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Posted on 01/23/2012 6:48:19 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
5 – North Korea
Implosion or Explosion
Don’t be fooled by stories of how smoothly the transition is proceeding in Pyongyang. The first rule of analyzing North Korea—it’s the world’s most opaque regime and no one really knows what’s going on inside—has not changed. Maybe things really are going smoothly. Maybe they’re already off the rails. We do know that North Korea is a nuclear power, that provocation is its traditional foreign policy tool of choice, and that North Korean collapse is the likeliest way to bring American and Chinese soldiers face to face in an unpredictable and dangerous security environment. That’s why it is precisely the inability of outsiders to evaluate what’s really happening in North Korea that creates so much risk there.
Will North Korea become history’s first leaderless nuclear power? Kim Jong-il’s 28-year-old third son Kim Jong-un has been named successor, but only after a hastily arranged transition and with no meaningful experience in government. Kim Il-sung took more than two decades to prepare the ground for Kim Jong-il to succeed him, and it still took years for the “Dear Leader” to consolidate power. Kim Jong-un will have to do more with much less.
To be sure, there is no North Korean political spring waiting to bloom. There will be no demonstrations, no opposition. It’s a totalitarian state. There’s no reform, no apparent demand for change, and a massive (when they fall, they fall hard) outpouring of emotion ongoing. Just as with the death of Mao and Stalin, those bases are covered. But Kim Jong-un is no Deng Xiaoping or Nikita Khrushchev, and security from within the circle around him is an entirely different matter.
It’s like what they say about family firms: The first generation builds it, the second hangs on to it, the third destroys it. And there are already warning signs in North Korea that the third time will not be the charm—the quick announcement of events to roll out the new leader revealed that they weren’t adequately prepared, and a number of high-ranking political figures have died lately in car accidents in a country notably short on cars. In short, the preparations for transition were hurried and violent—and the transition is now in motion.
Kim Jong-un may remain in place, but he is very unlikely to actually run the country. Those around him and other stakeholders—almost certainly encouraged by China—will have decided that this is the best outcome for the moment. In coming months, we should not be at all surprised to see provocative external acts meant to prove that the government is firmly in place and not to be trifled with.
Alternatively, we could pick up signals of infighting at the highest levels of government. Those within the leadership who fear a fall from favor have clear incentives to derail the process of consolidation of power. That won’t happen openly or immediately. (As they used to say in the British special forces, in a hostile environment you shoot the first person who moves. There’s a serious first mover disadvantage in a totalitarian transition). But the initial calm may not last long, and it’s almost impossible to predict exactly what sort of political risk the elite might produce. As we’ve seen in recent months, another belligerent international act could be just the thing to provoke a state of crisis and rally North Korea’s powerbrokers to the regime.
In the worst-case scenario of rapid government collapse, US and South Korean forces would move north to secure North Korea’s nuclear sites, while China would likely send forces across the Yalu River to block any flood of refugees and restore basic security, creating the potential for unintended conflict given the absence of any joint US-China contingency planning. After all, the United States and China remain on opposite sides of the security divide in Asia, a problem that will only get bigger in 2012 (see risk #7).
To add more supporting evidence to the assessment above, we point out that
N. Korean system is breaking down on all fronts. Military is demoralized, hungry, lacking adequate training, and poorly equipped. Party officials and security apparatus are corrupt. They are not up to their tasks. Especially, security infrastructure is crumbling. The network of informants is not what it used to be. People are busy with making ends meet, and spying on others takes the back seat. Informants themselves are being ostracized, and state security is no longer capable of restoring the network organization. Most members of ruling elites are on the take, believing that the money is only insurance against uncertain and potentially dangerous future.
State economy had collapsed long time ago. Efforts to resuscitate repeatedly failed because the cure requires the economic reform which will directly challenge the regime’s hold on power. People walked out of state economy long time ago. They pursue their economic life in the market outside the system.
This is not the situation Soviet Union was in after Stalin’s death nor China after Mao’s death. The state institutions were up and running when they died. Never deteriorated to the level of current N. Korea. Thus we can think that this time it will be indeed different.
NK is on China's border; it is half a world away from the U.S. Though we are helping South Korea be prepared to resist aggression, we have no business causing our troops to "face off" with Chinese.
I will go with implosion, no one inside NK gains by losing a war.
OH BOY get ready for Kill Bill Vol 1 ending in NK LOL!
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