What's your take on North Korea?

[Nomad]

*Other Option*

The nuclear capability is evident. They know nobody, including the US, is going to stop them. China will look the other way, they can all but decimate the South, Japan is a declawed Tiger and regional instability is just what they need. The PDRK is going through another economic disaster, by even their scale, and the "dear Leader" wants to continue the Family Dynasty. His health has been failing and swimming with the sharks around him, he knows it has to be his son who takes over to guarantee a modicum of safety to his acquired lifestyle.

He will go to war with anyone, especially the ROK, to remain in power. I view this as an incredibly dangerous unfolding of events.

You make a good point howerver...

If the PDRK goes to war their economy, which is in shambles and people, are starving literally would implode. There is another scenario that I’m thinking about.

Once upon a time on a thread regarding China and it’s unemployment, which would be steadily rising as the world’s economy is in crisis, would love to be in a war. (My opinion)

So by using the PDRK as a trigger and subsequently “supporting” it’s poor neighbour, would draw Korea, Japan and their ultimate target Taiwan into a war. End result they would take the oil field under Taiwan. The PDRK would take the brunt of the retaliation until China stepped in. Resulting in a huge war in the Far East.

Speculation at it’s best….

Far fetched in my opinion. China's never needed a proxy-state to conduct a war. If they wanted wipe Taiwan out, we would stand by and "condem this inhumane, reprehensible act". The reason for them not doing so range from economic facts to not creating further division between the mainland and it's satellite.

If I had to put money on it, I would say it has the classic markings of a struggle for internal succession. If KJI's son does take over his fathers place the old man can live out his last days in relative peace and so can all the minions under him.

The general public in NK is completely misinformed and forcefully fed propaganda. They live in a police state where anything mentioned opposing the regime's agenda is cause for severe punishment. Those smart, brave and able enough leave the country every year and seek refuge in the ROK.

This latest saber-rattling has nothing with geo-strategic objectives, which the PDRK might have on paper but cannot accomplish without a firm commitment from Beijing, which they are not about to give. In fact, the chinese populace has already made it known to their leaders that they want their military to react swiftly to any hostilities directed at their country. They want no part of the mess across their border.

In the end we'll probably see a relatively peaceful transition of power from father to son, with some parades honoring the family's contribution to the people and some more of the usual dictatorial propaganda.

As someone else mentioned here the other day: "If you want to win the war against NK, you send over 100,000 tons of rice and throw out potable water and blankets. Send in a few dozen ODA's to run some UW and MEDCAPs...and you'll never even have an insurgency."

However, it should be noted that PDRK's AAA setup and complex of bunker systems makes Yugoslavia's defenses look like a walk in the park.

[DrD]

You make a good point howerver...

If the PDRK goes to war their economy, which is in shambles and people, are starving literally would implode. There is another scenario that I’m thinking about.

Once upon a time on a thread regarding China and it’s unemployment, which would be steadily rising as the world’s economy is in crisis, would love to be in a war. (My opinion)

Speculation at it’s best….

Ranger Chiron;

Perhaps not as far fetched or speculative as one might think... war is an economic engine that is capable of bringing a country out of a deep depression. So, how deep is the economic slide going to be? Enough that this may be a serious issue?

DrD

[K.Ingraham]

I am sorry about the confusion on the cyber war definition. There are so many definitions and perspectives out there, it is crazy!! (although not nearly as many as the cyber psychological warfare, which I do love...) So, I should have been more explicit. To me, probing and penetration testing is just play... You know... boys and their toys. They try to find our sweet spots, we try to get to theirs... They own some of our stuff, we own some of theirs. They exploit us, but we also honeypot them and counter. I see warfare (defined) as when we put it all together for an all encompassing take down attempt.

Best;
DrD

I defer to DrD's obviously superior cyber knowledge here.

On another front, Chiron's speculation is intriguing & I'll enter the Russian card.
This is another opportunity for Russia to show itself as an important and responsible member of the great power club, membership to which they greatly aspire, and are managing not to gain recognition of. They can either make a positive contribution or can continue to play the French game of spoiling American efforts, just to spoil American efforts and be noticed.
We, the USA, of course, continue to ignore Russia to our cost & peril. There is much to be gained by both powers engaging each other, instead of the "bigger dick" contest we seem to insist on in place of responsible, informed policy.
(Note to all who wonder why I promote involvement with those dirty Ruskies: Wake your ass up - the cold war ended 20 years ago.) Today (Thu), NObama needs to be in Moscow, not yapping in Munich.
Anyway, opportunities abound for the PRC, depending on which card they care to exploit and as important, or more so, than Taiwan to the future of the PRC, is a vast, incredibly resource rich and reletively empty Siberia. A second Korean War opens a lot of doors to a lot of countries other than the RoK.

