I don't see Pyongyang going away quietly
Saturday, May 19, 2007 at 6:07AM ARTICLE: Report: U.S. willing to make peace with North Korea by September, EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COM, World Tribune, May 18, 2007
OP-ED: 'Pyongyang's Perfidy,' By John R. Bolton, Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2007, Pg. 17
Like John Bolton, I remain very wary of rewarding North Korea on its nukes because no one's threatening Pyongyang (unlike Iran, where we've taken down regimes left and right) and because I don't think Kim will denuclearize in return (unlike with Israel v. Iran, there is no strategic imbalance to correct, so why would Kim give up a clear advantage?).
Iran, we have to find a place for in the future Middle East. It's a real country that's been around for centuries, not some post-WWII creation. The DPRK really has no future. They know it. We know it. Everyone knows it. All the Cold War-divided states are gone--except North Korea.
A peace treaty that lays the way for a slow economic buy-out of North Korea would be very welcome, but remembering how East Germany took detente (part of my dissertation), I just don't see Pyongyang going away quietly. It's either a bang or a rapid collapse. Either way, with this approach I fear North Korea's going to have a number of nukes that will complicate matters greatly.
Neither Clinton nor Bush will be fondly remembered at that point.
Thanks to Dan Hare for sending the World Tribune article.
Reader Comments (2)
So why not a peace treaty? Sign it, remove NK's big domestic propaganda schtick, pull US forces back way below Seoul, and let the economic buyout begin in earnst. If China doesn't feel grown-up enough to get rid of Kim, sure, it comes down to the bang or rapid collapse...
A bang seems unlikely, given remaining US forces and a defense promise waiting in the wings. Allow the DPRK's regime members to keep their cash and go into a cushy exile, and their greed and rationality would come to the forefront. True believers are rare among them these days, we hear.
That leaves us with a rapid collapse. Chaos and refugees. Let the South Koreans take the lead. They can put well over a million (some 600,000 standing army, plus give or take 5 million in reserve) boots on the ground up north, and perhaps the bulk of the North Korean army could be kept intact to augment that. A perfect SysAdmin, given that they're ultimately the same nation... Keep US forces well south of the 38th parallel, aside from specialist teams to take care of whatever nuclear and other WMD the north has (bring Chinese teams in for the same thing...or make that part of it a wholesale multinational effort), and the Chinese won't get too jumpy about losing their buffer. They ought to be even more satisfied as the end of the DPRK and Korean reunification means an eventual phased withdrawl of nearly all US forces from the peninnsula.
Even refugee flows needn't be a long-term concern for China, as with the country unified, north Koreans would naturally be far more inclined to head south or even stay still rather than running to China...
/daydream.