North Korean Revisionism

Happiness is having your very own atomic bomb. This week we saw pictures of beaming North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, examining either a nuclear model or maybe even the real warhead of a miniaturized nuclear weapon.

Having a nuclear warhead is not, however, enough to scare your enemies and neighbors. You’ve got to have a fast, reliable delivery system. On his last birthday, a joyous Kim revealed what may be a submarine-launched missile believed capable of carrying a nuclear weapon.

Added to Kim’s new intercontinental ballistic missile (which may or may not work), the sub-launched strategic missile gave the South Koreans, Japanese and Americans apoplexy. China was not far behind in blasting the impudent North Koreans.

China, by contrast, gets the short end of the stick: it is forced to reluctantly tighten sanctions on an old ally, North Korea while seeing new US military forces emplace themselves in its strategic and vulnerable Northeast.

Discount, or even ignore, all the howling about the danger of Kim’s North Korea. His saber-rattling and nuclear arms are defensive. They are the result of Washington’s refusal to recognize the Pyongyang regime and crushing sanctions against the North. A non-aggression pact would likely end Kim’s nuclear program.

But there’s a far larger risk from North Korea that is hardly ever discussed: the potential collapse of the Kim dynasty and North Korea’s descent into chaos. First, there will be a mass exodus of millions of starving North Koreans to South Korea that Seoul calls, “unexpected reunification.”

An even larger danger would be caused by any political/military vacuum in the North. This would quickly create a dangerous confrontation between US Asian forces, South Korea, Japan and neighboring China. A vacuum in such a strategic location must draw in all regional powers, including Russia – Vladivostok is just up the coast.

China needs a friendly North Korea as a buffer state to protect its vital Northeast region that was the site of the first Japanese-China War in 1894 and the bloody, 1904 Russo-Japanese War. Beijing cannot allow the US to turn North Korea into a second South Korea – a useful vassal state occupied by American, South Korean and possibly Japanese troops. It’s only a mere 3.5-hour drive from North Korea’s Yalu River border to China’s key northern port of Dalian, gateway to the Beijing heartland.

Objectionable and cruel though it is, the Kim regime in Pyongyang is the cork that keeps this scary genie in its bottle. Any change in North Korea’s equilibrium could plunge North Asia into the gravest crisis at a time when the region is also seething with tensions over China’s attempts to dominate the South China Sea.

After foolishly overthrowing Libya’s Col. Muammar Khadaffi, and thus unleashing waves of jihadism against North Africa, the Sahara and West Africa, one would think the West had learned a valuable lesson about being short-sighted and uneducated. But it seems here we go again in North Asia. The US just can’t abstain from mixing in other people’s local conflicts. Why else would US troops be scattered across West and East Africa?

Caution is advised. The Kim we know will always be preferable to the Kim we don’t.

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