{"id":99342,"date":"2017-10-02T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=99342"},"modified":"2017-09-27T13:03:22","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T12:03:22","slug":"north-koreas-rational-nuclear-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/10\/north-koreas-rational-nuclear-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korea\u2019s Rational Nuclear Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A favorite tactic of U.S. war propaganda is to label a foreign adversary \u201ccrazy\u201d to justify a military attack \u2014 as is now happening with North Korea\u2019s Kim Jong-un although his nuclear program really makes logical sense.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

26 Sep 2017 – <\/em>The \u201cinsanity\u201d label that America attaches to North Korea has a lot of political utility. First, it colors the interpretation of everything North Korea does. The consideration of a rational motivation for undesirable actions can be prevented: the actions are assumed to be crazy.<\/p>\n

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North Korean missile launch on March 6, 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

Secondly, it makes the target of blame clear. Thirdly, and most importantly, it justifies the claim that rational discussion and diplomacy are pointless and misguided. Since the regime is irrational, it is incapable of listening to reason: the only approach that works is threats, military action and regime change.<\/p>\n

There is a long American history of calling opponents crazy. At times, the installation of a compliant but brutal and insane dictator has even been seen as desirable, since later \u2013 when compliance turns to inconvenience \u2013 applying the crazy label can justify his removal. (For instance, think of Panama\u2019s Manuel Noriega or Iraq\u2019s Saddam Hussein, who received American backing before their unpredictable behavior made them targets for regime change.)<\/p>\n

More than half a century ago, the insanity strategy was honed by the British and the Americans in Iran. They colorfully painted the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq, their target of regime change at the time, as mad, both to blame him for a political crisis and to justify the need to replace him.<\/p>\n

Publicly, the media and the politicians created a collage of lunatic adjectives to paint Mossadeq as mad. Ervand Abrahamian, in his book The Coup<\/em>, has curated a number of them: \u201cimpervious to common sense\u201d; \u201cbewildered and desperately short sighted\u201d; and \u201cmarred by nervous instability.\u201d He was called \u201chopelessly irrational\u201d; \u201ceccentric\u201d; \u201chysterical\u201d; \u201cmentally unstable\u201d; and \u201ccrazy.\u201d He was consistently portrayed as childish, erratic and emotional. Abrahamian says government officials frequently likened him to a character out of Alice and Wonderland<\/em>. They painted a picture of Mad Hatter Mossadeq.<\/p>\n

But they were being disingenuous. Privately, their recollections of him belied the propaganda. Sam Falle, a British foreign office expert on Iran, said years later that Mossadeq was \u201ca sincere and honest politician.\u201d Falle said, \u201cHe was non-violent and . . . people loved him, and saw him as a sort of Iranian Mahatma Gandhi.\u201d Falle called Mossadeq \u201cbrilliant.\u201d In other words, Western politicians depicted Mossadeq as the Mad Hatter in public while recognizing him as Gandhi in private.<\/p>\n

The British were not alone in their secret praise of the quite sane Mohammad Mossadeq. Henry Grady, the U.S. ambassador to Iran at the start of the crisis, admitted, when safely retired, that Mossadeq was \u201ca man of great intelligence, wit and education . . . . He reminds me of . . . . Mahatma Gandhi.\u201d Gandhi again! Grady\u2019s successor, Loy Henderson, who played a decisive role in the coup against Mossadeq, remembered him as \u201ca charming person\u201d with a \u201chigh sense of humor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crazy Kim Jong-un?<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than half a century later, the same strategy is being applied to Kim Jong-un. Is Kim crazy? I don\u2019t know. But the question in its general sense is irrelevant to American foreign policy. The North Korean leader\u2019s sanity is only relevant in the particular area that affects his governance and foreign policy. Or, in this case, it is only really relevant in so far as it affects his nuclear weapons program and policy.<\/p>\n

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.<\/p><\/div>\n

And, as with Mossadeq, government pronouncements and the public diagnosis don\u2019t align with private statements by more knowledgeable people. Siegfried Hecker<\/a>, the last American to inspect North Korea\u2019s nuclear facilities, said \u201c[s]ome like to depict Kim as being crazy. . . . He\u2019s not crazy and he\u2019s not suicidal. And he\u2019s not even unpredictable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly,\u00a0John Feffer, who has written extensively about Korea, agrees that Kim is not irrational; rather, the \u201cNo. 1\u00a0rational goal for Kim Jong-un is preservation of his own authority and the preservation of his system of government. He knows that any attack of South Korea or the United States would spell the end of North Korea as a country, and of course, by extension, the end of him and his regime. So pure self-preservation dictates that, no, North Korea is not going to engage in any kind of attack on a sovereign country.\u201d<\/p>\n

