North Korea’s system might look bizarre to us from the outside, but the Kims are the ultimate political survivors, hard-edged rationalists whose actions have always had a clear purpose: keeping the family in power. Seeing them as madmen is not only wrong, but also dangerous; any successful policy should be based on understanding the logic of the opposite side, not on discarding it as “irrational” Seeing the Kim family as lunatics with nukes makes them more threatening, and raises the risk of war, but it can also promote unrealistic expectations of compromise — if only the North “comes to its senses.”
Back in the 1980s the Kim family was laughed at even inside the Eastern Bloc as an embodiment of Stalinist irrationality. They were mocked for clinging to their outdated personality cult and failed economics and it was suggested that they should follow the dynamic leaders of Eastern Europe, like the reformist communist leader Karoly Grosz of Hungary. Today, these leaders are in the waste bin of history — overthrown, disgraced, and forgotten — while the Kim family still enjoys not only power, but the luxury that goes with it and remains in full control of their country.
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Kim Jong Un sees the nuclear program as purely defensive. Conquering the South would be nice in theory, but this task is completely beyond his reach, both due to the U.S. commitment to protecting South Korea and Seoul’s own huge advantage in economic and technological power. He knows that any unprovoked North Korean attack against South Korea or the United States will end badly, perhaps in his death, and he is certainly not suicidal. However, he also presumes that no great power would risk attacking a nuclear state or sticking a hand into its internal strife — especially if it has delivery systems and a second-strike capability.
And so North Korean leaders are determined to stick to their nuclear development, and see nuclear weapons as the major guarantee of their security. There is no form of pressure that can convince them to budge on this, no promise that will seduce them into compliance; they believe that without nuclear weapons they are as good as dead. That’s a disaster for the region, but a perfectly logical choice by the Kim family.
While North Korea’s nuclear program is defensive, it still makes sense to remind the world about its existence and use what President Richard Nixon once described as “madman strategy,” that is, to appear to one’s opponents to be irrational, volatile, and willing to disregard costs. That’s why North Korean propaganda uses such fiercely colorful language. When North Korean TV promises to “make Seoul into a sea of fire,” or threatens to nuke Canberra, or shows Kim Jong Un in front of a map of the United States with cities marked as targets of nuclear strikes, they are delivering the same message: “we are here, we are volatile, and will stop at nothing if our opponents do something threatening.”
Without their own nuclear weapons, the Kims would fear a direct U.S. attack — but they also fear American, or Chinese, interference into an internal Korean uprising. They saw what happened in Libya when foreign powers introduced a no-fly zone and ensured the insurgents’ victory. They remember that back in 1956 China, together with Russia, supported a failed conspiracy aimed at removing Kim Il Sung, the current supreme leader’s grandfather, from power.
Kim’s other ostensibly irrational policies should also be seen as defensive in nature. Nuclear weapons, after all, are not sufficient to protect the regime. They may prevent international aggression, for example, but they don’t remove the considerable danger of a domestic military coup.
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Will Kim Jong Un’s policy, rational if sometimes brutal, eventually succeed in keeping the regime stable in the long run? Most of his policies are inherently risky; the nuclear arms race can provoke U.S. preemptive strikes, the harsh treatment of generals might make them more, not less, inclined to start a conspiracy, and the economic reforms can unleash social forces beyond Kim’s control. But risky is not irrational. So far these policies have worked and, given the situation North Korean leaders find themselves in, any alternative would be even riskier. These polices might even work, which would mean the world will have to live with the Kim family regime for a long time to come. The clan has always known how to survive, and they might keep doing so.
What does it mean for the rest of us? Firstly, it is time to realize that there’s no quick solution at hand. North Korea’s denuclearization is impossible, but it is possible to manage the nuclear program and put some cap on its further development, provided the Kim family still feels it has the deterrent value it needs. (Of course, North Koreans will expect generous concessions for any freeze, and might not stick to it even then).