Cuando lo leí ayer en Foreign Policy Blog, tengo que decir que no me sorprendí mucho. Sería un paso más en la conquista de la costa del Pacífico, ya que como ya expliqué aquí, la parte rusa está bajo su influencia gracias a la masiva inmigraci…

Even so, recognizing that it only takes one-quarter turn of the screw to vary the end from one scenario to another quite different, it is well to be mentally and morally prepared if you are so near to the epicenter of events so as not to be put irremediably off balance by sudden possibly catastrophic developments on the Korean peninsula. For networks of our most thoughtful people in U.S. Forces Korea and in the Republic of Korea Armed Forces to have considered in advance the range of dynamics that might come into play is to be at least half-way prepared to deal with them. May the Lord Above strengthen and guide them in every way!

May He also make strong and wise all who would assist in the gargantuan long-term task of spiritual and material succor that must take place (mostly in the northern part of Korea, I trust) when the Kim family regime is finally history.

Many thanks for your service in Korea, and that of all who serve along side you.

Here is how I picture the most probable outcome:

I don’t see Kim’s clan crossing some line in which US national interests become unavoidable and the wheels start churning to do something and other pile on — at least not like I think you are describing it.

I see the end of the current status quo coming in the form of a major bloodletting when the contradictions inherent in the regime lead to the implosion of the North. I also expect, though this is just one of the possibilities, that that implosion will come with a violent strike outward – of what strength, I have no idea, because it could be of any kind, from a brief border skirmish of limited scope cut short by on organized armed coup in Pyongyang and generals at the DMZ who refuse to follow orders, or it could be a couple of hours of artillery rain down on Seoul that cause a massacre not seen since the conventional war days of Korean War itself, all for CNN cameramen to catch, or it could very well be a junior CNN cameraman in Taejon filming a mushroom cloud rising above what was Seoul……take your pick……all are possible and reasonable guesses……

Whatever happens, it will be over in one day probably, maybe a week, maybe a few weeks if the implosions stays an implosion and North Korean military units duke it out only amongst themselves in warlord fashion rather than simply letting the regime die and waiting to see what happens…..

……..but only then, after the bloodletting is finished, will the pied pipers of American self-interests come in demanding to know why they nobody had understood that a collapse of North Korea was inevitable and “done something” to prevent the bloodshed from happening……..Why someone had not prepared for the different possibilities and come up with the solution to handling a collapse so that “few people” (North Koreans, South Koreans, Americans stationed in South Korea, or possibly even Japanese hit by long range missiles) would die in the implosion?

As the concentration camps open and the North Koreans become free to tell of the horrors of the last 50+ years, none of the pied pipers will remember that it was in “America’s best interests” to keep the North alive to avoid any chances of implosion/explosion. Hell, they can’t even admit to themselves, at least from what I’ve read, that that is what they have really been piping for for the past 7 years or so.

No. One the horrors of the collapse are mixed with the horrors of what North Korea has already long done to its people are being well documented, everyone will be talking about how a “solution” could have been found and thus should have been found and pointing fingers at those who didn’t get it done.

This will be especially true if the implosion/explosion comes within the next 10 years, because they can lump everything on the Bush administration’s head. It will be good cover for the historians to justify burying the “soul-searching inquiry” not done on how Afghanistan could have been left churning out jihadists throughout the 1990s…..

In short, the United States will never begin gearing for plans in its real national interests concerning North Korea.

We will go along with the status quo until the outcome we refuse to admit is inevitable comes about in whatever level of destruction it finally comes about.

It is noteworthy that you find a disheartening absence of concern for the people of northern Korea in the statements concerning Korea by the presidential candidate Fred Thompson. To be sure, the oldest tradition of American foreign policy is to abjure any quest for “foreign monsters” to destroy, but instead to cold-heartedly avail ourselves of Eurasian contradictions to pursue and enhance the USA national interest, however it may be conceived. But is it ever so simple?

Unlike Garrison, Abraham Lincoln was no abolitionist. He plainly said that his cause was the American union, and would promote or deny emancipation in conformance to that national interest. However, his red line, and that of most of America outside of the South on the one hand, and New England on the other, was that slavery must not travel outside of where it had been already established at the time of the founding of the Republic. As the psychology of the “fire-eaters” of the South became the guiding animus of the South in the 1850s, that red line would be crossed, and civil war became unavoidable. When after a year of severe armed conflict the effort necessary to win it became manifest to the people of the North, the “national interest” was not adequate to spiritually gird the North for the long terrible fight. Save for a shrinking Copperhead minority, all now became abolitionists. It was a holy war on behalf of the freedmen.

So also with Korea. In the plain national interest, any administration with its head screwed on straight must seek the comprehensive steps with regard to the Kim family regime’s nuclear program that you have discussed at length. However, as you know so well, the head Hennessey imbiber in Pyongyang will ably play any game to avoid losing his vital primary means of coercion in the world beyond is realm, and with much success when the priorities of his adversaries are elsewhere. However, the inherent contradictions of his regime will only breed successive crises, each harder to manage than the last, until he crosses some undeniable red line in the USA national interest. As it becomes more painful to resolve the crisis in terms of a purely national USA interest, then the USA national interest will ally with the evident spiritual interest in liberation for the people of northern Korea. It will be amazing how the placid ocean of indifference of today’s world becomes an irresistible force sweeping away the tyranny and all of its accoutrements. And then Mr. Joshua Stanton will be confounded by all of those who will tell him that they had always steadfastly opposed the evil. Such is life!

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in which all Americans can remember a man who proposed we should judge only the content of a man’s character. This pastor began his struggle to bring down Jim Crow in the early 1950s in a national environment indifferent or hostile to him. So today also a steadfast pastor struggles with almost suffocating indifference among Americans and Koreans alike to the plight of the people in thrall to the Kim family regime. Who cares about Camp 22 or any of the rest of the archipelago of infamy north of the Imjin? But even with his immense pastoral responsibilities for a congregation of thousands of families, he resolutely pursues freedom for people in northern Korea through his leadership of the Korean Church Coalition and its manifold efforts including its current “Let My People Go” campaign to oblige the PRC government to permit the hundreds of thousands of northern Korean refugees in China passage to freedom. God bless Senior Pastor Peter Inshik Sohn, and sustain him, and all who labor for those in thrall, to the day of victory.