Kaplan Identifies the Problem. So How Do We Solve It?

[Updated; Updated again 9/6 regarding South Korea’s withdrawal from OPLAN 5029 planning last year.]

First, I want to thank “a fellow blogger” for forwarding me this article. The Marmot has posted the entire text. Richardson and GI Korea have already preempted many of my comments on this piece. As with everything Kaplan writes, the article shows the author’s research; it’s approached with both depth and perspective. Inevitably for a piece that printed out to 12 pages, there were parts with which I didn’t agree, and others where he stimulates further thoughts, mostly on reconstructing North Korea.

Place Your Bets: Inside Kim Jong Il’s Gargantuan Cranium

Kaplan approvingly cites Andrei Lankov, who calls the Kim Jong Il regime “an extremely rational bunch of killers.” Overall, I agree with that, although I’ve had trouble reconciling that belief with the highly predictable and severe consequences Kim brought on himself with his July missile tests. Kaplan also argues that Kim is not impulsive, but I agree with expert option which holds that Kim Jong-Il is both rational and impulsive.

Like Chuck Downs, Kaplan thinks that Kim Jong Il’s missile tests are a sign of weakness. Kaplan thinks Kim is “losing his edge,” and it’s possible that he’s deperately short of cash. This and other statements pretty well enroll Kaplan in the “collapsist” school, where I’ve been for a decade or so now, and in some good company. I also think that this regime will eventually collapse, and that outside aid can do little more than prolong the agony and risk. Predicting when things like this will happen is a bit too dodgy for me, however.

Place Your Bets: Seoul’s Green Zone?

Kaplan is correct that Korea is one of the least-desired places for a soldier to be assigned, but he overstates Korea’s unpleasantness and sense of crisis (one is much more struck by the absence of such a sense, and by how vulnerable and unsecure many of our posts seem to be). Like Kaplan, I’ve long wondered if North Korea would be tempted by a limited strike aimed exclusively at U.S. forces, although I suspect that Camps Paige, Hovey, Stanley, and Casey are more likely targets. That’s why I enthusiastically support removing our soldiers from those “trip wire” locations. Posting our soldiers there sets us up for military and political disaster should war break out.

Place Your Bets: Phases of Collapse

Kaplan provides one gem I’ve wanted to pass on for years but couldn’t, because it was classified when I saw it. If you’re an officer, warrant, or NCO in Korea, I highly recommend you pull any string you can to attend a “collapse briefing,” which describes regime collapse more as a process than an event, with seven identifiable stages:

Phase One: resource depletion;

Phase Two: the failure to maintain infrastructure around the country because of resource depletion;

Phase Three: the rise of independent fiefs informally controlled by local party apparatchiks or warlords, along with widespread corruption to circumvent a failing central government;

Phase Four: the attempted suppression of these fiefs by the KFR once it feels that they have become powerful enough;

Phase Five: active resistance against the central government;

Phase Six: the fracture of the regime; and

Phase Seven: the formation of new national leadership.

North Korea probably reached Phase Four in the mid-1990s, but was saved by subsidies from China and South Korea, as well as by famine aid from the United States. It has now gone back to Phase Three.

I agree with that assessment, and if you want more detail on how North Korea wavered in and out of Phase Four, read this.

Reconstruction: Logistical Preparations

The single most important point Kaplan makes is that we underestimate the severity of the catastrophe that post-collapse North Korea will be, and I emphatically agree with him that we should be doing a better job of planning for this.

With the probable exception of Pyongyang (assuming the city is not leveled) we can expect hordes of starving refugees, a collapsed transportation infrastructure, a near-complete absence of medical facilities, lynch-mob vengeance, loose nukes (or worse), epidemics of diseases we haven’t faced for decades, and an unprecedented percentage of the population driven to madness. Consider those factors in light of the struggle we’ve had in getting Iraq’s electricity grid back in running condition, and I think you can just begin to grasp the scope of this problem. Add to that Kaplan’s prediction — also accurate, I think — that the North Korean military will fracture. Some units will fight, some will fight each other, some will turn to bandity or, in the Navy’s case, piracy. Some may carry out doomsday orders to commit terror attacks in the South. Most regular units will probably just do what the Iraqi Army did and simply melt away, or join the refugee caravans.

Are we prepared for this? Colonel David Maxwell (whom I knew when he was a Lt. Col., commanding the 1/1 Special Forces Battalion in Okinawa) accurately states [maybe I should say “suggests”] that U.S. forces aren’t. There are two kinds of movement we’re really prepared for in Korea: a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation, or NEO, and a response to a conventional invasion. We certainly need to prepare for both events, but the latter is an increasingly remote risk, where our preventive role should be a supporting one.

