War Games

Looks like President George W. Bush may soon have one less member of the “Axis of Evil” to kick around: U.S. military action against Saddam Hussein appears imminent, and many predict a swift victory. No Asian leader will follow the action more closely than North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who no doubt managed to catch a number of recent international broadcasts—such as the one where Bush expressed his personal “loathing” for the Dear Leader and the one where Bush revealed that Washington now considers preemptive strikes against tyrants an option for ensuring homeland security (“if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long”).

But Kim has no intention of being reduced to a single point of light. How, then, does he plan to play out the Second Gulf War? North Korea’s patterns of behavior during crises, and its official explications of the state’s global objectives, have remained amazingly consistent over the half century since the 1953 Korean War cease-fire. These regularities in the North Korean system offer important clues as to what may lie ahead. Here, then, is the world according to Kim:

• Life is War Let’s start by recognizing that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is already a country at war. The war began in 1950, with the North’s surprise attack against the South, and won’t end until the peninsula is happily reunited under the tender care of the Kim family. The DPRK is already a total-war machine. Its economy is hypermilitarized, its proclaimed policy is “military-first politics,” and Kim rules from his seat on the National Defense Commission, North Korea’s highest post. The DPRK’s leadership inverts Clausewitz. For them, politics is a continuation of war by other means. In “total-war politics” there are victors and vanquished, prisoners, hostages, reparations. With the specter of strife on the Korean peninsula rising, North Korea’s decisionmakers are entering comfortable and familiar terrain. It doesn’t faze them to be weighing microcalibrations in nightmare scenarios that peacetime politicians would beg not to think about at all.

My bet: during an Iraq war, Pyongyang’s seasoned brinkmen will be pragmatic enough not to attempt a surprise assault against the South, no matter how the U.S. fares against Saddam. That’s because, given current realities—the U.S.-South Korean military alliance and the “trip wire” of American troops in the South—an unprovoked offensive would invite an annihilating counterstrike against North Korea. And if there’s one higher ideal that Kim values, it’s self-preservation.

• Thuggishness Pays Kim and his team have studied their own history, and they cherish the memory of the U.S.S. Pueblo, a U.S. spy ship operating off North Korean coastal waters during the Vietnam War—the last time America was embroiled in a massive, prolonged military engagement. In 1968, North Korean gunboats seized the Pueblo, pulling off what the U.S. National Security Administration called an “intelligence coup without parallel in modern history.” The captured Americans were tortured. The U.S. military response? None. Instead, Washington negotiated for 11 months, then offered an abject apology in return for the crew’s release. Uncle Sam didn’t even try to get his boat back. The lesson: when the going gets tough, you can never go wrong taking Americans hostage.

• Friends Don’t Matter North Korea’s relations with Moscow and Beijing were miserable during the Vietnam era. Brezhnev loathed Kim Il Sung; Mao’s Red Guards wanted to see him strung up. Yet North Korea’s Vietnam-era adventures, which included the shooting down of a U.S. spy plane and a commando raid on South Korea’s Blue House, took place despite this gaping lack of “socialist solidarity.” And today, North Korea may be better positioned for brinkmanship than back then. For one thing, the country is now treated as a de facto nuclear power—the CIA says North Korea may have two nukes already. For another, the U.S.-South Korea military alliance is in its worst shape since 1953. The South’s new President, Roh Moo Hyun, who as early as 1990 agitated for the ouster of U.S. troops from South Korea, appointed last month as Foreign Minister a professor quoted in the press as saying it would be better for the DPRK to get nukes than for it to collapse. And this month Roh silenced his government when North Korean jets muscled a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the Sea of Japan—possibly in a failed attempt to take hostages.

Today, Pyongyang’s mission is to orchestrate a break-down of the U.S.-South Korea alliance, push America to scale back its military involvement on the peninsula and extract tribute from abroad as a reward for good behavior. So look for North Korea to commence reprocessing plutonium at its Yongbyon plant as soon as the balloon goes up in Iraq and to provoke incidents along its borders in the hope of reaping American hostages.

From a distance, North Korea seems to be dying a death of a thousand illnesses. But rest assured: Kim Jong Il’s capacity to stir up trouble will be instantly revitalized if the U.S. goes to war with Iraq.