MESSAGE
| DATE | 2024-01-24 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout - NYLXS] [ Docs ] Where is the next flashpoint
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Part II
38north.org
Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War? - 38 North: Informed Analysis of North
Korea
Robert L. Carlin, Siegfried S. Hecker
9–11 minutes
January 11, 2024
Domestic Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Military Affairs
Source: Rodong Sinmun
The situation on the Korean Peninsula is more dangerous than it
has been at any time since early June 1950. That may sound
overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather in
1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war. We
do not know when or how Kim plans to pull the trigger, but the
danger is already far beyond the routine warnings in Washington,
Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s “provocations.” In other
words, we do not see the war preparation themes in North Korean
media appearing since the beginning of last year as typical
bluster from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or
North Korea).
Raising the specter of Pyongyang’s decision to go to a military
solution—in effect, to give warning of war—in the absence of
“hard” evidence is fraught. Typically, it will be met with the
by-now routine argument that Kim Jong Un would not dare take
such a step because he “knows” Washington and Seoul would
destroy his regime if he does so. If this is what policymakers
are thinking, it is the result of a fundamental misreading of
Kim’s view of history and a grievous failure of imagination that
could be leading (on both Kim’s and Washington’s parts) to a
disaster.
Historical Context
A failure to understand the history of North Korean policy over
the past 33 years is not simply an academic problem. Getting
that history wrong has dangerous implications for grasping the
magnitude of what confronts us now. Without grasping in detail
what, why, and how North Korean policy retained its central goal
of normalizing relations with the United States from 1990 until
2019, there is no way to understand the profound change that has
taken place in Pyongyang’s thinking since then. This bedrock
policy shift by Kim to gird for a war would only come after he
concluded all other options had been exhausted, and that the
previous strategy shaping North Korean policy since 1990 had
irrevocably failed.
Although Pyongyang’s decision-making often appears ad hoc and
short sighted, in fact, the North Koreans view the world
strategically and from a long-term perspective. Beginning with
the crucial, strategic decision by Kim Il Sung in 1990, the
North pursued a policy centered on the goal of normalizing
relations with the United States as a buffer against China and
Russia. After initial movement in that direction with the 1994
Agreed Framework and six years of implementation, the prospects
for success diminished when—in Pyongyang’s eyes—successive US
administrations pulled away from engagement and largely ignored
North Korean initiatives. Even after the Agreed Framework fell
apart in 2002, the North tried to pull the US back into serious
talks by giving unprecedented access to the nuclear center at
Yongbyon to one of us (Hecker). During the Barack Obama
Administration, the North made several attempts that Washington
not only failed to probe but, in one case, rejected out of hand.
There is much debate in the United States whether the North was
ever serious, and whether dialogue was simply a cover for
developing nuclear weapons.
Our view is that argument was seriously flawed at the time, and
today, it stands in the way of understanding not simply why
things have developed to such a perilous stage, but more
importantly, how dangerous the situation actually is. The issue
has moved far beyond assigning blame. What is crucially
important is to understand how central the goal of improving
relations with the United States was to all three of the Kims
who led the DPRK, and thus, how the North’s completely
abandoning that goal has profoundly changed the strategic
landscape in and around Korea.
Strategic Empathy
The second part of the answer as to why the current danger is
being missed is the failure to fully understand how the failed
February 2019 Hanoi summit affected Kim Jong Un’s views, and how
over the next two years the North reexamined its policy options.
The June 2018 Singapore summit with President Donald Trump was
to Kim the realization of what his grandfather had envisioned,
and his father had attempted but never attained—normalization of
relations with the United States. Kim poured his prestige into
the second summit in Hanoi. When that failed, it was a traumatic
loss of face for Kim. His final letter to President Trump in
August 2019 reflects how much Kim felt he had risked and lost.
Overcoming that psychological barrier would never have been
easy, and it goes a long way in explaining the huge subsequent
swing in North Korean policy. This was not a tactical
adjustment, not simply pouting on Kim’s part, but a
fundamentally new approach—the first in over thirty years.
The first obvious signs that a decision had been made and a
decisive break with the past was underway came in the summer and
autumn of 2021, apparently the result of a reevaluation in
Pyongyang of shifts in the international landscape and signs—at
least to the North Koreans—that the United States was in global
retreat. This shift in perspective provided the foundation for a
grand realignment in the North’s approach, a strategic
reorientation toward China and Russia that was already well
underway by the time of the Putin–Xi summit of February 2022 and
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There are few signs that relations
with China have moved very far, and, in fact, signs of real
cooling in China-DPRK relations. However, ties with Russia
developed steadily, especially in the military area, as
underscored by the visit of the Russian Defense Minister in July
and the Putin–Kim summit in the Russian Far East last September.
The North’s view that the global tides were running in its favor
probably fed into decisions in Pyongyang about both the need and
opportunity—and perhaps the timing—toward a military solution to
the Korean question. At the start of 2023, the war preparations
theme started appearing regularly in high-level North Korean
pronouncements for domestic consumption. At one point, Kim Jong
Un even resurrected language calling for “preparations for a
revolutionary war for accomplishing…reunification.” Along with
that, in March, authoritative articles in the party daily
signaled a fundamentally and dangerously new approach to the
Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea), introducing formulations
putting South Korea beyond the pale, outside what could be
considered the true Korea, and thus, as a legitimate target for
the North’s military might. At the plenum last month, Kim made
that shift crystal clear, declaring that “north-south relations
have been completely fixed into the relations between two states
hostile to each other and the relations between two belligerent
states, not the consanguineous or homogenous ones any more.”
Hypnotized by “Deterrence”
Washington and Seoul cling to the belief that their alliance
backed by “ironclad” deterrence will keep Kim on the status-quo
trajectory, perhaps with some minor provocations. There is a
belief, entirely understandable, that more and more frequent
symbols of our intent to retaliate will keep the North at bay,
as will our oft-stated conviction that if the North attacks, the
counterattack will totally destroy the North Korean regime. Yet,
in the current situation, clinging to those beliefs may be
fatal.
The evidence of the past year opens the real possibility that
the situation may have reached the point that we must seriously
consider a worst case—that Pyongyang could be planning to move
in ways that completely defy our calculations. Kim and his
planners may target the weakest point—psychologically as well as
materially—in what the three capitals hope is a watertight
US-ROK-Japan military position. The literature on surprise
attacks should make us wary of the comfortable assumptions that
resonate in Washington’s echo chamber but might not have
purchase in Pyongyang. This might seem like madness, but history
suggests those who have convinced themselves that they have no
good options left will take the view that even the most
dangerous game is worth the candle.
North Korea has a large nuclear arsenal, by our estimate of
potentially 50 or 60 warheads deliverable on missiles that can
reach all of South Korea, virtually all of Japan (including
Okinawa) and Guam. If, as we suspect, Kim has convinced himself
that after decades of trying, there is no way to engage the
United States, his recent words and actions point toward the
prospects of a military solution using that arsenal.
If that comes to pass, even an eventual US-ROK victory in the
ensuing war will be empty. The wreckage, boundless and bare,
will stretch as far as the eye can see.
Robert L. Carlin is a nonresident scholar at the Middlebury
Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a former
chief of the Northeast Asia Division in the Bureau of
Intelligence and Research at the US State Department, where he
took part in US-North Korean negotiations.
Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor of practice at the Middlebury
Institute of International Studies at Monterey, a professor of
practice at Texas A&M University, and a former director of the
Los Alamos National Laboratory and professor emeritus of
Stanford University.
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