That said, I agree with GI Korea that it isn’t we, but the South Koreans, who should move into North Korea after the collapse. The best thing we can do for the Korean people now is to evolve the alliance into something better configured to deal with a regime collapse. For example, we can help South Korea pre-position materials and equipment: food, water, clothing, blankets, medical supplies, tents, plastic sheeting, and construction equipment. If the World Food Program’s assessments are accurate, these will have to be enough to keep at least seven million people alive. Even this optimistically assumes there won’t be a major conflict. We should also identify active and reserve units that can transport and distribute those essential services.

Our forces should be limited to supporting South Korean forces from the South. We can provide logistical support for “nation-building” in the North, help control the movement of people across the DMZ, or deal with any North Korean attacks in the South. If necessary, we should also be ready to lend aircraft, air guard units, and ships to move those supplies into secure airfields and ports in the North. In this regard, we have a great advantage over China in the competition for influence.

Others are far better qualified than I to speak of ROK capabilities, but I doubt the present level of their preparation for several reasons: first, they have no secrets from the North Koreans and they know it; second, preparations of the kind needed would be extremely costly, and they don’t want to pay those costs; third, preparations of this kind would piss the North Koreans off, which they’re afraid to do; and finally, governments tend to avoid budgeting and preparing for costly things they would prefer to assume won’t ever happen.

[Update 9/6: How could I forget OPLAN 5029, and South Korea’s sudden withdrawal from joint planning for it?

OPLAN 5029 … is the US-ROK Combined Forces Command to prepare for the collapse of North Korea. The plan is reported to feature preparations by the South Korean and US forces to manage an inflow of North Korean refugees and other unusual situations if the North Korean regime collapses.

[….]

In January 2005 [a year after the U.S. side offered the plan] the ROK National Security Council rejected an American proposal transform Concept Plan CONPLAN 5029 into an Operational Plan, OPLAN 5029. The OPLAN would provide much more specific military course of action to repsond [sic] to various types of internal instability in North Korea, such as regime collapse, mass defection and revolt. In June 2005 ROK Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung and US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld agreed to “improve and develop” the Concept Plan, stopping short of turning it into an Operation Plan. The improved Concept Plan will include measures for “various types of contingencies” other than military operations.

The United States had asked that the plan be approved in 2004. It would have given the United States command over South Korean military assets in the event of rioting, mass defections or a government collapse in the impoverished North. US officials reportedly had argued that the contingency plan was necessary to secure sensitive nuclear and military facilities, and for overall public safety.

In April 2005 South Korean Defense Authorities rejected a contingency plan that would give command authority to the United States military in the event of a North Korean collapse. South Korea’s National Security Council on 15 April 2005 said it had vetoed a joint military plan with the United States on how to handle serious turmoil in North Korea, should it arise. South Korean officials said they were dropping the plan because it could limit “South Korea’s exercise of its sovereignty.”

These are the kind of things that would normally come out of alliance negotiations. But when the South Korean NSA (NSC) is making unilateral announcements like this, they’re clearly not consulting with the Americans beforehand. South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun is pursuing a policy of greater independence from its Cold War alliance with the United States. His government plans to increase military cooperation with China, and for South Korea to become what he calls a “balancing power” in Asia.

More on the South Korean withdrawal from OPLAN 5029 here, at DOA part 12. So it’s unanimous: Korea wants to lead the forces that go into the North, which in effect means those forces will be South Korean and any North Korean KATUSA types they press into service along the way. And obviously, I’m fine with that, but withdrawing from joint planning with the country that will be asked to supply much of the funding, equipment, and transportation is just nuts.]

Reconstruction: Diplomatic Preparations

Kaplan ends up predicting that China will win the power contest for a united Korea, and will end up occupying parts of the North as a feifdom or buffer zone of sorts. Kaplan concludes this after making a much more convincing case for the chaos and uncertainties that will follow collapse, and after noting that Americans tend to underestimate the importance of ancient and modern grievances between nations. Here, I think Kaplan misjudges the desire of China or Russia to have their own troops in North Korea, or the wisdom of such a move.

I agree that Japan will stay out for the obvious reasons Kaplan notes. I think America would also be wise to keep its troops out of North Korea for similar reasons — the population has been conditioned to hate us, and while some North Koreans obviously don’t believe that propaganda, others will. I don’t think the Russians have any great desire to occupy parts of Korea after the return on their investments in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Their interests in North Korea don’t justify the risk and expense. China’s interests might, and here’s what Kaplan could have stated more clearly: China is trying to revitalize the economy of its Northeastern rust belt, which is only wriggles from its landlock by shipping through ports hundred of miles to the south. This map may help you understand.

