What will the South Korean government do after the next North Korean attack? In a speech to the nation, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak announced that his government will abandon the previous policy of not retaliating against North Korean military provocations. In spite of this public promise, the South Korean government still lacks retaliatory credibility. The only South Korean firing that has hit a target was the firing of its defense minister, done to buy time domestically until the government could sort through the political viability of its options. Seoul still has no willingness to risk a larger war and therefore dreads the embarrassment of sitting on its hands once again should another volley of artillery shells arrive from the north.
How likely is another North Korean attack? The North Korean regime wants the six-party talks to resume in order to extract another installment of blackmail payments. This procedure has succeeded in the past and the North expects it to work again. North Korea enjoys escalation dominance over the first segment of the escalation ladder; the North's leadership knows that South Korea, having achieved a very high standard of living, is extremely averse to risking military damage to its wealth. The North, by contrast, could hardly care about military damage suffered at the lower rungs of escalation. Of course, war at the top of the escalation ladder would almost certainly be an extinction event for the North Korean regime. But the North is counting on the South never mounting the painful bottom rungs of the ladder. Assuming South Korea and the United States continue to resist making another blackmail payment, the North will likely calculate that another attack is a gamble worth taking.
Over the weekend China called for "emergency" six-party talks, essentially supporting North Korea's policy objective. Like the two Koreas, China also strongly supports the status quo. China has supported the Kim Family Regime for decades but for reasons that have shifted over time. In the beginning, there was communist ideology. Then North Korea provided a territorial buffer, separating China's territory from the U.S. army in the south. Today, China props up the Kim Family in order to forestall a refugee, environmental, and loose-WMD crisis that China might otherwise have to contain and clean up.
No rational leader knowingly starts a messy war; such wars begin through miscalculation. North Korea has calculated, based on past patterns of behavior, that South Korea and the United States will opt to make a payment through the six-party process rather than risk the consequences of even the most minor act of military retaliation. Miscalculation would occur when that assumption is no longer operative, perhaps due to a sudden hardening in the attitudes of South Korea's electorate. Such a change in the political calculus in the South may now be occurring. Northern miscalculation would occur if it did not perceive this change or did not believe that an announced change in the South's policy was credible.
What will the United States government do after the next North Korean provocation? Its standard response is to alert its forces and pledge support to its allies. Beyond that, the United States is thought to be a status quo power and thus -- just like the two Koreas and China -- should be in favor of maintaining the status quo on the Korean peninsula.
All true. But a regime collapse in the North could bring a large strategic benefit to the United States, especially if China ended up with the burden of cleaning up the North afterward. Should North Korea's government and military power collapse, U.S. military forces in the region would be liberated from the Korean War scenario. China, by contrast, would not be able to resist getting sucked into a large and messy stabilization commitment in North Korea. In the abstract, South Korea wants reunification and has planned for it. But it also understands its crippling cost. With Korean reunification inevitable in the long run, South Korea would no doubt maneuver to get China to pay as much of the clean-up tab as possible. South Korea could simply watch a post-collapse North from its side of the DMZ minefield and thus force China to stabilize the North. In addition to the financial cost of such a stabilization mission, China's competence and reputation would come under scrutiny the longer such a mission went on. A North Korean collapse would thus subtract a liability from the U.S. security balance sheet and add one to China's.
In spite of this potential opportunity for strategic benefit, we should not expect the U.S. government to use the current situation to apply strong pressure on the North. On the other hand, with all of the other actors in mortal fear of a change in the status quo, the United States has more leverage than the other players. China is increasingly held responsible for North Korea's behavior and will eventually have to make the largest payment to clean up the mess the Kim Family ultimately leaves behind. While it waits for this day, the United States government should use its leverage to make sure that China pays something every time North Korea acts up.
Comments
Robert,
Although it is not possible for the Republic of Korea or the United States to predict what North Korea will do next, it is possible to have contigency plans for most scenarios. The Republic of Korea and the United States should make it clear to North Korea that any further attack on South Korea would be met with massive retaliation. Military preparations should be made to enforce this retaliation which would be along the lines of the Iraq wars of 1991 and 2003. The Kim family and North Korean military are certainly aware of the fate of Sadaam Hussein. Indeed, this is probably why they have decided to develop nuclear weapons- to decrease the likelyhood that there would never be any retaliation.Who would want to go to war with a nuclear power? I doubt that North Korea would consider any further attacks if they knew that massive retaliation would occur.
