[William Choong] Provocations over rapprochement?

Following the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the 2004 film Team America, which had portrayed Kim as a lonely and insane dictator, began trending on the Internet. A popular clip being circulated is that of Kim singing, Broadway-style, in the opulent surroundings of his palace. “I’m so ronery (sic),” he sings, saying that the world does not appreciate his “grand prans (sic).”

This state of affairs now applies to his heir apparent Kim Jong-un, who is reported to be his late 20s and a newcomer to the dictatorship business.

In the short term, there won’t be any destabilizing scenarios on the Korean peninsula. The new regime led by the younger Kim will likely close ranks and seek to strengthen its grip on power. There won’t be shots fired across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). As the truism goes, war breaks out only when one least expects it, not when one does.

As Dartmouth college professor Jennifer Lind noted in Foreign Affairs journal last year, powerful forces instituted by the older Kim ― such as coup-proof measures and social engineering ― will ensure the continued but sorry reign of his son.

In the long term, there are only two ways forward for Kim Jong-un.

First, he could subscribe to the 1970s-era model of rapprochement and reform practiced by China. In such a scenario, North Korea will mend fences with the United States, give up its nuclear weapons and engage with the rest of the world.

This, however, is unlikely, given that such an unprecedented change ― even years after the older Kim’s death ― will be hard to stomach for a regime that has thrived on the country’s isolation. History shows that it is terribly hard for countries to give up their nuclear weapons. After all, North Korea’s nuclear bombs constitute its drive for security via other means ― the nuclear bombs are predicated on historical American enmity.

The second and more likely route for Kim Jong-un is to replicate his father’s foreign policy formulation, which the latter practiced with such panache. Specifically, North Korea will trigger a series of provocations against South Korea and its allies to secure attention and, in turn, aid and assistance.

“Everyone’s immediate refrain is ‘Oh, great, a tyrant is gone’,” Jim Walsh, a North Korea expert at the the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told Reuters. “But actually this is bad news... North Korea is going to be on the offensive. This young leader is going to have to prove his worth.”

It is worth nothing that in the 1980s, when Kim Jong-iIl was a dictator-in-waiting, he engineered a series of provocations that intensified tensions on the Korean peninsula.

In 1983, North Korean soldiers planted a bomb in the then Burmese capital Rangoon that killed four South Korean Cabinet ministers and two presidential advisers. Four years later, the North’s agents planted a bomb on Korean Air Flight 858 which killed all 115 passengers and crew.

The problem with the younger Kim is that in his youthful enthusiasm and eagerness to please the generals, he might actually overshoot and escalate hostilities. The game of chicken ― which provides a model of nuclear deterrence ― is instructive. Here, two drivers hurtle towards each other at high speed; each tries to egg his opponent on to swerve by pretending to lose control of the steering wheel.

The problem here for the younger Kim: In pretending to lose control of the steering wheel, he might really lose it.

Therein lies the reason why we will all miss the senior Kim. The world’s media has lampooned his bouffant hairdo, the elevator shoes and the crackpot image. But the fact is that he knew how to push hard to get concessions from the global community, and he knew that the U.S. and its allies will not retaliate so hard as to trigger outright conflict.

In March last year, North Korea was believed to be behind the sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean corvette. But Pyongyang saw Seoul’s response as weak.

In November the same year, North Korea’s artillery pounded the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong. The attack was the heaviest since the Korean War ended in 1953. South Korea and the U.S. then conducted a large-scale ‘show of force’ naval exercise in the Yellow Sea ― but nothing more than that.

More importantly, the senior Kim has provided stability on the tense Korean peninsula ― a quality that great powers such as China, Japan and the U.S. craved.

Note the reactions from the U.S. and China in the wake of his death. A White House spokesman said Washington “remained committed to stability” on the peninsula. Likewise, a Chinese analyst said Beijing’s biggest worry would be over Pyongyang’s stability.

If North Korea collapses, the South would find itself facing a German-style scenario. According to the think-tank Rand Corp, reunification could cost, in 2003 dollars, anything from $50 billion to $670 billion. Both South Korea and China would see streams of refugees flooding their borders.

Korean reunification will see Japan facing a neighbor which has harbored a visceral enmity towards it. Washington would have to explain to Beijing the rationale for the stationing of U.S. military forces on the unified peninsula.

Kim Jong-il was said to have been a movie fan. If so, the movie that aptly sums up his philosophy would be Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black comedy “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” As the madcap Dr. Strangelove instructed, deterrence is the art of creating in an enemy the “fear to attack.”

Thanks to deterrence, the Korean peninsula has seen heavy-militarized borders at the DMZ, but no outright war or nuclear exchange. Thanks to deterrence, the senior Kim kept a ramshackle country going for years, amassed nuclear weapons and cocked a snook at the world’s sole superpower.

His methods were reprehensible, his human rights record abysmal and, many times, he brought his impoverished country to the brink of war. But the transition from the senior Kim to his son can be summarized in one sentence: better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

By William Choong

William Choong is a senior writer of the Straits Times. ― Ed.

(The Straits Times/Asia News Network)