To that effect, they’ve leased the port at Rajin and the railroad that leads there from the Chinese border. (For those who haven’t read it, I strongly James’s interview with Gordon Chang.)

Still, I think the Chinese Army would find an occupation of North Korea to be as troublesome as we would. Their presence would provoke a xenophobic reaction, particularly given the tendency of the Chinese authorities to react to any disturbance of the public order with degrees of brutality that range from the heavy-handed to the outright criminal. North Koreans are much less likely to suffer such insults from foreigners, and even Chinese repression might not faze North Koreans much. Add to this the likely availability of loose AK’s and RPG’s and you have a recipe for China’s first post-consumer society guerilla war. If the roles were reversed, China would obviously have no qualms about fanning anti-U.S. sentiment and arming those who shot at our troops, and if the time comes, I hope that American leaders do their best to foment resentment of China’s “unilateral occupation” and “division” of Korea. A wise Chinese leadership would probably foresee this. That’s why they would probably prefer to work through South Korea in its hour of need, thus focusing their growing influence on a reunified Korean government.

Kaplan still raises a legitimate concern that disputes over feifdoms and occupation zones could lead to conflict (or, much more likely, proxy conflict). China and Russia don’t want large U.S. forces near their borders, but may not be enthusiastic about the risks that go with occupying North Korea, either. Ditto the United States: it has no particular interest in occupying the North, but would prefer to have the country united, stable, and with close relations to itself. Everyone wants stability and trade. Those goals aren’t mutually exclusive, so it makes sense for regional powers to reach an understanding that no foreign power will not station its forces in a post-collapse North Korea. Instead, states ought to agree that they will support South Korea in its stabilization effort. Some obvious exceptions apply, of course, including brief, limited deployments to secure loose WMD’s, protect third-country nationals, and provide essential humanitarian services that the ROK Army can’t, such as with medical and engineering units.

Reconstruction: Political Preparations

It bears repeating: we have done far too little to build our own independent means of influencing events inside North Korea. This will be a difficult, but possible, task. Our radio broadcasting efforts to the North are long overdue for a dramatic upgrade.

By itself, of course, broadcasting is insufficient. We need to win friends to influence people. I have long believed that we should recruit and train a cadre of North Korean refugees in the skills they will need to become North Korea’s next generation of leaders: medicine, journalism, law, government, and the essential hands-on tasks of restoring essential services. These professionals, once trained, need not await Stage Seven to reenter North Korea. Having a network of U.S.-trained journalists inside North Korea now would help penetrate that country’s opacity and avert the sort of situation we faced in 1945. That may be asking too much of an institution as inherently cautious as our government.

Finally, we should be taking Chuck Downs’s suggestion and cultivating contacts with North Korean officers whenever we can. That may well mean that we shake some repellent hands initially, but a handshake is not — and should not become — an offer of amnesty. On the other hand, an offer of passage to another country is not unthinkable if it saves lives.

Like Kaplan, I don’t believe it will be possible to unify Korea or to create a Jeffersonian democracy immediately. For the first few years, a strong authority will have to restore order and essential services. I also believe that if we devote sufficient time, funds, and planning to the problem, and if we don’t test the limited patience of Americans with a major U.S. military deployment there, Korea can hold unified elections within two or three years, and that inter-Korean border controls can be relaxed within five years. Essential to this is the restoration of a normal, healthy U.S.-South Korean relationship that will be needed for joint planning, along with advance agreements with China and Russia to avoid the carving out of feifdoms and foreign occupation zones. Without question, this planning would be immeasurably easier with Japan’s cooperation and without China’s meddling, but that may be asking too much of modern South Korea’s national maturity.

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The kind person who forwarded the article probably had no way of knowing that I’ve been a fan of Kaplan’s work since I was a high school kid, and Kaplan was the one journalist who covered the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980’s in depth. For those who want to read more of Kaplan’s dispatches from that time, which probably did much to shape his thinking, I highly recommend “Soldiers of God,” notwithstanding Kaplan’s apologia that he let himself get a bit carried way with enthusiasm for the story. I understand that enthusiasm, because I know the indescribable brutality (carpet bombing, massacres, chemical weapons, booby-trapped toys) with which the Soviets fought that war directly from those who lived through it, the courage and skill with which the Afghans fought back, and the disgraceful performance of the world’s news media in covering a conflict a U.N. Special Rapporteur once called “migratory genodice.” Those who believe we can solve our problems in Afghanistan by simply adding more troops and firepower should heed the lessons of the last conflict.