[K.Ingraham]

Robert Kaplan, author of 'Imperial Grunts' offers his view of the potential consequences of a DPRK collapse:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905u/ ... est-kaplan" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Atlantic, 27 May 09

The hazards of overreacting to Kim Jong Il's nuclear tests

by Robert D. Kaplan

North Korea, the Next Iraq?

The underground bomb North Korea detonated this weekend was equivalent in strength to those dropped by the United States on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. In response, the U.S. and Japan will likely call for strong sanctions. They are, after all, well positioned to do so: Neither country has a land border with North Korea, so if the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il were to implode as a result of punitive economic penalties, they would suffer no hardships. They would even be in a position of geopolitical gain because, initially at least, the unraveling of North Korea would cause China and Russia more problems than it would the U.S. and Japan.

China and Russia rely on North Korea as a buffer state between themselves and the dangerously appealing middle-class, vibrant, pro-American democracy that is South Korea. China, moreover, would face perhaps millions of North Korean refugees streaming across its border were the North Korean regime to crumble. Seeking to stem this possibility, China continues to prop up the buffer state of North Korea. And indeed, without Chinese assistance, Kim’s regime would probably not last long.

Nonetheless, Kim tries to remain feistily independent of China, for while China doesn’t want North Korea to implode catastrophically, China does have designs on North Korea’s territory: It prefers the idea of a Gorbachevian buffer state like Tibet on its northeastern frontier in place of Kim’s erratic totalitarian regime.

China also has good reasons for not wanting to see the kind of North-South Korean conglomerate that might ultimately emerge from collapse. Reunification of the Korean Peninsula would be, to say the least, geopolitically inconvenient to China. Jutting out far from the Asian mainland, the Korean Peninsula commands all maritime traffic in northeastern China and, most importantly, traps in its armpit the Bohai Sea, home to China’s largest offshore oil reserve. Moreover, a unified Korea would likely be nationalistic, with distinctly mixed feelings toward its large neighbors, China and Japan, who have historically sought to control and even occupy it.

And so Kim lives in dread of the Chinese slowly, methodically undermining his regime in a way that will lead to him being replaced—in a palace coup, perhaps—without the implosion of the North Korean state. His only hope is to draw America into direct talks, with Washington implicitly recognizing his regime, so that he can leverage Washington against Beijing. Nuclear tests and missile launches are his own warped way of trying to get the attention of the new Obama Administration. He needs to be enough of a problem that Washington will have no choice but to deal with him directly, rather than merely as one party among several in the multilateral talks that have characterized negotiations with North Korea since 2003.

This strategy poses a real problem for President Barack Obama. If he doesn’t hit North Korea hard with sanctions, he risks demonstrating to Iran that America is a pushover. Indeed, Obama’s Iran policy – which requires the stick of tough action in addition to the carrot of talks and recognition – is on the line in North Korea. On the other hand, vigorous sanctions against North Korea could lead to the collapse of the regime. And anyone who talks breezily about “helping” North Korea to collapse has simply not learned the lesson of Iraq: The only thing worse than a totalitarian state is no state at all.

North Korea, with 23 million people, is roughly the size of Iraq—and its population is less educated and has much less experience with democracy than do the Iraqis, who had enjoyed several decades of semi-democracy in the early- and mid-20th century. A regime breakdown in Pyongyang might necessitate the mother of all humanitarian interventions, with the American military and the Chinese People's Liberation Army being forced to work together. Nobody wants to go down that road, certainly not China or the U.S. A nuclear test in the North irritates the Chinese leadership, but the thought of large-scale violence and millions of refugees outright terrifies them.

Bottom-line: tough sanctions will have to be smart sanctions – measures that hurt the regime more than the North Korean population, thus keeping the North Korean state alive but weakened. We say that we want a free, democratic, and unified Korean Peninsula. But what we should want more specifically is a long, gradual transition to such an outcome. Pushing for North Korea’s precipitous demise would only alienate South Korea and propel it into the arms of China, for South Korea, too, would be threatened by the chaos of a sudden regime collapse. Now is not the time for unilateral threats. The disaster in Iraq should be foremost in our minds when dealing with North Korea. And that means, hard as it may be to swallow, working with Beijing.

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