North Korea’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il is dead. There is now no prospect of negotiating and implementing a new nuclear agreement with the North in the near future. The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is likely to be consumed with a power struggle which could turn violent. Washington’s best policy option is to step back and observe.

After his stroke three years ago, Kim anointed his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor. However, the latter Kim has had little time to establish himself. The previous familial power transfer to Kim Jong-il took roughly two decades. There are several potential claimants to supreme authority in the North, and the military may play kingmaker.

Some observers hope for a “Korean Spring,” but the DPRK’s largely rural population is an unlikely vehicle for change. Urban elites may want reform, but not revolution. If a North Korean Mikhail Gorbachev is lurking in the background, he will have to move slowly to survive.

During this time of political uncertainty no official is likely to have the desire or ability to make a deal yielding up North Korea’s nuclear weapons. The leadership will be focused inward and no one is likely to challenge the military, which itself may fracture politically.

Nor is China likely to play a helpful role. Beijing views the status quo as being in its interest. Above all else, China is likely to emphasize stability, though it may very well attempt to influence the succession process outside of public view. But China does not want what America wants, preferring the DPRK’s survival, just with more responsible and pliable leadership.

Washington can do little during this process. The United States should maintain its willingness to talk with the North. American officials also should engage Beijing over the future of the peninsula, exploring Chinese concerns and searching for areas of compromise. For instance, Washington should pledge that there would be no American bases or troops in a reunited Korea, which might ease Beijing’s fears about the impact of a North Korean collapse.

Most important, the Obama administration should not rush to “strengthen” the alliance with South Korea in response to uncertainty in the North. The Republic of Korea is well able to defend itself. It should take the steps necessary to deter North Korean adventurism and develop its own strategies for dealing with Pyongyang. America should be withdrawing from an expensive security commitment which no longer serves U.S. interests.

Kim Jong-il imposed unimaginable hardship on the North Korean people. However, what follows him could be even worse if an uncertain power struggle breaks down into armed conflict. Other than encourage Beijing to use its influence to bring the Kim dynasty to a merciful end, the United States can—and should—do little more than watch developments in the North.

North Korea: Kim Jong-il’s Death and the Coming Succession Struggle is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The AP and others are reporting that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has died at the age of 70. This has long been expected, but what comes next is unclear. The best case scenario would be a smooth transition to new leadership, one that is committed to opening up North Korea’s ossified political system and reforming its decrepit economy. That is unlikely, however. If a power struggle ensues, the North Korean people will be caught in the middle. The countries with the most at stake in the event of a complete collapse of the DPRK — especially South Korea and China — should take the lead in helping the North Koreans to sort out their future.

Kim Jong-il Is Dead is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Three issues are likely to dominate the talks this week between President Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. On the economic front, the two leaders will emphasize the extensive potential benefits of the bilateral free trade agreement.

On the security front, there will be considerable discussion of both North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program and the future of the U.S.-South Korean alliance. Unfortunately, leaders of the two countries are locked into increasingly obsolete and dysfunctional policies with respect to both issues. New thinking on those security matters is badly needed.

Seoul and Washington routinely contend that they will not tolerate North Korea having a nuclear arsenal. But other than the long-standing attempt to isolate Pyongyang internationally, U.S. and South Korean officials present no plausible strategy for preventing Kim Jong-il’s regime from expanding its nuclear capabilities. The much-touted six-party talks clearly have not worked. Moreover, without China’s active cooperation to deny crucial food and energy aid to North Korea (and there is no indication that Beijing is willing to take that step), North Korea cannot be truly isolated. Obama and Lee need to consider the possibility of learning to live with a nuclear North Korea, since the current U.S.-South Korean strategy for dealing with the nuclear issue is hopelessly ineffectual.

Policy regarding the bilateral security alliance is no better. Predictably, Lee and Obama will reaffirm the importance of that alliance. But from the standpoint of American interests, this commitment makes little sense. The principal effect of Washington’s security blanket for South Korea is to enable that country to shamelessly free-ride on America’s military exertions. Despite being located next to perhaps the most dangerous and unpredictable country in the world—Kim Jong-il’s North Korea—South Korea continues to spend an anemic 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense. That is woefully inadequate, and the only reason Seoul can get away with such irresponsible behavior is that South Korean leaders believe they can rely on the United States to take care of their country’s security—at the expense of American taxpayers.

