When North Korea collapses, it is easy to imagine chaos on the Korean peninsula that triggers a series of reactions from Beijing and Washington that are competing and hostile. Forget genteel rows over the yuan's value -- this is what could produce serious geopolitical instability. And that's why it's crucial that the United States, China and South Korea start talking about "black swans."
We do need to contemplate what we'd do along with the Chinese in case North Korea collapses. War over North Korea's fate would be tragic. And I do think that The Un is the designated fall guy--the Kim who will be the one strung up by his heels from a lamp post in Pyongyang.
But before discussions with China, we have to remember that the "collapse" of North Korea could be a regime collapse or a national collapse. Think Romania versus East Germany. The paper I cite deserves its own link here, although the checklist of signs is less than useful since many aren't fully explained and others aren't necessarily observable with open source intelligence.
If it is a regime collapse, the most likely result is a less (perhaps only marginally) oppressive government agreeable to China, that opens up economically and perhaps negotiates over nukes. If that is the case, there is little we can do, little danger of war unless North Korea lashes out in its death throes, and not a lot of need for crisis control thinking as we approach China over what follows the Kim regime.
In the case of North Korea lashing out to preserve their regime, the major point of discussion would be to make sure that the Chinese don't get in the way if we have to preemptively strike to keep Pyongyang from desperately using nukes or chemical weapons against South Korea or Japan to try and rally popular support (or to retaliate after, to destroy what might be follow-up strikes by North Korea). I don't think even China would support their little psycho-client to the point of defending them under those circumstances.
If it is a national collapse, that is what would require pre-collapse talks to avoid the prospect of South Korean troops moving north running into Chinese troops heading south, and clashing with possibilities of a war spinning out of control.
I'll go back to my old suggestion, in this case, that we should partition North Korea at least three ways and maybe four. And please note that my suggestion that all would sincerely prepare for unification was done with tongue firmly in cheek, as I hope the context is clear.
Zakaria is darned close to being fully on to something. Could it have been the environment of Newsweek that made him seem like a blithering idiot? We shall see.
Anyway, forgive me for another North Korea collapse post. I've stopped looking for signs to predict collapse, but as an analyst in the cited report notes, in one sense the collapse has been going on for a while now. We're just not at the final point.
