Kim Jong-un: is he the madman who could end the world?
ANALYSIS: Some say Kim Jong-un is not “mad” but instead a dangerous man striving to achieve legitimacy by threatening Armageddon. But others disagree.
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UNDERPINNING it is a feeling of helplessness that the fate of millions rests in the hands of two men, one out of his depth and the other out of his mind; and a false sense of security that if this goes up, damage will be contained to the Korean Peninsula.
The last time the world got so close to nuclear catastrophe was when John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev faced off during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. There were real differences to what is happening today: namely, it was two superpowers taking each other to the brink; and the threat to US mainland cities was real.
THE NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR THREAT EXPLAINED
Some argue, therefore, that 1962 was more serious than what is playing out between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un, who lacks the ability to hit the US mainland. This argument is viable only if nothing erupts on the Korean Peninsula. Who’d put good money on that?
Commentators repeatedly remind us that Kim is not “mad” but instead a dangerous man striving to achieve legitimacy and recognition by threatening Armageddon. Placed against pictures of him exulting in warheads, promising nuclear “gift packages”, and imperilling the lives of so many, including his own citizens, this view is becoming hard to take.
Kim is mad. With no enemies apart from those that are of his own imagining, he has conducted six needless nuclear tests with another expected as soon as today. He has fired one missile over the Japanese mainland. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley’s claim that he is “begging for war” seems right.
It is not of Trump’s doing that he is on watch as Kim realises his long-held ambition of being able to build and launch nuclear warheads. But it has become Trump’s greatest test. If ever there was a time to show his abilities to close a deal and make this go away, it is now.
Instead, Trump is using Twitter to advance ill-considered sledges, calling South Korea weak and messaging this week that the US is considering “stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea”.
He’s talking about China, America’s largest trading partner. By some estimates such a trade halt would instantly cost one million US jobs, see America’s shelves empty out, cause interest rates to spike and send the economy into deep recession.
Furthermore, Trump would need to turn to Central American and South-East Asian nations to ramp production to fill the China void — something that goes against everything his every instinct.
China would not in retaliation — as some fear — move to cash out its billions in US treasuries. That would cause the US to default and China would not get paid out.
A trade war with China won’t happen. But the fact Trump has threatened one shows how everything firing off from his hair-trigger Tweet finger has gone beyond meaning or analysis. All that matters from here on are his actions.
Swirling through the guesstimates of what might unfold is a belief among traditional military and strategic thinkers that the US, if further provoked, would hammer North Korea with an intense conventional weapons barrage and quickly crush it.
But North Korea could still unleash nuclear and conventional weapons at South Korea and Japan, if not beyond.
Japan is playing it calm, even as it formulates contingency plans to evacuate its citizens from South Korea should things further deteriorate. It is hard to see what that would achieve, given the Japanese are also at risk at home.
South Korea has lived through decades of provocation by the Kim dynasty. Its population and leadership are conditioned to believe threat of war is always overhyped.
Now, it is reassessing that holocaust is possible. However, it is blaming not just North Korea but the US for putting at risk the 64-year-old Armistice Agreement, which ended the Korean War and remains a fragile truce.
Newly sworn South Korean President Moon Jae-in still believes dialogue is possible with Kim, but was embarrassed by Trump undermining him on the world stage by ridiculing his leadership’s “talks of appeasement” with the North.
Added to this, Trump has used the moment to raise unbuttoning the US-Korea free trade agreement.
Rather than being an ally-in-crisis, the appalling timing suggests Trump values money ahead of lives. It also suggests that Trump is prepared to act unilaterally on North Korea.
The lessons of numerous recent conflicts, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya and Syria, show that great conventional firepower launched from US planes and ships never brings any problem to an immediate end.
Given that Kim could either conduct pre-emptive strikes, or still have time to do serious damage should the US strike first, the US must be considering, and configuring, a nuclear attack to destroy Kim entirely.
Rod Lyon from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, recommended as our best thinker on the Korean Peninsula, disagrees. “I don’t think the US would be reaching for nuclear option any time soon,” he says. “I don’t think they’re keen to have nuclear weapons used in proximity to their allies and China.
“For the US to cross the nuclear threshold in Korea is quite high. I’m not even certain they would cross it if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon. I think they would judge they don’t need to cross it.”
Lyon believes the US understands any action it takes cannot be unilateral. It would need Japan and South Korea fully onside. “Because the costs are going to be primarily worn by the neighbours,” says Lyon.
He argues that the US, in consultation with South Korea and Japan, would be looking to take out North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, to hit the broader North Korean military hard, and to eliminate key leadership targets, all using conventional force.
