Many conservatives in and out of the Bush administration assume that North Korea's population must be seething and that the regime must be on its last legs. Indeed, the Bush administration's policy on North Korea, to the extent that it has one, seems to be to wait for it to collapse.
I'm afraid that could be a long, long wait. The central paradox of North Korea is this: No government in the world today is more brutal or has failed its people more abjectly, yet it appears to be in solid control and may even have substantial popular support.
From a brief visit like mine, it's hard to gauge the mood, because anyone who criticizes the government risks immediate arrest. But Chinese and other foreigners I've spoken to who live in North Korea or visit regularly say they believe that most North Koreans buy into the system, just as ordinary Chinese did during the Maoist period.
He has an excellent point. And if North Korea's collapse was merely a hope he would be right. But I hope that we are actively seeking to squeeze the North Korean regime. I don't assume that the North Korean people are seething at the regime and waiting for a chance to smash the regime. I assume the people are passive but growing more desperate. And at some point they will be so desperate that they will lose all fear of the regime and lose fear of the consequences of defying the regime. If this base cracks, the rest could follow.
Yet squeezing the North is a problem since only Japan and America really want North Korea to lose and fall. As long as China and South Korea want North Korea to survive, our task is complicated.
And this does not mean that Kristof's solution of engaging the North is the solution. North Korea is poor enough that isolation does hurt them. They have few resources to survive and rely on Chinese and South Korean help. If we help--"engage" them which Kristof says will undermine them--then we just reduce the cost to South Korea and China to prop up the regime.
We need to keep applying pressure so that the North Korean people lose all hope and all fear. And we need to make sure that if Seoul and Peking want to prop up the Pillsbury Nuke Boy, that they bear the cost.
And we need to make sure Seoul and Peking pay the price of propping up North Korea. Pull our troops off the front line of the DMZ to make sure our people are not threatened by North Korea's remaining conventional power. Build up missile defenses in Japan and at sea to shoot down their missiles. Make sure we have assets to strike North Korean missiles. This will make sure that if North Korea is a military problem it will be South Korea that pays the price. I am unwilling to risk even San Francisco because South Korea doesn't want to risk winning! Let South Korea face the consequences of propping up a psycho regime.
As for China, if North Korea goes nuclear, we should stand aside and let South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan go nuclear. Let China face a few more nuclear-armed enemies if Peking thinks it is acceptable for us and Japan to face one in North Korea. China counts too much on our restraint of our non-nuclear allies and gives us little to justify our restraining our nuclear-capable allies.
I think we can squeeze North Korea to the point of collapse. But it is something we have to work on and not just hope for as Kristof notes.
But the alternative is not to help North Korea and hope they reform under the influence of our businessmen. That, I believe, is the real sucker bet. The real alternative to collapsing North Korea is to make sure that those who prop up North Korea pay the price for delaying the Pillsbury Nuke Boy's collapse.
UPDATE: My only question is whether the reforms will end up like the Soviet Union's or like China's. Of course, China's may end up like the Soviet's in the end, so perhaps North Korea has picked a loser of a model anyway. Because remember, past performance is no guarantee of future earnings. Strategypage has a relevant post:
July 17, 2005: North Korea is planning to radically restructure its economy. Apparently convinced that the Chinese approach (a market economy, but with a communist dictatorship still running the country) will work for them. North Korea has been taking small steps in this direction for nearly ten years. But now there are plans to open up more of the economy. To do that, North Korea will need lots of food and monetary aid. The major obstacle is the communist bureaucracy, who are used to a Stalinist, "total control" approach to government. Getting these guys to loosen up will not be easy. Meanwhile, North Korea continues to face famine, and the North Korean military becomes increasingly weak and unable to carry out the long feared invasion of the south.
