American officials and commentators often say it will be “suicide” if Kim Jong Un tries something. That something is usually unclear but at the rate Kim is launching missiles he appears to think he’s got plenty of leeway before he does something suicidal.
The North Koreans wouldn’t be the first to miscalculate what suicidal is.
It was suicidal for the Japanese to attack the Americans and British in 1941, in retrospect, at least. But at the time, it seemed like a reasonable idea.
It was suicidal for Hitler to attack Russia, especially when over half the German invasion force’s transport was horse-drawn. But at the time it didn’t seem so.
The United States invading Iraq without a plan for what to do once Baghdad was captured? It might not have been suicidal, but was at least the equivalent of jumping off a three-story building onto an asphalt parking lot, repeatedly.
So consider things from Kim’s perspective as he looks over the last 30 years. No matter what he and his father and grandfather have done they’ve never been painfully punished.
So consider things from Kim’s perspective as he looks over the last 30 years. No matter what he and his father and grandfather did they’ve never been painfully punished.
At various times, the Americans, Japanese, South Koreans and others have given the Kim’s food, money, oil, and atomic reactors – all in exchange for a promise to talk or behave better. Keeping the promises was optional.
And when the Kim regime has acted out – blowing up the South Korean cabinet in Rangoon, torpedoing a South Korean Navy ship, kidnapping Japanese citizens, launching missiles, building and testing nuclear weapons, poisoning a half-brother in broad daylight in a crowded airport terminal?
Why … nothing much happened.
After the South Korean vessel was sunk the Americans even pressured Seoul to do nothing. And China helpfully insisted at the UN that it was unclear who fired the torpedo.
China – the one country that can economically “turn off” North Korea – has kept the Kim’s afloat, protected them politically, and helped with their nuclear and missile programs.
This continues and includes pressuring South Korea over its THAAD missile defense system and strong-arming South Korean companies operating in China. But it’s not just Beijing.
The Kim regime maintains a gulag that a Korean Solzhenitsyn will someday write about. Yet 164 nations have diplomatic relations with North Korea.
The Kim regime maintains a gulag that a Korean Solzhenitsyn will someday write about. Yet 164 nations have diplomatic relations with North Korea.
And a number of them accept North Korean “forced” labor and allow the regime’s licit and illicit money making operations to continue.
The United States has had a curious approach towards North Korea. It maintains military forces on the peninsular and is committed to defending South Korea – while often displaying naivety and incompetence on the diplomatic front.
When the North’s nuclear program gathered speed in the early 1990’s, Jimmy Carter dropped by and declared Kim Il Sung a “good man who you can do business with.” (He added that an excellent harvest is coming – as “an old peanut farmer” knows, which was shortly before famine killed a million or two North Koreans.)
This writer was in the audience at the US Embassy in Tokyo in 1994 when Mr. Carter came back after reprising Neville Chamberlain’s role in Pyongyang. Jimmy Carter is still around, recently calling for talking things out with North Korea.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright dropped by in 2000 and hobnobbed – double handshake and beaming smiles – with Kim Jong Il. To no avail.
And the State Department’s point man on North Korea, Christopher Hill, was repeatedly bamboozled by North Korean negotiators during the mid-2000’s. He also shut down US officials calling for a harsh approach to North Korea – just when financial sanctions were biting.
The jury is still out on the Trump Administration. But North Korea returns a soon-to-die American student, threatens Guam, and fires in-your-face missiles, including over Japanese territory. And it faces nothing more than angry Tweets and “this time we mean it…really we do” sanctions from the United Nations.
Looking at all this from Kim’s perspective, North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs have progressed nicely over the years despite whatever punishment and sanctions the United States and the United Nations threw at it.
Kim just might think that short of dropping a missile into Washington, DC, there’s not much the Americans will do. And perhaps some distance will eventually appear between South Korea and the United States.
At that point, attacking southwards and reunifying the peninsula may not seem suicidal to Kim – if it does even now.
Given this history, maybe the US can’t change Kim’s mind. But it might change China’s mind about what is suicidal and what isn’t for the Kim family regime. And they can pass the message along to their ally in Pyongyang.
What to tell Beijing? In short, once Americans (or their allies) start dying because of North Korea, it will not be business as usual between the United States and China.
China has a choice now, rein in North Korea or face a complete severing of US economic and financial ties once the shooting starts. (Suspending the Bank of China from the global US dollar system for six months will give a nice sense of things.)
And the Chinese Communist Party elite’s properties and bank accounts in the US will be frozen, and family members’ green cards revoked.
The communist party’s main claim to rule over 1.3 billion Chinese is the economic progress made once it stopped brutalizing its citizens. Interrupt the economy and the party is in trouble.
Continuing to protect the Kim regime may not be suicidal for China’s ruling class, but the Americans can make it the equivalent of jumping off a six-story building – without cushions in the parking lot.
Then, China might finally get serious about North Korea.
Kim knows that Trump doesn’t have the nerve to take him out, primarily because of South Korean casualties. They were eyeball to eyeball and Trump blinked. Tough talk without tough action is worse than nothing.
If Kim gives up his nuclear weapons programm he will join Muammar Ghaddafi and Saddam Hussein.
What does any of that have to do with the fact that NOKO is an existential threat to the US NOW? Who cares WHY all this has taken place in the past under the Kim’s? the situation NOW is that Kim is developing nuclear weapons and soon will be capable of hitting the US. The fact is that if we back off now, Kim will be comming after us and also after Japan. The fact is that under this threat, Japan, SOKO and others will be compelled to also develop nuclear weapons. The fact is that nuclear war threats and the potential for error multiplies exonentially the more nuclear powers there are. The fact is that MOST of the suffering in NOKO has been the result of the brutal regime of the KIM dynasty, and continuing.
