The world’s most oppressive regime is “on its last legs,” according to a former director of Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.
“I believe that the 45th president of the United States will have to deal with a major crisis of governance in North Korea before the end of his term,” Victor Cha, who served at the National Security Agency under President George W. Bush from 2004 to 2007, told The Daily Caller in an interview about his new book, “The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future.”
“I think the regime is on its last legs. If you had asked any expert on the situation what was the most important variable that determined the stability of the regime, nine of out ten would have told you ‘sudden death of Kim Jong Il.’ Now that this has happened, many have walked away from this view because they see stability in the country thus far. My answer is that it has been barely over 100 days since the death of Kim Jong Il. Transitional regimes throughout history have lasted longer than this and have then failed, so we are very early in the game.”
Cha, who currently serves as a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor at Georgetown University, says that though the North Korean regime’s days may be numbered, it still poses a potentially “existential” threat to the United States.
“If we define the most grave threat to U.S. security today as the use of a WMD device by a state or non-state actor against the homeland or close ally of the U.S., then I would say the threat from North Korea today is quite serious,” he said, before detailing the regime’s nuclear proliferation efforts.
“Between April 12 to April 16, they have announced that they will conduct a long-range missile test (which they described as a satellite launch, but which uses the same technology as a ballistic missile). If this test is successful (and the last one in 2009 was moderately successful), then they will have demonstrated a capability to reach Alaska, Hawaii and possibly the western United States. This would constitute an existential threat to the homeland, and a capability that Pyongyang might then seek to sell to other actors. It does not get anymore dangerous than this.”
As for North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, Cha says, “We know less about Kim Jong-un than we did about Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.”
“Up until September 2010, we did not have an adult picture of him, even inside of the U.S. government,” he said. “Think about that — the newest renegade nuclear state with tremendous proliferation potential harmful to U.S. interests — and we did not even have a picture of him, let alone know anything about him.”
Check out the transcript of TheDC’s interview with Cha on his new book and the North Korean regime below:
How has North Korea survived so long when so many other bizarre, authoritarian regimes have collapsed?
Two reasons. First, China is a strategic partner of North Korea and will stand by them whether they like it or not, giving economic and food aid to prop up the regime. This is largely due to the fact that North Korea is an effective buffer state to U.S. troops and gives China a better security around its periphery. The last thing China wants is a democratic and unified Korea — a military ally of the United States — directly on its border.
The second reason is the United States. Not in the sense that we have not engaged enough with the regime. On the contrary, in the book I lay out how much engagement has taken place (unsuccessfully) with the regime dating back to Ronald Reagan. No, the problem is that North Korea does not rise high enough on the U.S. national security agenda for any administration to effect real change. Once the U.S. makes an issue a top priority, we tend to do what it takes to find a solution. But with North Korea, it has at best been a nuisance, a distraction when many other issues require attention. Thus, we seek to “park” the problem, not willing to force a permanent solution either by diplomacy or by force. Hence, the North has survived as long as it has. Our inattention to the problem has been one of North Korea’s biggest strategic assets, as they have worked slowly but methodically to develop a ballistic missile and nuclear weapons program.
How does North Korea maintain such total control over its population?
Think George Orwell’s “1984.” Total and absolute control. North Korea is a top-down society controlled by the regime (including food distribution systems).
The regime demands complete loyalty and obedience at the point of a gun. Vast networks of internal security ensure that all opposition is squashed. There is heavy indoctrination of nationalist juche ideology. And if you do not submit, then you are thrown into a gulag that makes Stalin’s gulags look like Chuck E. Cheese.
From an early age, children are taught that loyalty to the Kim family cult is more important than loyalty to one’s own family. There is no religion in North Korea except for worship of the Kim family cult. There is literally no psychic space in the North Korean mind for anything other than service to the leader and to the state. The regime has also used the pretext of external threats from the United States, South Korea and Japan as a rationale for the population to stay united and in support of the government. Only a minority of the population has been able to glimpse modern technologies or even leave the country and return. Any foreigners that visit North Korea are closely watched and monitored by government-sponsored tour guides and translators to make sure that foreigners do not interact with the locals.
What do we know about the new leader of the country, Kim Jong-un, that would help us understand how he might operate?
We know less about Kim Jong-un than we did about Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. Up until September 2010, we did not have an adult picture of him, even inside of the U.S. government. Think about that — the newest renegade nuclear state with tremendous proliferation potential harmful to U.S. interests — and we did not even have a picture of him, let alone know anything about him.
Andrew Higgins, the Washington Post journalist, wrote a story in 2009 where he went to the town in Switzerland where Kim Jong-un reportedly attended secondary school. From his interviews with former classmates, we learned that Kim is a big National Basketball Association fan and loves the L.A Lakers and Chicago Bulls. Incidentally, this taste for the NBA is not unlike his father, who was a huge fan of Michael Jordan. This prompted then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to present Kim Jong Il with a basketball autographed by the Chicago Bulls star, which now sits in a museum of gifts to the Dear Leader in Pyongyang.
