N. Korea Speaker Delivers (With Update)

The other evening's speaker on North Korea, Stephan Haggard of UCSD, was a rare treat at the Athenaeum. Not in recent memory have I felt so entertained and so educated by an Ath speaker. I'll type up my notes from this past evening, but should the video become available on the Athenaeum's website, do take a few minutes to watch.

I found myself wondering exactly how much he could know from a country that was so opaque, but he did a good job of allaying my concerns with a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of what can only be described as Hell on Earth. Professor Haggard is, as with most people brought to campus, a man of the left, but he fairly answered my question about a military option against N. Korea. He seems to think that interdiction of N. Korean ships is the best means of defense. I favor a strong offense which consists of three phases 1) neutralizing the artillery pointed at Seoul, 2) knocking out communications (which seemingly we could do easily) and 3) destroying the nuclear facility at Yongbyon. We needn't occupy N. Korea, but we could practice a bit of gunboat diplomacy. (As a courtesy to the Chinese, I think we ought to encourage them to seal their border so as not to worry too much about the N. Korean refugees.)

This offensive would be a good idea for were it not for the Israelis and sheer luck, it's clear to me that N. Korea would have made Syria and Burma nuclear powers, something the U.S. should absolutely reject. As I put it last night, if the case for intervention in Iraq was predicated on Saddam Hussein being a purveyor of weapons of mass destruction (which I confess I still believe), then the case for intervention with N. Korea is made all the clearer by their wanton disregard for the world as a whole. The time to intervene, I believe is now, especially as I don't think the N. Koreans have sophisticated enough guidance chips for their missiles. The traditional model that I.R. specialists use of assuming rational state actors seems nothing short of ridiculous when we consider that N. Korea is run by a man who seriously considered ending the famines by using giant rabbits.

Still I'm convinced that Huggard's right on ending the economic sanctions on N. Korea, though his arguments about continuing food aid strike me as a bit misguided. It's true that we could cause prices of food to drop by pumping in more food aid, but it's not clear that it would work because the N. Korean military would use that food as something of a weapon while the ground up entrepreneurial farmers would have the legs cut from underneath them. Far better, I think, if we would just fly over N. Korea and bomb it with food.

Update: My good friend, Joohyun Kim CMC '13 shares a good analysis of how the South might deal with the North, should the regime collapse.