Solving the North Korea Situation

Scott Adams' Blog ^ | July 5, 2017 | Scott Adams

[2ndDivisionVet]

I have some spare time this morning so I thought I would solve the North Korean nuclear threat problem.

The current frame on how all sides are approaching the problem is a win-lose setup. Either North Korea wins – and develops nukes that can reach the mainland USA – or the United States wins, and North Korea abandons its nuclear plans, loses face, loses leverage, and loses security. Our current framing of the situation doesn’t have a path to success.

So how do you fix that situation?

First we must acknowledge that a win-lose model has no chance of success in this specific case because North Korea responds to threats by working harder to build nukes. That’s no good. You need some form of a win-win setup to make any kind of deal. That’s what I’m about to suggest. And by winning, I mean both sides get what they need, even if it isn’t exactly what they said they want.

What the U.S. wants is a nuclear-free North Korea. That would be our win.

What North Korea wants is an ironclad national defense, prestige, prosperity, and maybe even reunification of the Koreas on their terms. So let me describe a way to get there.

The main principle to keep in mind is that you can almost always reach a deal when two parties want different things. If we frame the situation as North Korea wanting nuclear weapons, and the U.S. not wanting them to have those nukes, no deal can be reached. There is no way for North Korea to simultaneously have nukes while having no nukes.

So you need to reframe the situation. The following deal structure does that.

Proposed North Korean Peace Deal

China, Russia, and U.S. sign a military security agreement to protect

BOTH

North Korea and South Korea from attack

BY ANYONE

for 100 years, in return for North Korea suspending its ICBM and nuclear weapons programs and allowing inspectors to confirm they are sticking to the deal.

At the end of a hundred years, North Korea and South Korea agree to unify under one rule. No other details on how that happens will be in the agreement. North Korea will be free to tell its people that the Kim dynasty negotiated to be the rulers of the unified country in a hundred years. South Korea will be free to announce that unification is a goal with no details attached. We will all be dead in 100 years, so we can agree to anything today. (That’s the key to making this work – all players will be dead before the end of it.)

The U.S. withdraws military assets from South Korea.

South Korea and North Korea reduce their non-nuclear military assets that point at each other.

Over the course of the 100-year deal, there could be a number of confidence-building steps in the agreement. For example, in ten years you might have a robust tourist arrangement. In twenty years, perhaps you can do business across borders. In fifty years, perhaps a unified currency (by then digital).

A hundred years is plenty of time for the Kim family to make their fortunes and move to Switzerland, or wherever, before unification is an issue. The deal might require some sort of International amnesty agreement for any North Korean leaders looking to get out of the country before unification.

Under this proposed deal structure all sides get what they want. North Korea’s leader can tell his people that their nuclear program was a big success because it resulted in the United States withdrawing forces, and it led to an eventual Korean unification on his terms. There is no opposition press in North Korea to dispute that framing. This looks like total victory to North Korea. That’s a win.

For the United States, a credible deal to get rid of North Korean nukes is a win. China and Russia would look like the adults in the room. They win too.

South Korea wins too, obviously.

And this deal would probably result in Nobel Peace Prizes for the leaders of all countries involved.

Students of history will recall that Great Britain agreed to lease Hong Kong from China for 99 years to avoid any risk of China taking Hong Kong militarily. The long lease period allowed both countries to agree to a deal that could not have been reached for a shorter time period. And it gave everyone time to plan for the peaceful transfer. No two situations are alike, but you can see how a hundred-year deal makes it easy to agree to difficult things today. We’ll all be dead before any of it matters. And if you work toward a common goal for a hundred years, the odds are good that it can happen. One way or another.

This is the sort of deal that would have been impossible in prior years. But the Trump administration understands the structure of dealmaking. This solution is available for the taking.

Update: President Trump tweeted that trade between China and North Korea is up 40% in the first quarter. Look at how he frames it:

(TWEET-AT-LINK)

This is what I have been describing as Trump’s go-to strategy of creating two ways to win and no way to lose. In this case, China either clamped down on North Korea (we win), or we can say we tried to get them to help and they refused.

That’s a free pass to do whatever we need to do, no matter how much China dislikes it. Hey, we tried it the other way. Clearly it didn’t work.

And it sets the table for all sides to get more serious about solving this non-militarily. Would you want President Trump to have a free pass to kill you?

My suggested deal structure is the only non-military option, as far as I can tell.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Comments?

[Secret Agent Man]

Any genuine solution requires careful calculations of how many megatons are required.

[Malcolm Reynolds]

I read it, but couldn’t take it seriously. The problem is, you are attempting to enter into a deal with three parties, NK, China, and Russia, that have never stuck to an agreement with us or allowed transparency in verification. It’s a well-intentioned plan, but it does not comport with history.

[tet68]

all players will be dead before the end of it.)

Well, you got that part right anyway.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

That would be the simplest solution. However, Pyongyang is only 35 miles away from South Korea. Any nuclear strike on NK would be immediately felt in SK and would kill millions of innocent lives.