Is an Iraq style war preparation feasible ? North Korea has experienced recent famines in which 1 million of its people died from starvation. A nation on the verge of starvation cannot support a prolonged war. It is likely, as in Iraq, that the North Korean Navy and Air Force, along with most of the Army's armor, would be destroyed within a month. Iraq had a million man army, just as North Korea does. However, a million man army with no air cover or armor could not successfully invade South Korea. Of course, ther is always the prospect that China could intervene on the side of North Korea as it did in 1950. Mao is long dead and the Chinese are now the most successful capitalists in the world. The recent Wiki leaks contained diplomatic correspondance with Chinese diplomats which indicated that the Chinese are in favor of a united Korea. The United States, prior to any military action against North Korea, should make it clear to the Chinese that we will withdraw all U.S. forces from the Korean peninsula once reunification occurs.
Colonel Maxwell discusses several scenarios following a collapse of North Korea. It is true that the North Koreans are heavily indoctrinated and regard the Kim family as demi-gods. I doubt an insurgency would occur. With the demi-gods dead or in jail, they are no longer god like. At the end of WW2, when the Japanese Emperor surrendered to General MacArthur, no insurgency developed. The same was true in Germany when all the leading Nazis were dead or in jail. People who have been brainwashed into worshipping a leader do not become insurgents. When the leader is defeated they accept the new leader and in the case of North Korea it will be a Korean speaking president.
A reunification of the Koreas does have the potential to be a major humanitarian disaster. North Korea is not East Germany- which had an advanced economy and was absorbed by West Germany with some difficulty ( but no inurgency ). The North Korean economy is in the 19th century and it is a long way from the 19th century to the 21st century.
Robert,
You say that the U.S. has leverage over China to avert a regime collapse in NK. However, the NK regime shows few signs of collapsing, and I would argue that such incentives that do exist are more to the advantage of the NK regime than the U.S., by forcing cooperation with the NK regime in order to keep it in power. The costs of maintaining the NK regime for China are far lower than either dealing with its collapse OR pushing back against U.S. attempts to force a NK regime collapse.
Also, I think you do not take ROK domestic politics into consideration. The ROK government would face enormous domestic pressure to intervene in an NK regime collapse - this pressure would grow exponentially if it became clear that the ROK was abandoning the North to China.
Moreover, I don't think you have taken into consideration the North's nuclear arsenal, much less its stockpiles of weapons-grade nuclear material, as well as its quite considerable chemical and biological stockpiles. The U.S. and the ROK cannot, IMO, take the risk of allowing such dangerous material (or the scientists who helped create them) to disappear onto the world's black markets in the event of a regime collapse.
The pressures for the ROK or the U.S. to intervene in a NK regime collapse would be enormous and compelling. The Chinese certainly understand this.
There's a problem with North Korea backing itself further and further into a corner. There is simply no easy way to tell what they're going to do.
While China is the largest external resource provider to North Korea, China's interactions with South Korea both directly and indirectly are far greater. Trade actually exists between South Korea and China, whereas trade between North Korea and China can easily be viewed as a long series of one offs. Both the PRC and a lot of the Chinese citizenry seem quite aware of the risks to supply chain dynamics & potential commercial losses associated with conflict. China, for reasons quite independent of any considerations of US positions has every desire to see the conflict de-escalate.
I tend to look at the situation as being in a phase where everyone is going to be jumping around trying to contain further provocation. Without the US showing up on the scene in force it is entirely too likely that the North & the South would fall into a tit-for-tat pattern of provocation that would lead to a wider war. Right now apparently we are not seeing any type of `final formations' that might herald an all out attack by NK, however they don't seem many steps from that either.
Coming during the Asian Games, I'm wondering if this isn't a sort of Ossetian strategy on the part of the Kim Klan. The studied nonchalance during the conflict by North Korean leaders seems quite reminiscent of the Georgian conflict as well as indicating a fair amount of premeditation on the part of NK. I can't think that the timing pleased them very much.
I have to admit I am surprised by the escalation in the conflict. China has, in spite of their own frustrations with the situation, undertaken a steady series of activities undertaken a steady stream of activities with NK that have all been designed to increase positive interactions with the rest of the world. The US hasn't exactly always approved of these activities obviously, but then we can't see North Korea from our back yards either. There seems to be some certain amount of insult to the efforts China has been making that's got absolutely nothing to do with the US, but everything to do with China's domestic concerns.
Not none o' me -- I agree with Slap; that <i>is</i> a good article. My only quibble is that the US has no way to ensure China pays up when North Korea does its tantrum bit and it is important to recall that while China has more influence with North Korea than do others, influence is not control. Far from it...