As I live and work in the Republic of Korea, I naturally
have a certain immediate interest in the latest Donald Trump vs. Kim Jong Un
saber-rattling -- as in, "Am I on the brink of being hustled to an airport
with a one-way ticket out of Dodge?" On the other hand, in a land
permanently in a state of low-simmering war -- no peace accord between North
and South Korea ever having been signed -- one tends to fall into an unhealthy
default assumption that since nothing major has happened before, nothing major
will happen this time.
In fact, to observe the demeanor of
my Korean friends, colleagues, students, and neighbors is to be palliated to
near-coma levels. Threats and agitations from the North Korean regime have been
such a normal part of life in the ROK for so many decades that for a foreigner
who has lived here and been immersed in the day-to-day life of Korean society
long enough, it's hard to imagine what, short of a missile strike on Seoul (or
perhaps more than one), would push the average South Korean into a state of
urgent concern.
The North vows to annihilate the
South on a regular basis, carries out high-level weapons tests timed to get the
most attention as deliberate provocations, and has, in recent years, shelled an
inhabited South Korean island (killing several people and destroying property)
and sunk an ROK Navy ship with a torpedo. These events are top news headlines
in the ROK, of course, and cause the usual moment of outrage and frustration,
just as they would if they were reports of events happening on the other side
of the world. That these outrages are not on the other side of the world; that
the threats are against their own people, the deaths from among their own
fellow citizens; and that the military assault was directed against their own
Navy, which carries a more personal implication in the ROK, where all healthy
young men are conscripted for two years of military service -- the men on that
torpedoed ship could have been anyone's sons or brothers -- makes the typical
Korean's numbness to the threats and provocations almost surreal.
And I do not use the word
"surreal" casually. There is an oneiric quality to the South's approach to the
North and everything it represents, suggestive of our reactions in dreams: the
events feel real, but yet somehow do not quite stir the dreamer to a fully
engaged response. This may have something to do with the specific nature of the
threat. For the North Korean regime, from its inception, has fallen outside the
bounds of reason to such an extent that it may be hard to see the danger it
represents as falling within those bounds. It's a little like
having a crazy aunt living upstairs. She talks a lot and makes wild threats;
occasionally we have a family meeting to discuss her condition and whether more
radical action has to be taken. But somehow the sheer insanity of what she is
doing and saying makes her seem less dangerous, as though she is operating,
mentally, so far outside the realm of normal human efficacy that we can't help
feeling that all the wild promises she makes must be equally outside the realm
of normal cause and effect. None of it seems completely substantial, but rather
just a lot of explosions in her crazy mind. We therefore wish she would go
away, but feel little motivation to exert all the energy needed take the
active, complicated steps that would actually get her out of the house.
Now the U.S. military is actively
challenging the North regarding its nuclear ambitions. How serious the
challenge is depends on which news source, or which "leaked" story,
you choose to believe. Are we talking about a "preemptive strike," as
NBC implies, or not? But there is no question that the rhetoric has heated
somewhat, and that the unspoken rhetoric of deployment has heated even more.
The big questions are: Can this escalation end in anything fruitful, and what
exactly is the Trump administration's endgame in this situation?
There is no doubt that U.S. policy
for a generation has emboldened the North -- both Kim Jong Il (he of the five
holes-in-one during his
first-ever round of golf) and now his son Kim Jong Un -- to pursue an
ever-whackier line of provocations and propaganda. Even a lunatic and world
champion of Short Man Syndrome like Kim Jong Il was sensitive to the benefits
of serving wine and parades to a world champion of Unfeminine Woman Syndrome
like Madeleine Albright. A less tolerant and legitimizing stand from the U.S.,
and a strong statement that the time for empty "negotiation" with the
pot-bellied crackpots is over, are reasonable and long-overdue steps.
However, it would be unwise to
ignore the irreversible damage done by a generation of treating the North with
excessive forbearance and as trustworthy negotiators. The time for dealing
bluntly and cavalierly with your crazy aunt is when she is still just talking a
lot of inconsequential nonsense in the attic, notafter
she has stolen and loaded your shotgun and is aiming it at the door. The young
Kim Jong Un has real weapons, a lot of them, and has already shown himself to
be unhinged and ruthless -- or rather carelessly bold -- in the manner of an
extreme sufferer of his family's congenital Short Man Syndrome. It is
reasonable to assume that the only thing that prevents him from trying to rain
a hundred missiles on the twenty million residents of metropolitan Seoul is
that he still thinks he has more to gain from the threat than the deed.