That arrangement was dubious even when South Korea was a weak, traumatized country facing a North Korea strongly backed by both the Soviet Union and Communist China. Today, South Korea is a wealthy country, and Moscow and Beijing regard North Korea as an embarrassment, not a crucial ally.

President Obama should inform Lee that an America whose government is hemorrhaging red ink at the rate of $1.5 trillion a year can no longer afford to subsidize the defense of free-riding allies—especially those that are perfectly capable of providing for their own defense. This summit meeting creates an opportunity for Washington to begin phasing-out the obsolete military alliance with South Korea.

Obama-Lee Summit: Time for New Thinking on the Korean Peninsula is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Hill‘s Congress blog has a regular series that provides policy experts a forum to discuss current topics of the day. This week, the editors posed this question:

President Obama has taken a very different approach to diplomacy than President Bush. Does the new approach serve or undermine long-term U.S. interests?

My response:

What “very different approach?” Sure, President Bush implicitly scorned diplomacy in favor of toughness, particularly in his first term. But he sought UN Security Council authorization for tougher measures against Iraq; a truly unilateral approach would have bombed first and asked questions later. By the same token, President Obama has staffed his administration with people, including chief diplomat Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice, who favored military action against Iraq and Serbia in 1998 and 1999, respectively, and were undeterred by the UNSC’s refusal to endorse either intervention.

There are other similarities. George Bush advocated multilateral diplomacy with North Korea, despite his stated antipathy for Kim Jong Il. President Obama supports continued negotiations with the same odious regime that starves its own people. Bush administration officials met with the Iranians to discuss post-Taliban Afghanistan and post-Saddam Iraq. In the second term, President Bush even agreed in principle to high-level talks on Iran’s nuclear program. President Obama likewise believes that the United States and Iran have a number of common interests, and he favors diplomacy over confrontation.

This continuity shouldn’t surprise us. Both men operate within a political environment that equates diplomacy with appeasement, without most people really understanding what either word means. Defined properly, diplomacy is synonymous with relations between states. As successive generations have learned the high costs and dubious benefits of that other form of international relations — war — most responsible leaders are rightly eager to engage in diplomacy. Perhaps the greater concern is that they feel the need to call it something else.

Bush v. Obama on Diplomacy is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

At 85, former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung has died of heart failure.  Elected in 1997, he was the architect of South Korea’s “Sunshine Policy” with the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, highlighted by the first South-North summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.  Kim Dae-jung’s presidency ended in disappointment — Pyongyang took advantage of South Korean generosity while corruption reached into his family.

But he fought heroically for human rights against the South’s old military regime.  He ran for president in an election stolen by Park Chung-hee and was kidnapped while in exile in Japan. He avoided death at sea when the Reagan administration, alerted to the crime, warned Seoul that he had better arrive alive in South Korea.

I met him in 1989 shortly after his defeat in the first free election after the dissolution of military rule.  Imperious but principled, he seemed destined to spend the rest of his life in opposition.  But he persevered and triumphed.

Kim Dae-jung’s flaws were manifest, but his personal courage and commitment to democracy were without question.  May he rest in peace.

Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung Dies is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The fact that North Korea is a monstrous tyranny is well-known.  Google Earth is helping map that tyranny in extraordinary detail, from the opulent palaces of the elite to the horrid labor camps for the victims. 

Reports The Independent:

US researchers are using the internet to reveal what life is really like behind the closed borders of the world’s last Stalinist dictatorship

The most comprehensive picture of what goes on inside the secret state of North Korea has emerged from an innovative US project. The location of extraordinary palaces, labour camps and the mass graves of famine victims have all been identified. The online operation that has penetrated the world’s last remaining iron curtain is called North Korea Uncovered. Founded by Curtis Melvin, a postgraduate student at George Mason University, Virginia, it uses Google Earth, photographs, academic and specialist reports and a global network of contributors who have visited or studied the country. Mr Melvin says the collaborative project is an example of “democratised intelligence”. He is the first to emphasise that the picture is far from complete, but it is, until the country opens up, the best we have.

Palaces

The palatial residences of the political elite are easy to identify as they are in sharp contrast to the majority of housing in the deeply impoverished state. Though details about many palaces’ names, occupants and uses are hard to verify, it is known that such buildings are the exclusive domain of Kim Jong-Il, his family and his top political aides. Kim Jong-Il is believed to have between 10 and 17 palaces, many of which have been spotted on Google Earth:

1) Mansion complex near Pyongyang

This may be Kim Jong-Il’s main residence. His father lived here surrounded by the huge, ornate gardens and carefully designed network of lakes. Tree-lined paths lead to a swimming pool with a huge water slide, and next to the complex there is a full-size racetrack with a viewing stand and arena. There is a cluster of other large houses around the mansion, forming an enclosed, elite community. It appears to be reached via an underground station on a private railway which branches off from the main line.

