Vincent J. Curtis
23 May 2018
Regardless of whether President Trump and Kim Jung Un of
North Korea meet in Singapore, or not, no turn of events ends up well for the
Kim regime.
The meeting in Singapore will show whether or not Kim is
strong enough in his own country to leave it for more than a day. It is quite possible that with Kim away in
Singapore for a few days a bloodless coup will be launched against him. This fear of coup may be one reason why
President Trump has publicly offered to guarantee Kim’s safety.
But even if the Singapore meeting is successful, and Kim
denuclearizes, his regime is still not safe.
The purpose of the Democratic Republic of North Korea is the
worship of the Kim dynasty. Kim is the
political center of gravity of North Korea.
If he were deposed in a coup, North Korea very quickly would fall
apart. It would have no purpose. The successor regime would have no
legitimacy. There will be no reason for
the continued repression of the North Korean people. North Korea would dissolve in civil war, and
China would have to step in to manage the situation.
But if no coup takes place, and Kim denuclearizes North
Korea without loss of face domestically, the return is for the United States, Japan,
and South Korea to make the North economically prosperous. Such an outcome would not only be disastrous
for the Kim regime, it would also be impossible to sustain. The Kim regime is a kleptocratic, murderous
tyranny. It steals what it needs, and kills
those who object. Nobody is going to
take risks and engage in free enterprise when the slightest accumulation of
wealth would be commandeered by the regime.
The ‘animal spirits’ of which economist John Maynard Keynes spoke would
be immediately crushed by the regime, if they ever showed themselves.
The illegitimacy of the Kim regime also would be made
obvious if North Korea suddenly did became prosperous as a result of American
and South Korean aid. If the North
Korean people became aware of the economic and cultural success of South Korea,
the question will arise: why cannot we be like them? They are our cousins and they have done so
much better than ourselves, who are starving and deprived! For its own preservation, the Kim regime
cannot allow the people of the North to become aware of the wealth and success
of the South.
Likewise, a peaceful merger of North and South Korea into
one country, as occurred between East and West Germany, would also be fatal to
the Kim regime. The prosperous and pluralistic
South would not tolerate for an instant the pretentions of a communist regime
to rule the country.
If Kim turns on his heels and spurns negotiations with
Trump, the outcome will still be eventually fatal to his regime. The campaign of maximum pressure against
North Korea will continue, and may even worsen, and what little economic life
is left in the North will be crushed out of it.
Kim and the people around him are in it for themselves. For Kim, it is a matter of life or
death. For those around him, it is what
they can get out of it for themselves: prestige, wealth, creature comforts in
the midst of utter deprivation. Those
around Kim live on the lip of the crater of an active volcano, and they serve
Kim at the risk of a capricious death for what they can get out of it for themselves. If Kim cannot provide them with what they
want on account of the sanctions, then what is the use of risking life and limb
for serving Kim when there is nothing in it?
They have to ask themselves.
To tamp down the risk of a coup, Kim will have to engage in
more capricious oppression against those closest to him. He dare not risk losing face, and so he will
have to resume nuclear and missile testing, and get all boastful and
threatening about it. It would be easy
at this point for Trump to goad Kim into doing something rash, like firing
missiles in the direction of Japan or at Guam.
A rash move by Kim is all the pretext necessary for the
United States to destroy the Kim regime by military means. I would not rule out the use of three or four
nuclear weapons in order to make quick work of it. A prolonged conflict would drag in China and
Russia. I believe Trump has already
hardened his heart to this, which is why he would be happy to meet with Kim, or
not.
With Kim dead, and his nuclear and missile facilities all
smoking ruins, the North Korean generals who are left would lack the political
legitimacy, a reason, and even the means to resist the complete collapse of
North Korea. With Kim gone, and with no
weapons, what is the point? Every man
for himself!
What would be left is for China, the United States, South
Korea, and Japan to manage the integration of North and South Korea into one
country that was not a threat to either China or Japan. Korea, a genuine and prosperous democracy
sharing a border with China, cannot undermine the legitimacy of the communist
party in Beijing. The fear of this is
why China props up North Korea.
Likewise, Korea cannot become a staging area for United States forces to
mass against China. These are the
ticklish problems that will have to be worked out after North Korea collapses with
the fall of the Kim regime.
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Vincent J. Curtis is a free-lance writer interested in
military affairs.
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