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Who Gets Stuck with North Korea? Font Size:
By Robert Haddick : BIO| 05 Feb 2008
Is the regime in North Korea about to collapse? Betting on the demise of Kim Jong-Il's reign is a wager frequently made, but yet to pay off. A recent country report from Jane's Information Group speculates on a collapse within six months. The report cites Asian sources who describe the "Dear Leader" moving financial assets before a possible run into exile. By contrast, a team of researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) gathered the views of leading Chinese government officials, academics, and researchers who specialize in North Korean affairs. As a group, these Chinese experts believe Kim Jong-Il is still firmly in power, and viewed the North Korean economy as improving slightly. They foresaw no threat to the North Korean regime for at least several years.
And yet many of these same Chinese government officials and analysts recommended that the Chinese and U.S. governments begin joint contingency planning for the aftermath of the Kim regime. According to the CSIS report, the Chinese army has already made plans for intervening inside North Korea in order to provide humanitarian relief, maintain civil order, and to secure North Korea's nuclear weapons and fissile material.
The North Korean black hole
The day Kim Jong-Il and his family flee North Korea will be a great day for the cause of human rights. Yet it is also a day that leaders in China, South Korea, and the U.S. dread. Chaos and a security nightmare will replace the previous state of brutal stability. And a gargantuan economic bill, to be borne by someone, will then begin to mount.
Once the North Korean police state collapses, it will be impossible to keep the global media out of the Hermit Kingdom. For the first time, the world will get to view the economic and social depravation imposed by the Kim regime. The pressure for wide-ranging humanitarian and economic relief will be immense.
However, government leaders in China, South Korea, and the U.S. will remember the economic consequences of the reunification of Germany. Germany's reunification resulted in a surge in Europe's inflation rate and a tightening of monetary policy in response, which later led to a painful recession. The economic situation in North Korea is even more extreme, a condition the global media won't let the world ignore.
But those are just the beginning of North Korea's costs. Even if the North Korean army were to assist a Chinese or South Korean or American relief force, such an expeditionary relief force would face large logistical challenges. The first task of the expeditionary force would be to find and seize control of North Korea's stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, along with any fissile material. Even with the cooperation of the North Koreans, this would be dangerous work. Add to that crowd control and humanitarian relief, and the costs and risks of the expedition multiply.
The intervention force would have to face the prospect that many officers in North Korea's army and secret police would resist an occupation of the country. Thus, the intervention force might very well have to find and seize control of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) stockpiles in the face of a terror insurgency armed with these very weapons.
Who wants to volunteer for this job? After assessing these costs and risks, the political leaders in China, South Korea, and the U.S. could hardly be blamed if they chose instead to ignore the aftermath of Kim Jong-Il's collapse. Nor should we be surprised if these countries maneuvered to get someone else stuck with the task of cleaning up North Korea. But how likely is this?
Getting stuck with the dirty work
As much as China, South Korea, and the U.S. would seem to want to avoid the risk and expense of managing North Korea after the collapse of the Kim regime, there are strategic reasons why each of these countries might end up with the job.
China
China fears the arrival of waves of refugees in the wake of a North Korean breakdown. China's border with North Korea is long and difficult to patrol. And these potential North Korean refugees would enter a region of China already unsettled with its own problems. China's leadership fears domestic turmoil more than any other threat. Chaos in China's northeast, sparked by a crisis in North Korean, could be a nightmare scenario for the leadership in Beijing. China's leaders may feel that the best way of preventing a crisis in North Korea from infecting China itself is to move into North Korea and attempt to contain the crisis there.
China would have other strategic reasons for wanting to intervene in North Korea. China has as much to fear from "loose" North Korean WMDs as anyone. This gives China an important incentive to take decisive action. In addition, establishing a Chinese military presence in North Korea would ensure that American ground forces would be kept away from Chinese territory. Finally, Chinese naval and air bases in North Korea would give China a better position from which to deter a future potential Japanese military threat, an important consideration in China's historical memory.
South Korea
Remembering Germany's recent experience with reunification, many statesmen in South Korea must faint when they consider the potential economic costs they would bear with their own reunification with the North. The South Korean leadership might wish to either avoid reunification, or ensure that China, the U.S., Japan, and the wider international community contributed heavily to the financial cost of the relief and clean up. Being already a wealthy country, South Korea may get less sympathy in this regard than it might like.
A strong sense of Korean nationalism and the desire for family reunification and relief may force South Korea's leadership to be more enthusiastic about formal reunification than it might otherwise care to be. Even if South Korea's leadership wished to proceed cautiously after a collapse of the Kim regime, popular sentiment may force a more aggressive and financially costly response. And even if South Koreans wished to approach the costs of reunification and relief soberly, it could be intolerable for them to watch while the Chinese, Americans, or others dominate a large portion of Korean territory.
United States
American political leaders would seem to have no interest in assuming the costs and risks of cleaning up North Korea. South Korea is a wealthy country that has long planned for reunification. And from the American perspective, China bears a large responsibility for North Korea's current state. Many in the U.S. will believe that if there is a large cost for cleaning up the mess, it is only fitting that China should pay it.
Yet the U.S. has its strategic interests in the region. In the wake of the decline of NATO, Japan becomes America's most important ally; it is certainly America's most important ally in Asia. If the U.S. cannot defend the Japanese-American alliance, it would lose credibility everywhere else in the world.
Yet Japan would be the strategic loser in either of the two scenarios described above. A large and sustained Chinese military presence in Korea, exposing the breadth of Japan across the Sea of Japan to China's military power, would be very unsettling to Japan. Likewise, a reunified, nationalistic, and anti-Japanese Korea would also trouble Japan over the long-term.
If the U.S. did nothing while Japan's strategic situation deteriorated, Japan would have to consider the option of significantly expanding its own armed forces. Given the long historical memories in the region, this step would prove to be highly destabilizing.
In addition, the U.S. has an interest in preserving its military basing complex in South Korea. These bases provide a logistics and trans-shipment capability to deploy and project U.S. military power throughout Asia. The U.S. may need to participate in a North Korean relief expedition in order to preserve the option of using these bases in future regional contingencies.
Thus, American political leaders will need to consider what price they would be willing to pay in order to protect America's alliance with Japan, to prevent Chinese military expansion into the Korean peninsula, and to preserve a U.S. basing option in southern Korea.
Two levels of diplomacy are needed
I have described reasons why China, South Korea, and the U.S. could get sucked into the North Korean tar pit in spite of the risks and costs of doing so. With all sides having strategic interests in the problem and obvious reasons for wishing to minimize their own costs and risks, it would seem to make sense for China, South Korea, the U.S., Japan, and others to cooperate now on planning for a post-Kim North Korea.
Although strict defenders of national sovereignty will object to the idea of a group of countries scheming over the collapse of another, the case of North Korea is too dangerous to ignore. Cooperative planning now might prevent a chaotic response later.
But even if these countries provide a smooth response to the collapse of the Kim regime, the strategic conflicts described above will still occur. A coordinated international relief expedition could provide humanitarian relief to North Korea, maintain order, prevent a refugee crisis, control the WMD stockpiles, and begin reconstruction. Yet it will take another level of diplomacy to prevent strategic conflict in the region, even after all of this important work is done.
The author was a U.S. Marine Corps infantry company commander and staff officer. He was the global research director for a large private investment firm and is now a private investor. His blog is Westhawk. He is a TCS contributing writer. |
