North Korea is threatening to start a nuclear war. The rest of the world seems to be dismissing this threat, claiming it’s being done for domestic political reasons. It’s true that North Korea has in the past made what have turned out to be false threats, and the North Korean leadership would almost certainly be made much worse off if they started an all out war.
But imagine that North Korea does launch a first strike nuclear attack, and later investigations reveal that the North Korean leadership truly believed that it was about to be attacked and so made the threats in an attempt to get the U.S. to take a less aggressive posture. Wouldn’t future historians (perhaps suffering from hindsight bias) judge us to be idiots for ignoring clear and repeated threats from a nuclear-armed government that appeared crazy (map doesn’t match territory) and obsessed with war.
Wouldn’t future historians (perhaps suffering from hindsight bias) judge us to be idiots for ignoring clear and repeated threats from a nuclear-armed government that appeared crazy (map doesn’t match territory) and obsessed with war.
Why do we care what they think, and can you name previous examples of this?
As someone who studies lots of history while often thinking, “how could they have been this stupid didn’t they know what would happen?”, I thought it useful to frame the question this way.
Hitler’s professed intentions were not taken seriously by many.
Hitler’s professed intentions were not taken seriously by many.
Taken seriously… when? Back when he was a crazy failed artist imprisoned after a beer hall putsch, sure; up to the mid-1930s people took him seriously but were more interested in accommodationism. After he took Austria, I imagine pretty much everyone started taking him seriously, with Chamberlain conceding Czechoslovakia but then deciding to go to war if Poland was invaded (hardly a decision to make if you didn’t take the possibilities seriously). Which it then was. And after that...
If we were to analogize North Korea to Hitler’s career, we’re not at the conquest of France, or Poland, or Czechoslovakia; we’re at maybe breaking treaties & remilitarizing the Rhineland in 1936 (Un claiming to abandon the cease-fire and closing down Kaesŏng).
One thing that hopefully the future historians will notice is that when North Korea attacks, it doesn’t give warnings. There were no warnings or buildups of tension or propaganda crescendos before bombing & hijacking & kidnapping of Korean airliners, the DMZ ax murders, the commando assault on the Blue House, the sinking of the Cheonan, kidnapping Korean or Japanese citizens over the decades, bombing the SK president & cabinet in Burma, shelling Yeonpyeong, the attempted assassination of Park Sang-hak… you know, all the stuff North Korea has done before.
To the extent that history can be a guide, the propaganda war and threats ought to make us less worried about there being any attack. When NK beats the war drums, it want talks and concessions; when it is silent, then that is when it attacks. Hence, war drums are comforting and silence worrisome.
Certainly the consequences of us being wrong are bad, but that isn’t necessarily enough to outweigh the presumably low prior probability that we’re wrong. (I’m not taking a stance on how low this probability is because I don’t know enough about the situation.) Presumably people also feel like there are game-theoretic reasons not to respond to such threats.
There is an issue of ability vs. intention, no matter whether the North Korean leadership wants to destroy the US or South Korea they don’t have the ability to do any major harm. The real fear is that the regime collapses and we’re left with a massive humanitarian crisis.
Pretty sure nuking Seoul is worse than the regime in NK collapsing. I think annexation by either china or SK would be way better than the current system of starvation in NK.
Maybe a slow and controlled introduction of free enterprise, Deng Xiaoping-style, while maintaining a tight grip on political freedoms, at least until the economy recovers somewhat, could soften it. Incidentally, this is apparently the direction Kim Jong-un is carefully steering towards. Admittedly, slacklining seems like a child’s play compared to the perils he’d have to go through to land softly.
Some here. One of the most interesting parts of the essay was the aside claiming that NK saber rattling is an intentional effort to distraction S. Korean, US, and Chinese attention from thinking about the mechanics of unification.
Edit: I’ll just quote the interesting paragraph:
The way I read the North Korean sabre-rattling (and use) is that it is designed to keep the South Koreans and their allies off balance, focussing on crisis management and preventing war, and not – for instance – planning coherently for the probable collapse of their régime. After all, if there was a good reunification plan, it would become more likely.