So, if any of that is true, why did NOKO start the Korean War in the firs place?
This went over the red line. If we wait now, Kim will gain the ability to nuke a US city. An overwhelming air strike and bombing campaign to take out the nuclear facilities, the NoKo air forces and the conventional artillery aimed at Seoul is the only answer that ASSURES us that no US city will be hit with nuclear weapons. At the same time, China has to know through the back channel that we will ruin them economically if they intervene… by cancelling their 1.7 trillion in US treasuries, halting all trade, and freezing all assets, and invoking Articel V of NATO forcing the European allies to do likewise. To do this means a full on conventional air campaign until all NoKo’s offensive threat is destroyed. This would utillize the B-1, B-2, F-22 and all the carriers available with F-18 and other aircraft, taking out their submarine fleet, and with asistance from Japan and SoKo Air and ground forces.
Rogelio Raphael Rodriguez 1905.
Well said.
It is an interesting and dangerous game of high stakes chess. If we take out the Fat Boy we are at war with China. Bad outcome. If we wait? Iran gets the bomb.
20 some odd years of kicking the can down the road has gotten us to a ‘T’ intersecton.
Something’s gotta’ give… I hope the world leverages the China/money connection to put the squeeze on them to get their wild child to heel..
China has already cut off the vast majority of their trade with North Korea. Russia is ready to take up the slack. The idea that China is the key is stupid.
China can do one remaining thing with North Korea: destroy their nuclear facilities with nuclear weapons. North Korea will use some of its few remaining nukes and use them to nuke a major city like Beijing or Shanghai.
Or, the US can destroy North Korea’s nuclear facilities ourselves. And since we have no cities within North Korea’s range, at most he’ll nuke a US base on Guam.
Why would China let North Korea destroy Beijing just for the benefit of the US? The US knows what to do to take care of the North Korea problem; it just needs to do it.
Did Sadaam Hussein understand suicidal?
This crisis will only subside when China decides they’ve had enough of it. The U.S. needs to force their hand by threatening to give nukes to Japan, S. Korea and Taiwan. China does not want an arms race in it’s neighborhood – let them contemplate that possibility.
Perfect article. Kim is not suicidal. China supports him and is overjoyed he ties up US resources and distracts the US from their own aggression in the South China Sea, against India, Japan, and the rest of our allies.
President after President has done nothing but bluster before Caving and bribing him Getting nothing in return but Nukes & Missiles.
Trump is trying the blister at a higher level but even that is opposed by the corrupt worthless Democrats and some worthless RINOs. Kim & China know that and are laughing.
Yes the USA could impose real sanctions against both but those have consequences, especially with China.
The USA should impose sanctions cutting N Korea off completely & anybody that does any business with them. They should also announce that Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam will acquire nuclear ballistic missile technology to protect themselves from N Korea Nukes. Let China bear the brunt of the evil they created & support in N Korea. Let China face Nations in their region w nuke missiles pointed their way the way they’ve allowed North Korea to threaten those nations & us. Let China reap what it has sewed!
Why wait? The US should announce plans immediately to invest heavily in the manufacturing capacity of countries China is not friendly with — India, for example. If they believe we are serious about cutting their share of the US consumer market, they’ll find the motivation to smackdown chubby lil Kim pretty quickly.
AARP Asia: What planet are you from? Mr. Kim is a genocidal maniac. China uses him as their attack dog or crazy relative to do for them what would be untenable for them to do for themselves and maintain plausible denial. Mr. Kim, his father, and grandfather are simply monarchs with serfs who drink french champagne and live well while their people suffer and starve. Their country is medeival. Their people are 8-10 kgs lighter in weight and considerably shorter than South Koreans because of malnutrition unless they are ‘party members.’ This young monarch / despot has family members murdered and otherwise eliminated quicker than any episode of Game of Thrones. You must be connected to China or North Korea in some way, perhaps doing profitable business with them.
Rogelio Raphael Rodriguez Well, the Battle of Tsushima was in the Russo-Japanese war in the early 1900s…so…but it did announce that Japan was a modern naval power.
China will drag their feet with North Korea for as long as they can. Everyone In the has gotten very use to the angry word tact, especially the North Korean leadership. That’s why North Korea keeps winning the game. Because everyone at the table has let it.
Now Johnny that ain’t no way for a Sooner to talk. Nuclear attack means enever having to say you’re sorry. Nuke the Norks..
Nuke ’em.
It’s nuke the Norks time.
It’s nuke the Norks time.
Turn it into a sea of glass.
Ken Nguyen Yes Russia and Japan also had a large naval battle which Russia lost. Forget when. However both conflicts occured prior to Germany invading Russia after which Stalin focused exclusively on Germany. He had no choice and it is widely belived that Russia would have fallen to Germany without western aid. The same is possibly true in China. I am not belittling China. The are a great emerging power and are not going anywhere, provided they do not make the same mistake Japan made on December 7th 1941. As we speak this morning Kim has detonated another nuclear device. China as well as everyone else must now work very hard to prevent a catastrophe. If China keeps up its retorhic and does not take concrete actions to reign Kim in, the next missile launch over Japan may be the start of something very bad.
Daniel Berg regime change in NK can be accompanied by US guarantees that NK will be a demilitarized zone from the 38th parallel to the Chinese border and that the THAAD systems in SK will be removed and THAAD will not be placed in Japan. China and The Koreas still remember the years from 1938 through WWII and do not want Japan to rearm. Reunification is not necessary and is not the business of the US in any case.