The new technology is creating a new variant to the old saying:  you can run, but you can’t hide.  Tyrants can run their countries but they can’t hide their abuses.

We still have yet to figure out how to toss thugs like Kim Jong-il into history’s trashcan.  But better understanding their crimes is an important part of the process.

New Technology Charts Old Repression is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

It’s hard to know what to believe about the misnamed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  But reports are circulating that North Korean officials are attempting to purchase medical equipment for treating “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il.  That in turn suggests that his condition might be worsening.

Reports Agence France-Presse:

A South Korean newspaper has said the health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is rapidly worsening and Pyongyang is trying to import expensive medical equipment through China.

The North is also seeking to bring in an emergency helicopter, the South’s largest-selling daily Chosun Ilbo reported on Friday.

Kim is widely believed to have suffered a stroke last August but there was no confirmation of the latest report. The National Intelligence Service declined to comment.

Chosun said Pyongyang’s Ponghwa Hospital is treating the 67-year-old.

It said officials of the hospital who are based in Beijing are trying to buy medical equipment which has been banned under an embargo imposed in 2006 to punish the North’s first nuclear test.

The UN resolution does not ban the import of medical equipment, only items which could be related to weapons programmes.

“Kim’s illness appears to be serious,” a North Korean source in Beijing told the newspaper.

The 67-year-old had a stroke last year and both his rotund figure and bouffant hair have thinned of late.  The world, and especially North Korea, would be a better place without him, but no one knows what would follow.

Kim apparently has annointed his 26-year-old son to succeed him, but it will take years to switch the levers of power in favor of the “Cute Leader,” as he has been nicknamed by Westerners.  (In North Korea he apparently is being referred to as “Brilliant Comrade.”)

More likely would be a collective leadership, perhaps led by Kim’s brother-in-law, with increased influence for the military.  That would probably make a negotiated settlement eliminating the North’s nuclear program even less likely.  But no one really knows.

We can only look forward to the day when this humanitarian horror of a country  disappears and North Koreans are allowed to again live as normal human beings.

Bad News For North Korea’s Dear Leader? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The North Koreans have been busy, testing a nuclear weapon and shooting off missiles.  It seems that nothing upsets North Korea more than being ignored.

President Barack Obama expressed the usual outrage:

These actions, while not a surprise given its statements and actions to date, are a matter of grave concern to all nations. North Korea’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons, as well as its ballistic missile program, constitute a threat to international peace and security.

However, this really is all old news.  Although the nuclear test reinforces the North’s irresponsible reputation, the blast has little practical importance. North Korea has long been known to be a nuclear state and tested a smaller nuclear device a couple years ago. The regime’s missile capabilities also are well-known.

Contrary to the president’s excited rhetoric, the North has little ability to project force beyond the Korean peninsula.  So Washington should treat the North’s latest offense as an opportunity to reprogram the latter’s negotiating formula.

The U.S. should not reward “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il with a plethora of statements beseeching the regime to cooperate and threatening dire consequences for its bad behavior. Rather, the Obama administration should explain, perhaps through China, that the U.S. is interested in forging a more positive relationship with North, but that no improvement will be possible so long as North Korea acts provocatively. Washington should encourage South Korea and Japan to take a similar stance.

Moreover, the U.S. should step back and suggest that China, Seoul, and Tokyo take the lead in dealing with Pyongyang. North Korea’s activities more threaten its neighbors than America. Even Beijing, the North’s long-time ally, long ago lost patience with Kim’s belligerent behavior and might be willing to support tougher sanctions.

Washington should offer to support this or other efforts to reform North Korean policy.  But without Chinese backing there is little else the U.S. can do.  War on the peninsula would be disastrous for all, and Washington has few additional sanctions to apply.  Beijing has the most leverage on Pyongyang, but whether even that is enough to moderate North Korea’s behavior is anyone’s guess.

North Korea is a problem likely to be long with us. The U.S. has limited ability to influence the North. Washington should offer the prospect of improved relations as a reward for improved North Korean behavior, but should let the North’s neighbors, most notably China, take the lead in managing this most difficult of states.

Troublesome North Korea Strikes Again is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog