What’s next for rogue nuclear regime in North Korea in ’18?
For good or evil, we may see radical changes in North Korea in 2018.
The beefed-up United Nations sanctions by midyear could lead to widespread North Korean hunger, as well as the virtual end of the country’s industry and transportation.
In the past, the West had called off such sanctions and rushed in cash and humanitarian aid on news of growing starvation. Would it now if the alternative was a nuclear missile possibly striking Seattle?
To survive an unending trade embargo (and perhaps to avoid a coup) Kim Jong Un would likely either recalibrate his nuclear program or consider using it.
China has always been unwilling to give up North Korea as its client. The Kim dynasty has proved especially useful over the past 30 years for aggravating and distracting the Chinese communist government’s archenemy, Japan, and its chief rival, the United States. Yet China is now worried the Trump administration is as unfathomable as the Obama administration’s patience doctrine was predictable.
Beijing’s sponsorship of the rogue nuclear regime in North Korea could increasingly become bad business, given global anxieties over the many possible trajectories of North Korea nuclear missiles.
What are some likely scenarios for 2018?
1) The status quo. China may loudly proclaim that it is following U.N. commercial sanctions while it secretly offers just enough sanction-busting aid to keep Kim Jong Un afloat. The status quo — North Korean missiles pointed at America’s West Coast — is clearly untenable.
2) A Chinese solution. China would cut some sort of deal to remove North Korean missiles — or even the Kim regime itself through a coup or uprising — in exchange for controlling the future of North Korea. The U. S. should not give any concessions to China to remove the nukes. That would only reward North Korea nuclear roguery and ensure that the cycle of the last three decades would be endlessly repeated.
3) Forced removal. The U. S. would be forced to accept widespread malnutrition of the North Korean populace and a constant ratcheting up of pressures to eliminate Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons. The U. S. should sponsor a Manhattan Project- style regional comprehensive missile defense system. It could also ban Chinese Communist Party officials and their families from U. S. soil.
Such pressures might force something quite unpredictable to happen. A doomed North Korea could launch a missile, invade South Korea, be forced to disarm or disintegrate amid coups or popular uprisings. A humiliated China would likely ei- ther be pressed to quietly abandon North Korea or find financial, economic and military ways to harm the U. S.
4) Pre- emption. The U. S. and its Japanese and South Korean allies would have to disable the missiles through military force, including massive attacks on North Korean missile sites, command and control centers, artillery and missile platforms, military bases and WMD repositories.
Such preemption would quickly escalate to a general-theater war — or worse. Last-gasp North Korean nukes might escape preemptive bombing and be launched at Japan, South Korea, America’s Pacific bases and the U. S. West Coast. A tottering North Korea could order a fullfledged artillery pounding of Seoul, chemical and cyber attacks, and a conventional ground invasion of South Korea.
The U. S. and its allies would win such a war. But the cost could be catastrophic and prompt global recession. No one knows what China would do in such an exigency.
One thing is always certain. The naive architects of appeasement who watch as monsters grow always win shortterm praise for avoiding immediate war. Their realist successors, who are forced to cage or destroy such full-grown beasts, are usually labeled as war mongers.