What is his breaking point? What
would push him into desperate action? Certainly any sense that his grip on
power was being immediately threatened from without would be likely to trigger
a catastrophically foolish response from a man seemingly capable only of
foolishness of one sort or another.
The basis of playing chicken with
anyone is the presumption one makes that one's adversary is rational enough to
flinch, which is to say that he has a natural propensity to step back from the
brink of disaster. But if he doesn't, or if he has made a literal or figurative
suicide pact with himself, then what?
One might object that Kim Jong Un
is no Islamic suicide bomber; he wants to survive. That may be true, and it is
certainly difficult to imagine the overfed, unstable Kim having even the
twisted, maniacal courage of a jihadist. However, one cannot underestimate the
influence of the North's own propaganda on the psyche of its latest Dear
Leader. His hold on power requires that he continue to be perceived as godlike,
invincible, capable of superhuman feats, born to rule his people, and
immovable. How much of that vision, force-fed to his starving population daily,
has penetrated his own skull? A young heir to a small but monolithic kingdom
who possesses the ability and the will to kill political rivals, including
family members, with impunity is probably inclined to half-believe his own
hype. All the talk of destroying the South Korean and American aggressors may
well have sunk deep into his unrestrained and unchallenged mind, causing him to
have more faith in himself, his arsenal, and the loyalty of his enormous
military, than is warranted by the facts.
If so, then he must be approached
with caution, as offensive as that prospect may be. No, the United States
military, alone or in conjunction with the ROK's, is not seriously threatened
with defeat at the hands of North Korea. But that's not the problem. The
problem is that in the process of dealing roughly with this crazy aunt, now
that she has been allowed access to the ammunition, she is very likely to spend
a lot of bullets prior to being subdued. In this case, those bullets could
strike one of the ripest targets on the planet, situated within easy range of
even the most inept shooters.
Perhaps it never had to come to
this, but this is where it has come. We are seeing the results of allowing
progressives to control foreign policy in a dangerous world. South Korea had
its own period of "Sunshine Policy" toward the North, as leftist
sympathizers with the communist system tried to imagine the system could be
judged separately from the regime. Likewise, American progressives have spent
almost thirty years imagining the Kim family, though crazy, somehow presided
over a system worthy of self-determination and autonomy. Now, like it or not,
this folly has created an intractable problem. We cannot wish away the North's
arsenal and nuclear developments. They are here, real, and nightmarish,
achieved right under the noses of successive progressive morons, East and West,
left and right. The question is how to handle this new, far more difficult
crazy aunt problem.
Throughout his campaign, Donald
Trump appealed to his base in part by promising that he would not engage in
globetrotting military projects where immediate American interests were not at
stake. He even threatened to leave South Korea and Japan to fend for themselves
against the North Korean nuclear threat. Who knows exactly what caused the
recent about-face on those attitudes? But if this strong posturing against
North Korea is the administration's attempt to further ingratiate itself with
the so-called "globalist" wing of the Washington establishment, or to
boost Trump's poll numbers as patriotic displays of firepower tend to do, then
the strategists had better take heed.
North Korea is not Syria. The
Syrian regime has no serious capacity to inflict massive harm on an American
ally. And Syria's weapons, such as they are, are effectively aimed inward,
against internal threats. North Korea's weapons, much more deadly than Syria's,
are all aimed outward -- and aimed specifically at America's two most
important, most politically sound, and most economically powerful allies in the
region.
Whatever President Trump and his
team have in mind here, let's hope they are weighing all these factors
carefully, and not succumbing to infatuation with their own hype. Kim Jong Un's
regime might tumble like a house of cards at the first serious confrontation.
But it is at least as likely, cultish power and megalomania being what they
are, that Kim will choose to go out with a bang -- a bang that could have historically
significant impact on the Republic of Korea and Japan.
I truly hope Trump, or someone
among his chief advisors, understands this. I hate traveling on short notice.
Daren
Jonescu writes about politics, philosophy, education, and the sunset of
civilization at www.darenjonescu.com.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/dateline_south_korea_whats_trumps_endgame_here.html
