Preventing Another “Three Kingdoms” Era

In The National Interest, Michael Green, the NSC’s primary Asia advisor during President Bush’s first term outlines a series of scary stages that he thinks are approaching rapidly as Kim Jong Il withers away and North Korea dies with him. The lines of fracture in such an opaque regime are extremely difficult to predict, of course, but most of Green’s analysis makes sense to me. First, Green says the current regime can’t be stabilized in the long term, and that recent history has shown that doing so won’t make us more secure, but would send the wrong message to other proliferators.

Second, Green doesn’t invest any more faith in Kim Jong Un’s readiness to be a real successor to Kim Jong Il than I do. He thinks the succession contest that has probably already begun marks the first stage of North Korea’s descent into becoming a failed state:

At a minimum, it is already becoming clear that the regime is hardening its ideological stance in anticipation of the death of the Dear Leader. In addition to the rapid acceleration of nuclear and missile tests to achieve full nuclear status by 2012, the regime has expelled most aid workers and has begun closing markets that opened when the state could no longer feed its people through the rationing system. With the future balance of power within the National Defense Commission uncertain, no senior general or party official is likely to promote compromise or diplomacy with the United States, South Korea or Japan. If anything, the collective impulse will be bellicosity toward the outside world in order to mask internal challenges.

And this is why we are already seeing the first signs of the inevitable nuclear blackmail we will soon face. The first stage has thus begun. [Michael J. Green, The National Interest]

I’d take that a step further. Kim Jong Il was just “ready” enough to seize power, but not “ready” enough to prevent famine, economic collapse, and the breakdown of state control over all but a few key industries. The first stage really began in 1994 with the death of the last leader most North Koreans viewed as “legitimate” to some degree, loss of Soviet aid, and the accession to power of a functionally incompetent bacchanalian — incompetent at everything but palace intrigues and global brinkmanship, anyway.

From there, Green thinks things only get worse. He goes on to explain the why North Korea is effectively undeterrable with regard to proliferation. It thinks it can get away with anything, and pretty much has. Take North Korea’s construction of a nuclear reactor in Syria, which our government tried to cover up, then forgave, because of its enchantment with Agreed Framework II. The North Koreans have learned that our “red lines” mean nothing. Green suggests that the fragmentation of North Korea’s security forces increases the danger of loose WMD’s. I’d say that danger is just as great with the current regime in power and taking advantage of a well-developed proliferation network than with it fractured and preoccupied with fratricide.

Green correctly notes that when the regime fragments, the various factions are likely to invite in foreign powers to assist them, meaning that the states in the region need to do better contingency planning, with South Korea’s role being especially important. It also calls for some good diplomacy with China and Russia, diplomacy that (in my view) ought to begin with the understanding that we’ll stay out of northern Korea if they’ll agree to do the same (we can make limited and temporary exceptions for humanitarian aid and WMD dismantlement). Given the chaos that’s already overtaking North Korea, we’ll all eventually thank one another for such an agreement.

What’s given too little attention in all of the analysis of this issue, including Green’s, is the influence of the North Korean people in a post-Kim North Korea. Korea’s future — and by extension, the geopolitics and economics of the entire region — will depend on the extent to which they favor or resist any potential occupier or form of government. Within 20 years, a unified Korea could be a prosperous nation with vastly enhanced military and economic power, nuclear weapons, and a strong infrastructure, and even a robust birthrate. Or, the battle lines between warring rump-states backed by competing foreign powers could consolidate, leading to several more decades the would superficially resemble the Three Kingdoms era, and with local conditions resembling those in Mogadishu or Kandahar. (Great-power competition could be particularly intense in North Korea’s far northeast, where the Chinese have invested heavily to get access to North Korean ports, but where Russia also has the advantage of proximity.)

Green manages to squeeze in a pitch for standing up for the basic rights of North Koreans as human beings:

And the Obama administration should not lose sight of the plight of the North Korean people. The United States should be clear and consistent in building international pressure on the regime for its horrifying human-rights record. More should also be done to provide food and medical assistance to the North Korean people, as long as it can be monitored by something close to international standards. It is also important to continue modest international NGO and training efforts now in place for the North Korean people, as long as the regime itself does not receive cash, technology or propaganda benefits. The more we can expose the North Korean people to the possibilities before them, the better prepared they will be.

But this still falls short of the kind of broad outreach necessary to crystallize and shape North Koreans’ amorphous discontent, to entice them with the promise of unification, or to steel them against becoming a Chinese colony. How unfortunate that the administration Green served never managed to pursue even the limited goals he outlines here.

(Hat tip and thanks to a reader.)