It’s only anecdotal evidence, but my son, teaching in a small town near the DMZ, warned me that the topic is too sensitive for casual conversation. So Pyongyang may have spooked the South Korean public into treating the whole subject as unthinkable, because of its one unthinkable component, a nuclear conflict.
I was talking about this with a friend of mine, and it does seem like there is no outcome that’s not going to be hugely, hideously expensive. The costs of a war are obviously high—even if they don’t/can’t use nukes, they could knock Seoul right out of the global economy. But even if its peaceful you’d have this tidal wave of refugees into China and the South, and South Korea will be paying reunification costs for at least the next decade or so.
You can sort of see why SK and China are willing to pay to keep the status quo, and screw the starving millions.
South Korea will be paying reunification costs for at least the next decade or so.
Far longer than that. (West) Germany is apparently still effectively subsidizing (former) East Germany, more than 2 decades after unification—and I have read that West & East Germany were much closer in terms of development than North & South Korea are now. For the total costs of reunification, ‘trillions’ is probably the right order of magnitude to be looking at (even though it would eventually more than pay for itself, never mind the moral dimension).
I quite agree, on both parts. 25 million new consumers, catch-up growth, road networks from Seoul to Beijing, navigable waters, less political risk premium, etc.
It’s a gloomy picture though. A coup seems unlikely (given the Kim-religion) and it’ll probably be 2050-70 until Jong-un dies. I’ve got two hopes: the recent provocation is aimed at a domestic audience, and once he’s proved himself he’ll pull a Burma; or the international community doesn’t blink and resume aid, forcing them into some sort of opening. Not very high hopes though.
To expand: a massive burst of cheap labor, a peace dividend in winding down both militaries (on top of the reduction in risk premium) such as closing down military bases taking valuable Seoul-area real estate, and access to all NK’s mineral and natural resources.
I had a little dream scenario in my head when Jong Il died that Jong Un would have been secretly rebellious and reasonable and start implementing better policy bit by bit, but that clearly didn’t happen. My hope is that whoever actually has their hands on the buttons in charge of the bombs and military is more reasonable than Jong-Un, and that he gets taken out either by us or by someone close to him who has a more accurate view of reality. At this point, the international rhetoric would immediately start being toned down, and the de facto government could start making announcements about the world changing its mind or something to smooth over increased cooperation and peace and foreign aid.
North Korea is threatening to start a nuclear war. The rest of the world seems to be dismissing this threat, claiming it’s being done for domestic political reasons. It’s true that North Korea has in the past made what have turned out to be false threats, and the North Korean leadership would almost certainly be made much worse off if they started an all out war.
But imagine that North Korea does launch a first strike nuclear attack, and later investigations reveal that the North Korean leadership truly believed that it was about to be attacked and so made the threats in an attempt to get the U.S. to take a less aggressive posture. Wouldn’t future historians (perhaps suffering from hindsight bias) judge us to be idiots for ignoring clear and repeated threats from a nuclear-armed government that appeared crazy (map doesn’t match territory) and obsessed with war.
Why do we care what they think, and can you name previous examples of this?
As someone who studies lots of history while often thinking, “how could they have been this stupid didn’t they know what would happen?”, I thought it useful to frame the question this way.
Hitler’s professed intentions were not taken seriously by many.
Taken seriously… when? Back when he was a crazy failed artist imprisoned after a beer hall putsch, sure; up to the mid-1930s people took him seriously but were more interested in accommodationism. After he took Austria, I imagine pretty much everyone started taking him seriously, with Chamberlain conceding Czechoslovakia but then deciding to go to war if Poland was invaded (hardly a decision to make if you didn’t take the possibilities seriously). Which it then was. And after that...
If we were to analogize North Korea to Hitler’s career, we’re not at the conquest of France, or Poland, or Czechoslovakia; we’re at maybe breaking treaties & remilitarizing the Rhineland in 1936 (Un claiming to abandon the cease-fire and closing down Kaesŏng).
