Georgy Toloraya covers the recent developments in North Korea on 38 North:
The North Korean nuclear dilemma has evolved far beyond the issue that sanctions originally sought to counter. While Pyongyang has achieved unprecedented nuclear and missile advances during US President Barack Obama’s administration, the basis for that leap forward was established during Kim Jong Il’s rule. The former leader was far more moderate and inclined toward compromise than his son; he preferred not to provoke his opponents with excessive nuclear and missile demonstrations and only presided over two nuclear tests and a handful of missile tests—quantities inadequate for the deployment of operational weapons. Kim Jong Il appeared to restrain the North’s nuclear development in hopes that diplomacy would finally work, and reasonable members of the US establishment would overrule US and South Korean conservatives with a strategic decision to recognize and coexist with North Korea.
That decision never came during Kim Jong Il’s lifetime, and the less patient Kim Jong Un seems to have adopted none of his father’s limits on pressuring the United States and South Korea. Still, the Obama administration did not initially anticipate the level of progress Pyongyang has achieved under its guiding principle of “strategic patience,” which relies on the false assumption that the regime is nearing collapse. In line with this thinking, Washington has answered North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests by trying to increase the North’s economic and political isolation.
But despite a decade of sanctions and related international steps, North Korea has succeeded in acquiring a significant new nuclear potential while still achieving modest economic growth. Rather than prompting calls for a new method to deal with the North’s nuclear program, experts are now rationalizing that the restrictions were never tough enough.
It’s difficult to envision a first-strike nuclear attack on North Korea, even with great provocation – but that’s just my view; I have to wonder what a President Trump might do. Or, more to the point, what his “experts” might recommend in order to solve the North Korean problem.
I claim no expertise in the realm of North Korea or war, really. My sense is that North Korea, once it has sufficient nuclear arms, could actually contemplate completing a cessation of war treaty with South Korea and its allies (including the United States), although if that would result in a loss of face for the leadership of either Korea, then it wouldn’t be possible. Even so, North Korea could consider reducing its conventional armies, and that would help its civilian economy a little more. Georgy notes the apparent goal of the civilian sector:
Through my conversations in Pyongyang, I got the impression that the economic planners are seeking a new paradigm of development. This approach does not appear to be based on restoring its outdated heavy industrial potential,[9] but rather on “jumping over” the re-industrialization phase to a more knowledge-based economy. This concept demands educational capabilities that North Korean engineers have already demonstrated with the country’s indigenous nuclear and missile achievements. “Construction of a powerful civilized state” with an emphasis on science and technology now seems to be the focus of all government policies.
No measurement of the percentage of the civilians who have received training adequate for participation in a knowledge-based economy is given, and probably none is available even from sources such as the NSA – North Korea is a notoriously difficult society to evaluate. This makes it difficult to evaluate the likelihood of North Korean success in transitioning to such an economy. It may also imply more openings to the outside world as a knowledge based economy is implicitly about open communications – and that, I should think, would have implications within North Korea as well. How much does the North Korea leadership depend on the careful segmentation and isolation of the subject populace in order to survive? A knowledge-based economy’s prospects of success may be in proportion to the inverse of that estimated value.
Georgy’s recommendations for continued handling of North Korea:
What does this mean for a new US administration? Washington is free to recognize the failure of former policies, but it cannot look to war as a viable alternative. It must instead devise a strategy aimed at finding a new balance of interests and reconciling desirable outcomes with what is possible. A restart of the diplomatic process—ideally in a multilateral format that would enable all interested actors to benefit—could at least bring about a freeze on further North Korean nuclear and missile development. Little hope is left for North Korean capitulation, and a new search for compromise should start—the sooner, the better.
