Just to be clear, everyone understands the dramatic differences from a human terrain perspective between Korea and Iraq, right?
I mean, Korea isn’t going to devolve into sectarian violence when the current regime is gone. Everyone understands this, right?
That’s not to say that you can kill Kim Jong Un and then it’s over… But saying that every intervention will end up like Iraq is just as foolish as saying that Iraq was going to turn out like post WWII Japan.
If you think that somehow this all ends with no military engagement, so be it. That’s certainly your right to think that, even if I think it naive.
But if you accept that an engagement is going to happen, then the best time to do it is as soon as China is on board with it. Because delaying it until North Korea has a nuclear weapon capable of hitting Europe or the US is not wise.
And if you are going to have that engagement, you always target the leadership. That’s strategically sound, as well as the MOST ethical way to fight a war, as it minimizes civilian (and military) casualties.
Just to be clear, we (or rather our ally, South Korea, so us too) are actually at war with the DPRK right now. The Korean War was “ended” with a cease-fire and an armistice, not a formal cessation of hostilities or peace treaty. Our attacking Kim and/or his infrastructure would be a violation of the truce, but not actually illegal under international law.
Of course, that’s just rules-lawyering and by any sane measure we are not at war with North Korea, but it’s late on a Friday and I feel like being pedantic.
Not entirely, though your point is well taken. Quite a few of these posts have been about what the consequences of a war might be, and most of them come the conclusion that one big reason to avoid a war is that the aftermath would be nightmarish.
But yeah, as bad as any possible war in Korea would be, it’s entirely likely the aftermath–mass movements of refugees, political turmoil, power vacuums, instability–would be in the long term even worse.
I do think it’s useful to remember Iraq in that context, though here at least the only one talking about voluntarily starting such a war seems to be the President. Erm, well, that doesn’t actually make me feel much better.
The truly sad thing is that the aftermath of a war would almost certainly be a major net positive for almost everyone on the Korean peninsula. I mean, you can’t really set aside all the death and property damage and human suffering that the actual prosecution of the war would cause, but if you COULD then the future would be fairly rosy:
The Korean people are relatively unified from an ethnic standpoint and there is substantial hunger on both sides of the border for reunification, at least down at the street level. The South has a ridiculously low unemployment rate and although there would be short-term consequences (for the South) from absorbing the North’s cheap labor, the reunified country would probably come out of the deal as a manufacturing powerhouse within a decade.
The standard of living and quality of life for the North would rise radically and the after taking a short-term hit to theirs, the South would probably come out ahead too. The parallels to German reunification are legion.
And of course this is why China is none to keen on doing anything that might hasten the collapse of the DPRK. South Korea is already a regional rival; a reunified Greater Korea would be more so.
The truth is we don’t KNOW how things would play out. You conjecture that things will be easy and great, but how many times in history has that actually happened? I think it’s far more likely that it’ll be a mess. Consider a population on the verge of starving that probably relies on the military for a good portion of it’s materiel supply and distribution network, and where not the military a centralized authority and control structure. Even in the context of a 100% eager-beaver population without a bunch of weapons, how does it work when that feeble machine is brought to a halt? Think about Haiti, or other natural disasters. The initial disaster is usually a smallish part of the problem.
In the long term, it would almost certainly be better just by probability theory. North Korea ranks at or near the bottom of all countries on most measures of human happiness.
However, in the short term I think you are right we really don’t have clue what will happen. It is not a normal country in any way and how the population will react is frankly anyone’s guess.
And that’s gonna happen soon. Any day now, China is going to say, “Hey US, come on over and add a country that borders us to your sphere of influence by means of a large-scale war. No problem!”
I’m sure you’d be willing to allow China to invade Mexico and set itself up as its main trade partner to speed this process along.
North Korea has been China’s problem to deal with since the cease fire. We may not be happy with the way they’ve done it, but that was the implicit deal. The reason we agreed to it in the first place is not because we thought it was a terrific deal, but because we thought it was a better deal than going to war against China.
Fair enough. While I do think Trump (and even more so for Kim Jung Un) dying in office would be a good thing for the nation and the planet, an assassination would traumatize the country (after all nearly 1/2 the country voted for him and most still approve of the job he is doing)
One of my earliest memory is JFK funeral, I was four and mom was on the couch balling her eyes out. I asked what was wrong and she said, the president had been shot and they were burying him.
I said but I thought he was a Democrat? and mom patiently explained that that didn’t matter he was still the President.