William J. Perry<\/a>, the former Secretary of Defense who negotiated for President Clinton with North Korea, says, \u201cBut they are not crazy, as some people believe. North Korea is a pariah state and nearly alone in the world, but there is logic to the actions of its leadership. Fundamental to that logic is an overriding commitment to keeping their regime in power, to sustain the Kim dynasty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former President Jimmy Carter recently criticized<\/a> the dehumanizing irrationality approach to North Korea with the reminder that \u201cuntil we\u2019re willing to talk to them and treat them with respect as human beings, which they are, then I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to make any progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Logic of Deterrence<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, what is the logic to which William Perry refers? It is the logic of deterrence: ironically, a logic you adopt when you don\u2019t believe your opponent will listen to reason.<\/p>\n

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Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly before he was murdered on Oct. 20, 2011.<\/p><\/div>\n

It is a logic unfortunately reinforced by the hard, historical lessons learned by Iraq and Libya when they abandoned their nuclear weapons programs. (Not only did the U.S. mount invasions of the two countries but the two leaders died gruesome deaths, Saddam Hussein by hanging and Muammar Gaddafi sodomized with a knife and then murdered.)<\/p>\n

The North Korean articulation of deterrence is that they\u2019ll negotiate over their nuclear weapons program when nuclear weapons are no longer necessary to deter the existential threat that is ever present in the form of U.S. policy. If the two parties can talk about the existential threat, they can talk about the deterrent to the existential threat. There is a balance and proportionality to the logic.<\/p>\n

North Korea\u2019s Deputy Ambassador Kim In-ryong recently\u00a0put it this way\u00a0to U.N.\u00a0Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio\u00a0Guterres: \u201cAs long as the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat continue, the DPRK, no matter who may say what, will never place its self-defensive nuclear deterrence on the negotiating table.\u201d<\/p>\n

The North Korean logic was articulated the same way<\/a> by Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho. Recently<\/a>, Ri Yong-ho explained to the U.N, that its nuclear program is \u201cto all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the U.S. and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most importantly, Kim Jong-un, himself, has also appealed to this logic<\/a>. Kim stated<\/a> that \u201cOur final goal is to establish the equilibrium of real force with the U.S. and make the U.S. rulers dare not talk about military options.\u201d Those military options have included the explicit statement in the 2002 U.S. nuclear posture review that North Korea is a country that the U.S. should be prepared to drop a nuclear bomb on. The existential nuclear threat has continued uninterrupted in the form of U.S.-South Korean military exercises\u00a0on the North Korean border that include stealth bombers simulating nuclear bombing attacks on North Korea.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of September, as the crisis heightened, U.S. B-1 bombers, accompanied by an escort of fighter jets, tore along North Korea\u2019s coastline in a \u201cshow of force\u201d<\/a> that encroached closer on its coastline than had any previous threat.<\/p>\n

Defense Secretary James Mattis recently warned North Korea that its actions \u201cwould lead to the end of its regime and\u00a0the destruction of its people.\u201d And, most recently and most importantly, President Donald Trump revealed his own plans to the North Koreans and the United Nations when he said<\/a> that if North Korea threatened the U.S. or its allies, America \u201cwill have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Proportional Moves<\/strong><\/p>\n

So tightly does North Korea hold to the logic of their nuclear program that Siegfried Hecker calls North Korean nuclear policy predictable. The policy is predictable because it is proportional. If America threatens North Korea with nuclear destruction \u2014 as it did in the 2002 nuclear posture review, as it did when it simulated nuclear bombing attacks and as it did when Trump threatened it with total destruction \u2014 then the deterrent response will be a nuclear weapons program. Since the threat isn\u2019t diminishing, the deterrent isn\u2019t diminishing.<\/p>\n

But, if the threat diminished, then there could be a proportionate diminution of the deterrent. On two occasions, in 2014 and 2015, North Korea offered to freeze its testing of missiles<\/a> if the U.S. froze the threatening joint military exercises it holds with South Korea. On both occasions, the U.S. rejected that offer.<\/p>\n

Noam Chomsky has called the logic of proportionality \u201ca kind of tit-for-tat policy.\u201d In Who Rules the World<\/em>, he explains the predictable policy as \u201cYou make a hostile gesture, and we\u2019ll respond with some crazy gesture of our own. You make an accommodating gesture, and we\u2019ll reciprocate in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n

This pattern describes the making and breaking of U.S.-North Korean nuclear agreements from 1994 to the present. In each case<\/a>, North Korea froze its nuclear program in exchange for proportionate concessions by the U.S. and, in each case, North Korea reactivated its nuclear weapons program when the U.S. reneged on its concessions.<\/p>\n

The historical pattern reveals, not the insanity of North Korean nuclear weapons program, but a very predictable logic. The insanity label may serve a utilitarian purpose by readying the American people for war, but it does not serve the truth, and it does not serve the higher priority of freezing North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons program and preserving peace on the Korean peninsula.<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

Ted Snider writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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