A Syrian Solution for North Korea

So now that the Syrian army is invading town after town from Dara’a in the south to its restive border with Turkey, can we call it a civil war yet? Worse things could happen there, and absent this wave of unrest, probably would have. If Syria isn’t likely to become a democracy within the next year, a destabilized Syria is probably the next best thing. If Bashar Asad is preoccupied fighting to survive, he’ll be impeded in his capacity to build up his WMD capabilities, bully Lebanon, and support proxy terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah. He may be more likely to throw his Palestinian cannon-fodder against Israel as a diversion, but he’s less likely to do anything serious enough to intensify sanctions or start a full-scale war (and I hope, but sometimes question, that the Israelis are smart enough not to throw Assad a lifeline by fighting him now). We can also thank this unrest for the clarification it has given us. It has liberated even Hillary Clinton from the illusion that Bashar Assad was a reformer who might have been talked out of his alliance with Iran and seeking a lasting regional peace, when in fact, those things are contrary to Assad’s pathology and fundamental interests. Finally, Syria and Libya were both good customers for North Korean weapons. The collapse of these regimes might reset those relationships and deprive North Korea of some key sources of revenue.

But the significance of Libya and Syria to North Korea extend far beyond finance in this, the post-Sunshine, post-engagement, post-Agreed Framework age we’ve entered, when the foreign policy establishment is struggling in vain for a plausible solution to the growing North Korea crisis. Libya and Syria are also showing us a way by showing us how quickly even ruthless totalitarian regimes can become unstable in the face of popular resistance. Significantly, neither Syria nor Libya had broad-based resistance or dissident movements at this time last year. In both cases, those movements coalesced spontaneously, largely from the thin, dry air. There are some obvious differences, of course. Even in Syria, news is more difficult to suppress than in North Korea. The other X Factor is the likelihood that foreign forces, most likely Chinese, will intervene, and that South Korea would quietly equip North Korean insurgents with the weapons and supplies to resist them.

Still, I posit that the United States and South Korea should be thinking through and planning for the eventuality of internal unrest in North Korea, and preparing to support opposition to the Kim Dynasty. I offer these arguments in support of such a policy:

First, a North Korea that’s wracked by civil war might still be a safer place for the North Korean people and the world than one where North Korea’s centrifuges, reactors, and its killing fields run at a full and unimpeded capacity, and while the state has little incentive to win over those segments of its population that it has chosen not to feed.

Second, a destabilized North Korea is no greater a proliferation threat than the regime as it is now — selling missiles by the boatload, selling nuclear technology to Iran and Burma, selling a nuclear reactor to Syria, in short, selling pretty much anything to any purchaser with the money. The sooner the present regime is shocked into a dramatic change of management, the sooner Office 99 goes out of business.

Third, a destabilized North Korea is no greater a threat to South Korea than the current regime. In 2010, we probably saw North Korea approach the limit of its willingness to risk a large-scale war with the South, backed by the United States. As long the regime is stable, it can afford a limited war with the South, and probably gains some benefits from one by galvanizing domestic support and writing new myths about Kim Jong-Eun’s military prowess. Kim Jong Il can’t afford that if he’s simultaneously fighting a rebel army based in Chongjin or Hamheung, or if he’s fighting a cross-border insurgency at the foot of Mt. Paektu. To do so would further tempt the South and the United States to break from their inevitable ambivalence about supporting the rebels.

Fourth, a destabilized North Korea is more likely to negotiate in good faith, because we’ll have leverage over it that we lack now. If North Korea’s leaders grasp that their regime is doomed but that we can offer them a way to save their necks, they may choose to give up as much of their WMD programs as they think they can’t hide from us, and from the factions opposed to them.

Fifth, a destabilized North Korea could induce China to negotiate in good faith. China clearly isn’t doing that now, in part because China prizes the stability of its puppet above keeping its negotiated commitments to the United States, its word as memorialized in U.N. resolutions, and even (as the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong incidents show) regional peace. But a destabilized North Korea brings unrest, weapons, chaos, and more refugees and drugs than ever to China’s border. If that happens, China’s incentive shifts to finding the quickest and cheapest way to restore order along its border. A new proxy regime without reunification won’t restore order for long, and even China must know that occupying any part of North Korea would come with high diplomatic (and perhaps military) costs. The best prospect for restoring stability to North Korea would be a negotiated reunification with the South, with China securing the right to keep its lucrative investments in the North and keep U.S. forces south of the current DMZ. And of course, leaving South Korea — with whatever financial Japan and the United States are in a position to offer — with the messy task of reconstructing North Korea.

This is not to say that supporting forces opposed to Kim Jong Il would be an alternative to diplomacy. Far from it — undermining the regime might be the only realistic prospect for diplomacy to succeed, and may be the alternative that resolves this crisis at the lowest cost in human life.