The three Kims, grandfather, father, and now grandson, have dictatorially ruled North Korea since its founding in 1948. Over the past 70 years the Kims have created a brutally sophisticated dictatorship. They have perfected all the necessary elements: massive propaganda and scapegoating (all problems are caused by Americans and their puppets, the South Koreans), informants and spies throughout the society, complete control over travel and all media, fear-inducing arbitrary arrests, disappearances and executions, a massive slave labor and concentration camp system, and directing almost all resources to the military and weapons development, leading to frequent civilian starvation. Underlying all of this is a religious-like trance-inducing cult of personality in which only the Kims are worshipped. If George Orwell was alive he might say that North Korea was the perfect example of how to maintain long term dictatorial power.
The United States, which is technically still at war with North Korea, sees the country as a threat to South Korea, Japan, the East Asia region, and now to the United States itself. Through twelve American presidential administrations behavior modification has been our fundamental North Korean strategy. Behavior modification is a simple tool for guiding behavior: if people do something you like, you reward them; if they do something you don’t like, you punish them. Behavior modification can work on pets, children and employees, but, as implemented by American policy makers, it has not worked on the Kims.
Why not? The original Kim gained power through ruthlessness, and the latter Kims maintain power through fear. If the current Kim actually made the concessions required to gain rewards, he will be perceived as weak, which will diminish people’s fear and therefore Kim’s power. American presidents have failed to understand that behavior modification only works if the individual whose behavior one wishes to modify can actually be controlled by the rewards and punishments used. The Kims have proven to be uncontrollable. They have lied to receive the rewards (food and other economic aid) and gotten away with it, and our sanctions are not perceived as punishments because the Kims do not care about the suffering of their people, plus they always find ways to get around the sanctions. Regime punishment, not population punishment, is necessary and that would likely require a military intervention. No President, including Donald Trump, has been willing to seriously consider that option.
So what else can we do? We could go against entrenched policy, as Richard Nixon did in 1972. Nixon, the vehement anti-Communist, shocked the world by meeting with Chinese dictator Mao. This meeting led to a paradigm shift in our China policy. Instead of isolating China globally, we welcomed it into the interconnected global trading and political community. Presumably Nixon’s assumption was that opening dictatorial China would put it on the path to democracy. The opening did put China on the path, to capitalism, but not to democracy, and capitalism without democracy is fascism. Therefore why bother trying this approach with North Korea?
For two reasons. One, two dictator-ruled countries and one partial dictatorship country have nuclear weapons: Russia, since 1949, China, since 1964, and Pakistan, since 1984. All three of these countries are much more fully integrated into the global economic and political community than North Korea is, and none of the three have used their nuclear weapons against other countries. Since our behavior modification strategy has not stopped North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons, maybe global integration would stop North Korea from using them. Two, Kim, like all dictators, is extremely paranoid about any possible threat to his power. Perhaps welcoming North Korea into the family of nations would reduce Kim’s paranoia, especially since his fear of an American overthrow attempt would be reduced. So yes, the Nixon strategy might reduce the risk of a nuclear war, which is a very good thing, but it will not make the world more democratic.
Anthony Stahelski can be reached at [email protected]Kim
Cartoon: DonkeyHotey via Flickr