One thing that hopefully the future historians will notice is that when North Korea attacks, it doesn’t give warnings. There were no warnings or buildups of tension or propaganda crescendos before bombing & hijacking & kidnapping of Korean airliners, the DMZ ax murders, the commando assault on the Blue House, the sinking of the Cheonan, kidnapping Korean or Japanese citizens over the decades, bombing the SK president & cabinet in Burma, shelling Yeonpyeong, the attempted assassination of Park Sang-hak… you know, all the stuff North Korea has done before.
To the extent that history can be a guide, the propaganda war and threats ought to make us less worried about there being any attack. When NK beats the war drums, it want talks and concessions; when it is silent, then that is when it attacks. Hence, war drums are comforting and silence worrisome.
Certainly the consequences of us being wrong are bad, but that isn’t necessarily enough to outweigh the presumably low prior probability that we’re wrong. (I’m not taking a stance on how low this probability is because I don’t know enough about the situation.) Presumably people also feel like there are game-theoretic reasons not to respond to such threats.
There is an issue of ability vs. intention, no matter whether the North Korean leadership wants to destroy the US or South Korea they don’t have the ability to do any major harm. The real fear is that the regime collapses and we’re left with a massive humanitarian crisis.
Pretty sure nuking Seoul is worse than the regime in NK collapsing. I think annexation by either china or SK would be way better than the current system of starvation in NK.
Any thoughts about what a relatively soft landing for NK would look like?
Maybe a slow and controlled introduction of free enterprise, Deng Xiaoping-style, while maintaining a tight grip on political freedoms, at least until the economy recovers somewhat, could soften it. Incidentally, this is apparently the direction Kim Jong-un is carefully steering towards. Admittedly, slacklining seems like a child’s play compared to the perils he’d have to go through to land softly.
Some here. One of the most interesting parts of the essay was the aside claiming that NK saber rattling is an intentional effort to distraction S. Korean, US, and Chinese attention from thinking about the mechanics of unification.
Edit: I’ll just quote the interesting paragraph:
Emphasis mine.
I was talking about this with a friend of mine, and it does seem like there is no outcome that’s not going to be hugely, hideously expensive. The costs of a war are obviously high—even if they don’t/can’t use nukes, they could knock Seoul right out of the global economy. But even if its peaceful you’d have this tidal wave of refugees into China and the South, and South Korea will be paying reunification costs for at least the next decade or so.
You can sort of see why SK and China are willing to pay to keep the status quo, and screw the starving millions.
Far longer than that. (West) Germany is apparently still effectively subsidizing (former) East Germany, more than 2 decades after unification—and I have read that West & East Germany were much closer in terms of development than North & South Korea are now. For the total costs of reunification, ‘trillions’ is probably the right order of magnitude to be looking at (even though it would eventually more than pay for itself, never mind the moral dimension).
I quite agree, on both parts. 25 million new consumers, catch-up growth, road networks from Seoul to Beijing, navigable waters, less political risk premium, etc.
It’s a gloomy picture though. A coup seems unlikely (given the Kim-religion) and it’ll probably be 2050-70 until Jong-un dies. I’ve got two hopes: the recent provocation is aimed at a domestic audience, and once he’s proved himself he’ll pull a Burma; or the international community doesn’t blink and resume aid, forcing them into some sort of opening. Not very high hopes though.
To expand: a massive burst of cheap labor, a peace dividend in winding down both militaries (on top of the reduction in risk premium) such as closing down military bases taking valuable Seoul-area real estate, and access to all NK’s mineral and natural resources.
I had a little dream scenario in my head when Jong Il died that Jong Un would have been secretly rebellious and reasonable and start implementing better policy bit by bit, but that clearly didn’t happen. My hope is that whoever actually has their hands on the buttons in charge of the bombs and military is more reasonable than Jong-Un, and that he gets taken out either by us or by someone close to him who has a more accurate view of reality. At this point, the international rhetoric would immediately start being toned down, and the de facto government could start making announcements about the world changing its mind or something to smooth over increased cooperation and peace and foreign aid.
I think part of the problem is that we don’t know whether they seem to be crazy or not.