When you put an adversary up against the wall, it should come as no surprise that he won’t hesitate to blow himself up if it means taking you with him.
The failure of the United States to get what it wants in North Korea after all these years can partly be attributed to the fact that what the political establishment wants is simply unfeasible given human nature and the political realities of the Korean peninsula.
As is so often the case with modern American globalist foreign policy, those crafting the policy cling to idealistic notions which, while seemingly well-intentioned, are really driven by pride and have high costs in terms of money and human life.
Two of Washington’s overarching goals for Pyongyang are the denuclearization of North Korea and the eventual removal of the Kim regime.
Neither of those two things are going to happen. The United States should stop expecting them to happen and instead focus on achieving realistic goals related to America’s own national-security interests.
Because, ultimately, that is what does and should matter; American foreign policy should be driven by placing America’s national security first and foremost — everything else is ancillary to that. Our goal should not be to democratize and liberalize the rest of the world — that’s the type of neocon thinking that dominated the George W. Bush administration, and look where it got us.
Most Americans already understand the principle of “letting the rest of the world do what they want” on some level, as do our policymakers. Why else do we maintain such close relations with Saudi Arabia (an autocratic state as oppressive and illiberal as North Korea), the Taliban, and a variety of other regimes we condemn?
The problem with foreign policy, as with any other aspect of government, is that there is always inertia; those involved in shaping policy — particularly the unelected Deep Staters in the State Department and Pentagon who think they’re above voters and their elected representatives — are always fighting yesterday’s war.
This is why the Western powers have alienated Russia and needlessly turned one of the world’s great powers into an adversary, pushing Moscow into an alliance with China. The United States, NATO, the European Union, and the other instruments of the international establishment were so used to Cold War thinking (and, in the case of NATO and similar entities, are dependent on Cold War-era battle lines to justify their existence) that they have carried on with the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” status quo even when doing so is no longer in their national-security interests.
They’re likewise using outdated and fanciful paradigms with North Korea, a practice that could cost us all very heavily.
If our foreign policy makers were responsible and clear-headed, they would look at North Korea through the America First prism and decide what it is we need out of Pyongyang. Not what we would like in an ideal world, but what we actually need from North Korea on the plane of national security.
Through that lens, it’s very simple: We want Kim Jong Un not to bomb us or our allies (specifically South Korea and Japan).
And what does North Korea’s Kim Jong-un want?
It’s also very simple: Kim doesn’t want to conquer the United States. He doesn’t want to spread North Korea’s iteration of communism to the United States. He doesn’t want an America that’s subservient to Pyongyang or to make the United States walk back all the pro-LGBT culture it has adopted in recent years. He doesn’t care if the United States takes in or keeps out waves of third world migrants or whether abortion is legal or illegal in the United States.
The only thing Kim wants is to remain in power and to ensure that his descendants remain in power. It’s what any other ruler in his situation would want, including America’s friends — the House of Saud — in Saudi Arabia.
Therefore, as long as it remains an overarching goal of the United States and the western powers to try to find ways to depose the Kim dynasty, of course Kim Jong-un is going to ally himself China and Russia — who give him assurances of staying in power — and continue developing capabilities to launch nuclear attacks against the United States.
Kim is not a suicidal maniac, though he’s happy to play the part to pump fear into Americans and thus dissuade any plans to attack his country. But he doesn’t have a death wish. On the contrary, Kim very much enjoys being alive. He has a wife and young children. Like any monarchy, he and his family lead a lavish life of yachts, European cars, designer clothes, and elegant food.
Thus, contrary to the scare tactics so often employed by the Washington establishment, Kim is never going to be the one to start a nuclear war. He’s never going to attack first — he knows that doing so would be signing his (and his family’s) death warrant.
And Kim’s desire to remain alive, free, and in power is also why he will never desist from his nuclear program. North Korea is a small island nation of 25 million inhabitants. The only thing — the only thing — keeping the United States or other countries from invading and Saddam-Husseining Kim Jong-un is Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Kim knows that if he got rid of his nuclear weapons, within a year he would join the ranks of Mohammad Mosaddegh, Muammar Gaddafi, and countless other leaders who have found themselves on the wrong side of the neocons’ “democratization” campaigns.
And it’s not just about the United States. Even if Kim remains allied with China and Russia to fend off a U.S. invasion, he knows he can’t trust blindly in them either. After all, it was as recently as the 20th century that Korea was being fought over as a territorial prize by Russia and Japan.
By continuing to push North Korea into a corner with calls for regime change and denuclearization, the United States only forces Kim to keep his finger on the nuclear button and make the outbreak of conflict that much more likely.