It is also apparently the case that Kim Jong-un is hot-tempered, opinionated and somewhat ambitious and aggressive in his demeanor (which is presumably one of the reasons why his father chose him among the three sons). We do not know whether he is married. We have not heard him speak. He has been guarded like a closely-held secret by the mandarins in Pyongyang.
In propaganda recently, he has been linked to previous North Korean missile tests, the March 2010 submarining of a South Korean naval vessel, and the 2010 firing of artillery shells on South Korea. Aside from all of this rumor and hearsay, the one thing that we do know about him is that he is around 28 years old — the youngest of Kim Jong Il’s sons. We also know that Kim Jong Il had nearly 20 years to prepare to take over for his father, while Kim Jong-un has had barely 20 months before the sudden death of his father. This youth and inexperience is likely to result in dangerous or risky behavior.
Is the North Korean regime rational?
Yes, it is rational. The common caricature of the regime is the one we see in Team America — a crazy and unpredictable dictator with a penchant for plutonium. But this is not accurate. The regime has been eminently rational. For example, it has been rationally deterred by the United States and South Korean military forces from attempting a second invasion like the one in 1950. In 1950, Kim Il Sung thought that he had a chance of uniting the peninsula through force. Not even the hawks in North Korea believe that they can do this today and, therefore, deterrence has held.
That logic is pretty straight forward. But there is another logic at work in North Korea that still sees provocations short of war as eminently rational as a way to extort benefits from South Korea and the world. Put simply, Pyongyang knows that the U.S. and R.O.K. have more vested in the peaceful status quo than they do. So the North is willing to engage in provocative behavior and push things to the brink (e.g. missile tests, nuclear tests, etc) in order to gain concessions (food and energy) from the U.S. and R.O.K. to maintain the peace. This is undeniably dangerous behavior, but it is rational from their perspective.
We have seen authoritarian regimes suddenly fall all across the world. Do you believe there is any prospect a regime as brutal as North Korea’s will fall? If so, how would you envision this happening?
In my book, I talk about how I believe that the 45th president of the United States will have to deal with a major crisis of governance in North Korea before the end of his term. I think the regime is on its last legs. If you had asked any expert on the situation what was the most important variable that determined the stability of the regime, nine of out ten would have told you “sudden death of Kim Jong Il.” Now that this has happened, many have walked away from this view because they see stability in the country thus far. My answer is that it has been barely over 100 days since the death of Kim Jong Il. Transitional regimes throughout history have lasted longer than this and have then failed so we are very early in the game.
More important, however, I believe that there are two forces at work that threaten the regime’s coherence. The first is the changing mentality of the people. In the mid-1990s, when the country was in the midst of a famine, the people were forced to fend for themselves when the public distribution system broke down. They created informal markets to trade and sell whatever they could to survive. These markets have grown over the last two decades such that defectors today admit that some sixty percent of their livelihoods in the North were supplied by markets rather than by the government. The government has tried to crack down on markets and entrepreneurial activity through draconian measures including an unpopular redenomination of the currency aimed at wiping out family savings and making the people dependent on the government. The limited introduction of cell phones and the Internet in Pyongyang accelerates the trend of a more independent society. At the same time that society is growing more distant and independent from the government, the leadership under Kim Jong-un is becoming more hardline and more obsessed with control than ever before. This is an unsustainable combination that will eventually end badly for the leadership.
How big of a threat is North Korea to the United States and its interests? Do you think the current tensions between the two countries will lead to a serious confrontation sometime in the near future?
If we define the most grave threat to U.S. security today as the use of a WMD device by a state or non-state actor against the homeland or close ally of the U.S., then I would say the threat from North Korea today is quite serious. North Korea is one of the world’s worst proliferators. Every missile system they have built, they have sold to Iran and Pakistan. They helped Syria build a nuclear reactor before it was destroyed by the Israelis. They have had nuclear cooperation with Libya, and there are rumors of cooperation with Burma.
The record shows that the leadership has been engaged in a systematic effort to develop a miniaturized nuclear warhead that they could place on a long-range ballistic missile to target the United States. Between April 12 to April 16, they have announced that they will conduct a long-range missile test (which they described as a satellite launch, but which uses the same technology as a ballistic missile). If this test is successful (and the last one in 2009 was moderately successful), then they will have demonstrated a capability to reach Alaska, Hawaii and possibly the western United States. This would constitute an existential threat to the homeland, and a capability that Pyongyang might then seek to sell to other actors. It does not get anymore dangerous than this.