But Kim has a range of options that would make it hard to roll over him quickly. “The artillery tubes just north of the DMZ (demilitarised zone) are already in place,” says Lyon. “Even if they spent half an hour firing at Seoul, they could do a lot of damage.”
The non-nuclear option Lyon describes relies on the assumption that the US political and military leadership is sober, reflective and would be prepared to let a major allied regional city, be it Seoul or even Tokyo, take some major hits.
With all due respect to Lyon, I am not so sure Trump, or any US president, would permit North Korea to launch a nuclear weapon at a neighbouring city without severe repercussions. They would hit back North Korea with nukes, fivefold, and in doing so bring a temporary lull that would be followed by:
1. A reckoning of the millions of dead in North Korea, South Korea and Japan
2. Kim emerging unscathed from a bunker to rally his troops
3. An allied advance into North Korea (involving Australia, which has legal obligations under the 1953 armistice to defend South Korea) to fight Kim’s loyalist troops
4. A mass rush of refugees to the South Korean and Chinese borders. China would repel the refugees back into North Korea, where they would be slaughtered by Kim’s forces
5. An eventual allied military victory
6. Kim being killed or put before The Hague for war crimes
7. The declaration of a unified Korea in which the US accedes to Chinese demands that it removes its military entirely from the Korean Peninsula (ie, China’s doorstep), or
8. Current borders remain but there is regime change in North Korea, allowing the US to maintain a presence in South Korea, and
9. A massive expenditure program to repair North and South Korea.
The alternative is to pursue diplomacy, but Trump and Kim would never agree to meet face-to-face in the other’s country for security reasons. It would need to be on neutral ground. China? Switzerland?
Maybe, but as Lyon says: “Meetings are not useful just for themselves. They are only useful for desirable outcomes. Any such meeting would have to be awfully well prepared if it was not to degenerate into a slanging match.
“In Washington, the question would be, ‘What is the purpose of this meeting?’ If the purpose was to let Kim parade his international credentials, I do not think there would be enthusiasm for it.”
Asked this week whether he was considering military action, Trump said: “Frankly, that’s not a first choice, but we will see what happens.” He believes China holds the key, namely its ability cut off oil supplies to North Korea and starve it out.
However, China fears any such action would prompt a refugee run at its border; and it does not want to be seen as acquiescing to US wishes.
It argues that North Korea would consider freezing its nuclear program if the US abandoned its regular joint exercises with South Korea, which aggravate Kim so deeply. The US does not believe Kim can be trusted to honour such a freeze.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the North “would rather eat grass” than give up their nuclear program. And he warned that further sanctions would make Kim even more dangerous. “It could cause a global catastrophe and an enormous loss of life,” he said.
US resident and China watcher Kevin Rudd talked in Stockholm last week of the possibility of a “grand bargain”, based on China accepting that the US might attack North Korea without the approval of its allies — which might create a unified and pro-US Korea on China’s border.
The thinking is that China is so desperate to avoid this that it would use all its persuasion to talk Kim into giving up his nuclear arsenal.
If this happened, Rudd argues, this could lead to a formal peace treaty between North and South; diplomatic recognition of the North by the US; guarantees by superpowers for the security of the North Korean state and the survival of the Kim regime; China stepping in to develop the North’s economy; and perhaps the withdrawal of US forces from South Korea.
Rudd, who has persistently overstated North Korea’s ability to hit Australia for the best part of a decade, and could not foresee his own political demise (twice), is getting ahead of himself.
Malcolm Turnbull was more worried about the immediate risks when he talked with Trump this week. “Everybody wants to get this dangerous situation resolved, bring this reckless, dangerous, provocative regime to its senses without conflict,” Turnbull said after the call.
“A conflict would be catastrophic, everyone understands that. The best avenue to achieve that is continued enforcement of strong economic sanctions and, of course, the country with the biggest lever in that regard is China.”
But China — whose President Xi Jinping also spoke with Trump this week, in which he urged Trump’s restraint — is in no hurry to make a stand for humanity, possibly because it believes there is more time for this to play out.
The Global Times, said to be the unofficial voice of the Chinese leadership, editorialised midweek that China’s influence over North Korea was overstated but said the “nuclear issue is unmanageable by the US and South Korea. China needs to face up to reality and seek a least-worst result.”
It doesn’t publish this stuff without permission. It would seem to suggest that Xi plans to do something decisive, soon, perhaps emerging as last-minute mediator and champion.
He’d better get moving. It must be assumed that Trump’s plans to destroy Kim with nukes are well-advanced.
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