Left Flank

I can't say I've ever liked any essay about DPRK Dr. Andrei Lankov has ever written...until now. I must be fossilizing! But, I recall hearing similar statements from Dr. Johan Galtung.

It will happen, sooner or later, but there are two strategies to speed up the event which should be used simultaneously. First, one should try to provide North Koreans with information about the outside world. The continuous support for radio broadcasts and to fund opposition activities is vital.

Second, there is another strategy to foment dissent - the development of officially approved exchanges, such as visits by academics, hosting concerts and exhibitions. Since such measures require Pyongyang's consent, they would be impossible to arrange without some compromises. Hardline critics may be right that North Korean officials will portray these visits as a foreigners' tribute to their "Dear Leader". However, one should not overestimate the efficiency of this propaganda. I grew up in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and officially approved cultural and academic exchanges were a critical source of information about life overseas and helped arouse serious doubts about the communist system.

Both strategies should be used persistently, irrespective of what is happening on the ever-shifting diplomatic front. One should not dismiss support for broadcast and opposition activities, even when optimists assure everybody that the North Korean regime is about to change itself. (It will never change itself.) On the other hand, the cultural and academic exchanges (as well as humanitarian assistance) should continue even in the midst of another crisis - whatever the hawks say.

And, since I let my FA subscription lapse, kudos to MDC for making some quotes beyond the summary available.

Left, meet Right!

OFK's Joshua, with some fancy keywork and must-read links, has reached the depressing conclusion Left Flank did already, but with much more rending and gnashing:

...we haven't paid enough.  On the «disablement» of the already used-up Yongbyon reactor, there seem to be legitimate technical reasons why disablement has slowed down, but North Korea is also deliberately slowing things down.

There's just enough tea leaves to invite a broad range of conjecture, but, like a Rorschach test, I think Blake Hounshell has a more useful take on Pyongyang's "temper tantrum":

Perhaps there's something more nefarious going on, but Occam's Razor suggests that an impending famine is the main reason for the North's latest tantrum. Until the country's leaders learns how to address such problems in a forthright manner, I'm afraid, this is the kind of thing we can expect.

OFK likes to examine the bureaucratic and the personal: I prefer the systemic, how states interact regardless of who or what's behind the curtain. But, Hounshell's fits with Beijing's recent "natural" admonition. Perhaps, Beijing is correcting for any rosy interpretation of the Fûkûdá visit, and there's always reminding Taiwan of its diplomatic vulnerability. Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb even argues Beijing sneaks a zinger at democratization on the Kenya issue, even when the ethnic fiasco has past governments' stinking paws all over it. Anyway, I think the Bush administration is just outclassed.

Related to this, both TMH and DPRK Forum are excited about "Keeping an Eye on an Unruly Neighbor", and the TMH boards are both spirited and informative. But, I would argue that Beijing's long list of policy options, the contingencies it has planned into perfunctory procedures, is irrelevant to this goal to keep DPRK as a bargaining chip in the region against the US and Japan. And, DPRK's punky determination to stay alive and muddle through (coupled with the region's need to keep giving it life support aid and rice) just makes Beijing's task easier. If it all fell apart tomorrow, kudos to those who chanted and danced to widen the cracks in the pavement, but it's more impressive how the jerry-rigging just seems to work oblivious of all the prayers directed at it. As Michael Garibaldi said, Daffy Duck is the "patron saint of frustration".

But, Jack at DPRK Forums has a better read of the inkspots for my money:

I do not have a crystal ball, so it is very hard to say what the future may bring. Whatever the case, sudden collapse will be painful and a mess. I cannot see it any other way.

Even, Andrei Lankov has to admit it:

But again: over last three years I keep saying that collapse is likely, but there is a force which is perhaps capable and willing to prevent it, and this force is China.

As Robert Koehler quoted:

Don't think Beijing will be getting into the regime change business anytime soon, though. One Chinese expert told the team, 'We don't care who is in power as long as stability is maintained.'

Any attempt at wishing that away is to invite another Iraq, an even worse miscalculation, if that's possible.