4 January 2010: Another “Nothing to Envy” Review, and the Growing Urgency of Regime Collapse Planning

ANOTHER GOOD REVIEW FOR “NOTHING TO ENVY,” from NPR’s Frank Langfitt, who also relates this second-hand experience:

American journalists are rarely granted visas and all visits are carefully monitored, so I had to rely on the accounts of Chinese truckers who drove into the country to trade food for scrap metal. One trucker had a gash on his forehead from his latest trip. He told me a teenage boy had hit him with a rock as a crowd leapt on his truck, cut through inch-thick ropes, and made off with 30 bags of flour. Other Chinese traders described children so weak they didn’t have the strength to climb onto the trucks to steal.

Read the whole thing. The review gives the best sense I’ve seen anywhere of Demick’s book, and will be very hard for me to top.

PETER BECK HAS WRITTEN AN OP-ED on the costs of reunification in the Wall Street Journal. Peter, a brilliant scholar and a very nice man who speaks excellent Korean, recently moved to take a job a Stanford after a stint running HRNK — not something that was really a good fit with Peter’s views, in my humble opinion. Peter, being very much my opposite when it comes to the politics of North Korea, draws my interest when he says,

Kim Jong Il’s regime looks increasingly unstable, raising the specter that managing reunification–and especially the costs associated with it–could become the big problem. Now, before regime collapse is upon us, is the time to start considering how to pay for it.

Hat tip: Kushibo.

REMEMBER WHEN SELIG HARRISON PREDICTED that imposing sanctions would send the North Koreans into a tizzy and blow up any prospect for diplomatic progress? Well, it’s hard to argue that there were good prospects for diplomatic progress right after Kim Jong Il tested an ICBM and a nuke, but as Don Kirk writes, the North Koreans are making nice again, something they’ve been doing with us on an atmospheric level ever since the sanctions started to bite. Of course, regardless of how the North Koreans adjust the atmospherics, they still sell missiles to terrorists, enrich uranium, and violate every standard by which the rest of civilized humanity aspires to live, and they still demand to be recognized as a nuclear power.

LEAST SURPRISING HEADLINE OF THE YEAR, SO FAR: “Pro-North Korean rally draws thousands.” Yes, you guessed right. The rally was held in Pyongyang.

THE U.N. SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA will visit Seoul and drop in on Hanawon, where refugees are taught how to balance a checkbook, drive, and use a computer. He will also visit with Robert King, the Obama Administration’s Special Envoy, who has yet to impress me much.

A NORTH KOREAN SHIP HAS SUNK OFF THE COAST OF THE PHILIPPINES: The 3,461-ton Nam Yang 8 was carrying magnetite ore when it ran into a heavy storm and lost engine power. The crew of 22 abandoned ship and made it to shore, where friendly villagers welcomed them. The shipwreck has created much controversy because magnetite mining — it seems to have been run by a South Korean company, interestingly enough — was supposed to have been banned in the area due to concerns that it was causing beach erosion and coastal flooding. The Nam Yang 8 did not sink, however; instead, it ran aground, and now, the Filipino police are searching it, and gearing up for a board of inquiry. This is where things start to get interesting.

OH NO, NOT AGAIN: “Japan leader wants equal ties with U.S.” Which means he should acquire an independent defense capability with an equal army that can be deployed to places from which modern civilization is under attack. When Hatoyama sends a few brigades of JSDF to Yemen to carry his tidings of co-prosperity and Michelle Obama learns to eats the sun for breakfast, I’d say there will be more to the equality than some bitching about noisy helicopters.

SOME, NO DOUBT, WILL SEE THE DOWN SIDE OF THIS: “December was the first month since the beginning of the Iraq war in which there were no U.S. combat deaths, the U.S. military reported.” Also, Michael O’Hanlon, Great Satan of the This-War-Is-Lost Caucus, writes about continuing steady progress in Iraq and has the data to back up his argument (fingers crossed). The news is much more mixed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, however, and will probably get worse before it gets better. One thing I’m beginning to believe on that count is that we have to resist the temptation to become too dependent on air power. After the Afghans’ bitter experience with indiscriminate Soviet bombing, it will be too easy for many of them to impose the same template on us. Far better for us to “clear and hold” populated areas, although that, too, can’t succeed unless we do a better job of recruiting local militias — as opposed to stoned, disspirited, and underpaid Afghan National Army troops — to secure the population. Yes, the Afghan Army will get better with time, but plenty of southern Pashtuns will always see every non-Pashtun as a foreigner.

IT’S BEEN A SURPRISINGLY GOOD DECADE for the global economy, writes Tyler Cowen in the New York Times:

[S]steady economic growth is an underreported news story — and to our own detriment. As human beings, we are prone to focus on very dramatic, visible events, such as confrontations with political enemies or the personal qualities of leaders, whether good or bad. We turn information about politics and economics into stories of good guys versus bad guys and identify progress with the triumph of the good guys. In the process, it’s easy to neglect the underlying forces that improve life in small, hard-to-observe ways, culminating in important changes.