concern is being LIKED “in the court of world opinion”—rather than being effective.
well, we can push for regime change then wait until a republican is in the white house to do anything about it. then undermine said republican and then blame him/her for anything that goes wrong.
also, a little OT but if obama is out there touting how many jobs he will create or ‘SAVE’, couldn’t bush have said how many lives were ’saved’ when the media had the death toll count as their drum beat?
Clearly the proper thing to do is to break out the awesome power of the american apology.
I’m sure glad President DA Earbama is “gravely concerned.” What’s he gonna do, take Shelly to another Broadway show, while we lose 16,000 jobs a day?
well, we can push for regime change then wait until a republican is in the white house to do anything about it. then undermine said republican and then blame him/her for anything that goes wrong.
Excellent point, ragingbull; isn’t this what Congress did under Slicky Blue Dress? They talked the talk, did nothing else, and when someone had the bullocks to do anything about it, they undermined it incessantly…
id say…create a nuclear accident in NK…and they wont have a pot to piss in…
I say we should have a regime change here first before we think of pushing for a regime change in NK. It would only be right. ;-) (Praying for regime change at here.)
Liberals? Any Liberals want to comment?
No, Mark—-the pattern is to agree that a bad guy is a bad guy till a conservative kicks him out, and then whine about how “at least under (..name bad guy..) there was STABILITY!. There is no way anyone can defend Kim Jong Il now, so there is silence until something happens. If their guy is in charge when he is booted, booting was a wonderful idea, brave and noble and all things good. If our guy is in charge, then it is a stampede to undermine everything he does, mourn the loss of a LEADER loved by so many of his people, pine for the stability a totalitarian regime brings, and in general make the situation as bad as possible.
It is too early to know what position will best serve the Rabid Radical Left, so until they know where they are supposed to stand they can’t say much.
The fact that the Japanese call their military a “self defense force” doesn’t change the fact that it is indeed a military.
Somewhat surprisingly, I agree with this 100%.