Wouldn't want to get into a ground war with NK either. My Dad fought in Korea. He was in the offensive when the Chinese "volunteers" came across. Said they were very emotionless and stoic, even when their fellow soldiers were dying alongside them.

[calenel]

Appallingly naive. We got to where we are by taking the NKs at their word. Never once did they honor an agreement. Best case scenario is an "agreement" just kicks the can down the road a decade or two, and then the NKs nuke somebody.

If we're going to wait for them to nuke somebody, I prefer it not be us, and giving them a pass on however many more years of research and development undermines that goal.

[BeadCounter]

Russia and China downplay what North Korea says.

What if the shoe was on the other foot, Romania threatening Russia with nukes or Taiwan threatening Mainland China with the same.

I doubt if they’d see this as lighthearted.

[samtheman]

What North Korea wants is an ironclad national defense, prestige, prosperity, and maybe even reunification of the Koreas on their terms.

---

I don’t think what North Korea wants is an ironclad national defense, prestige, prosperity. If they wanted that, they could have had that years ago.

[Lee25]

No it does not work, because nuclear gave them security 100% sure. It’s nuclear that brought us here. I see no way to solve except military

In a military solution, the key is not in china, or in Russia but in South Korea. Without South Korea opposing it, US military will be able to solve this.

People are too reminiscent of previous Korean War to even think about using military solution in this case

With today’s technology us armed force will finish North Korea faster than Iraq. Difference now is that South Korean soldiers would clean up ground

[Army Air Corps]

This assumes that the DPRK is led by a rational actor.

[Windflier]

"...we must acknowledge that a win-lose model has no chance of success in this specific case..."

Sorry, Scott. I don't accept that premise.

We have the ability to send that country back to the stone age. Now, we ourselves may suffer some kind of losses for taking that route to a win, but we would win.

In the long term, so would North Korea.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I left Korea the last time in 1982. Even then, the ROKA could’ve invaded the DPRK. Vietnam showed everyone that if they were paying attention.

[DocRock]

This will not work with people that will only see weakness in our “peace deal” which will encourage more bad behavior. This is known in the drug and alcohol realm as an “enabler” which we have been for decades. They will never honor an agreement, but we can make them fear us. Sorry, but people are going to die and it's not our fault. The question is, which people are going to die?

[DoodleBob]

I don't know if Kim Jong-un is irrational, per se. I think he's a tyrant, a murderer, a dark soul, but he responds to threats accordingly. That is, he exterminated any opposition. Again, he may be playing with 47 cards but he's not irrational.

Given that, and without repeating a long post on this topic, let's give Psyops a chance. In short, imagine the NK Leader eating with his generals. One of them drops dead. A few moments later, another one drops dead. Rinse and repeat over a week. Then, Kim Jong-un wakes from a bad night's sleep to this...

Yea, if we go psyops, we will still get rhetoric from NK and his people remain under tyranny. However, there will be NO more missile tests (he can take a hint, and I suspect news of how that new guy in DC operates will reach China pretty fast) and NK is now neutralized.

To paraphrase John Lennon, all I am saying, is give Psyops a chance!!

[JohnyBoy]

>I don’t know if Kim Jong-un is irrational, per se. I think he’s a tyrant, a murderer, a dark soul, but he responds to threats accordingly. That is, he exterminated any opposition. Again, he may be playing with 47 cards but he’s not irrational.

Irrational isn’t relevant here. Hitler was acting quite rationally when he declared war on Poland before Germany was ready for a major because the UK and France had caved every time before. As it turned out he turned Germany into a burned out ruin by his “rational” decision.

What’s important here is how people see the world. And the way Kim sees things is ICBM’s gives him the power to blackmail the US and other nations. He has good precedence for this based on how the US and other paid him off in the past. However, the moment he can send an ICBM to hit a major US city then the US will nuke his nation back to the stone age. The US cannot play nuclear blackmail with the lives the public and the demand to end the Norks will be too great for any president to resist. Kim doesn’t understand this and it will lead to war because of it.

[Lysandru]

I normally love Scott Adams' stuff-- but he is clearly out of his depth here.

I don't have the time or energy to fully refute the incredible naivete and questionable assumptions here.

[GOPJ]

ping

[ThunderSleeps]

Pretty sounding idea, a real feel-good, we’re all winners approach. Of course it will never work. NK has gone back on, ignored, or otherwise violated every security agreement they’ve entered into over the last 30 years. We cannot negotiate with them, it is pointless. We can only impose a solution on them, by force.

[A strike]

A super dumb Chamberlainesque ‘plan’.
“What North Korea wants is an ironclad national defense (already guaranteed because NOBODY wants that fourth world POS of a country), prestige ( only Davos fools can grant them that (and probably would )), prosperity (DITTO!), and maybe even reunification the Koreas on their terms ( this is the most idiotic of all, kinda like maybe the U.S. should agree to reorganizing civilization under Sharia ).

“The U.S. withdraws military assets from South Korea.”
Even stupider than above. There would be NOTHING to stop KimJongInsane from just rolling through SK Barbarossa/ PearlHarbor style, he and his brainwashed slaves would not give a damn about cost.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Scott doesn’t understand cults of deep wickedness.