An even more obviously orchestrated flurry of DPRK-related articles than the “Why North Korea hates America” flurry we got in 2017 (which I discussed here) was the one which Siegfried Hecker and Robert Carlin (discussed here) initiated last January with an article on the Stimson Center’s 38 North website.
The main points of that piece were these:
- For 30 years and under three leaders, North Korea’s central goal has been that of “normalizing relations with the US.”
- Kim Jong Un’s “traumatic” loss of face at the Hanoi summit in 2019 led him to make “a decisive break with the past.”
- The new approach: a “strategic reorientation toward China and Russia.”
- Since then, the intensification of ties with Russia has encouraged Kim to prepare in earnest for a “military solution to the Korean question.”
- Relying on the threat of mutually-assured destruction to keep the North at bay may be a “fatal” error for the US to make.
- “History suggests those who have convinced themselves that they have no good options left will take the view that even the most dangerous game is worth the candle.”
- “If that comes to pass, even an eventual US-ROK victory in the ensuing war will be empty. The wreckage, boundless and bare, will stretch as far as the eye can see.”
This urgent, doomsday call for “strategic empathy” with the North (to quote one of its subheadings) was reported on by one establishment outlet after another, with each journo making sure to identify Hecker and Carlin as “respected,” as “top experts,” etc, perhaps so as to lend weight to their (false) assertion that talk of preparing for war was something new to North Korea. The article was reprinted in full by the Pacific Forum, and the two men were invited to enlarge on it by Stanford, by NK News, etc.
The claim made that tensions on the peninsula had risen higher than at any time since 1953 (higher than 1968, 1976, 1987, 1993, 2002, 2010 and 2013!) was so ludicrous that for a while there — as readers of this blog will have noticed — I worried that Kim’s partnership with Putin had finally put paid to Foggy Bottom’s soft spot for the North, and that the US public was being primed for a preemptive strike on the country.
But clearly, the soft spot is alive and well; just contrast Biden officials’ fierce condemnations of Russia’s offensive against Ukraine with their expressions of “concern” about North Korea’s participation in it.
It appears, then, that the effort to raise awareness of the threat of nuclear war on the peninsula was in fact intended to prime the US public for a softer approach to Kim Jong Un, an approach which his dispatch of troops to the Russian war effort has naturally put on hold.
I’m not of course complaining about this; I’m relieved. But unless I’ve missed something, Hecker is yet to urge on us any “strategic empathy” for Russia, that far more heavily armed nuclear state which (in contrast to North Korea) carried out no deadly attacks on our allies during the 30 years in question, and which made a far more consistent and convincing show of wanting good relations with Washington than North Korea ever has.
The questions that Hecker recently posed to our two presidential candidates in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists must be seen to be believed. Not once does he express a desire for an immediate end to hostilities in the Ukraine war, let alone ask how the candidates propose to bring it about.
Instead he speaks prefatorily of the “brutal, unjustified invasion of Ukraine” before asking Harris and Trump:
- How has Russia’s war in Ukraine changed your view of the role of nuclear weapons in Europe and by extension to Northeast Asia?
- How does China’s nuclear buildup shape your view of the requirements for the US nuclear arsenal and for nuclear policy?
- Should North Korea use this nuclear threat to attack South Korea, perhaps to enforce what it sees as its legitimate borders, what will you be prepared to do to either prevent or respond?
- And how would you respond to a South Korean decision to field its own nuclear arsenal?
- How will you address the increasing, but largely ignored, nuclear dangers in South Asia?
- How would you respond to Iran’s continued nuclear buildup, which has considerably reduced the breakout time required for nuclear weapons, especially considering the escalating dangers resulting from the war in Gaza?
- What would you do to dissuade Saudi Arabia’s crown prince from responding to Iran with his own nuclear weapons program?
- How would you address the concerns over lack of progress on nuclear disarmament?
At one point in his explanatory remarks he asks, without numbering them, these questions:
How would you attempt to restore the global nuclear order absent a fair termination of the war in Ukraine? Would you be willing to take the political risk of inviting China to join the United States to do so? If you do, how would you get China to the negotiating table?
Imagine being a nuclear scientist, and asking those questions about the war?Asking about political risk!
Oh, and note “fair”: we know what the Deep State, on whose behalf Hecker teaches “practice” in Monterey, means by that. But when it comes to North Korea we’re not to worry about “fair.” We’re to come rushing to the negotiating table, for the sake of humanity.
Here are my questions. Does Hecker really believe that the current conflict in Europe is less dangerous, less likely to result in nuclear war than the current standoff on the peninsula? Or does he think (to pick up on the Ozymandias-influenced finale to that 38 North piece) a nuclear war between the US and Russia would be more survivable than one between the US and North Korea?
