They’re doing a good job of it too, which rather sticks a chicken bone down the craw of the “KIM Jong Il is a raving lunatic” meme.
Well, he may not be a complete gibbering nutbar, but anybody who runs a country the way he has is one sick individual, no matter what talents as a gamesman he might have.
It’s a freaking nightmare. You can’t deal with him; you can’t not deal with him. Kim’s worse than Saddam, if you ask me, and even without nukes they can kill tens of thousands of people (if not more) effortlessly just with the artillery they’ve got pointed at Seoul.
Stalling for what tangible benefit–to augment his nuclear deterrent, to wait out Bush until a less-hawkish US president takes office? Regardless of the west’s opposition, Kim is free to enlarge his nuclear forces, be tyrannical, bluster and to pound his shoe whenever he sees fit. His regime may be deeply paranoid, but his advisers know the US will never attack NK–any more than Kim would attack SK. Perhaps Kim is hoping to mend internal schisms within his ranks, but maybe his irrationality can be explained by his being a drama queen with a narcissist’s love for the spotlight.
Well, the North Koreans have already changed the deal. It took them a whole day, but this is par for the course for that regime. Everyone who has ever tried to deal with them has said it is wildly frustrating. One day it’ll look like there’s a new deal, then the next, for no apparent reason screaming and shouting breaks out and the deal’s off. It’s chaotic, and apparently that chaos is a tactic.
So who knows? When you’re dealing with a crazy person or a crazy regime, you do the best you can, but never get complacent, and never assume that the other side means what they say.
Don’t discount the difficulties on holding on to a dictator’s job. The Dear Leader has never had the same degree of power has his father, and if he’s got serious challengers for power, then NK on the brink of war, without actually going over the edge would be one way to keep everyone occupied and more unified. As one source put it
Valuable to North Korea? Probably not at all, but I’m under no illusion that Kim is acting in the best interests of North Korea; he is acting in his self-interest.
In trying to get into the heads of the regime, I see two possibilities. One is that they have well and truly drunk the kool-ade and really believe that Kim Jong-Il shits ice cream (or whatever the story is) and that the coming glorious victory is soon at hand. I think it unlikely that many at the very top believe this, but perhaps some at some levels do to some extent. After all the money they’ve spent on hero-worship and xenophobia for the last 50 years, they must have something to show for it.
The other possibility is that they know full well that the whole thing is a sham, and that sooner or later it’s going to fall apart, and that when it does, there will be lots of people at the top facing justice, either in front of a judge or in front of mob. That is what they fear; that when they show weakness, or when they start allowing cracks of light into the shithole that is their fiefdom, the true believers will turn on them, and it will all come crashing down.
Kimmy and his top people are, mostly, not young men; given that the sham has worked for a half-century, it seems reasonable to think that it can hold on for another decade until you croak. Certainly that’s the smart play if you harbor a fear of being dragged through the streets.
In this context, I think it’s notable that Kim Jong-Il has not publicly set his son(s) up to succeed him, the way his father set him up. Kim Il-sung was clearly intending to establish a dynasty, including his son in the hagiography for years; I see no signs of that plan with the current regime.
So Kim Jong-Il is taking an apres moi, le deluge approach to his rule? Is he wrong or right? And if he’s right, when will the deluge come?
That’s been the official interpretation since day one, but the US knows little about the internal power structure and much time has passed since Kim’s ascension. He may well have marginalized challengers and consolidated power since then.
Right. Were the US to “give” NK that light-water reactor, you can imagine Kim’s response once he takes possession: “I want 50 more reactors, or we will build 50 more nuclear weapons!”
Kim’s “crazy leader” shtick is Faustian. It gives him the national spotlight, but marginalizes him as a nutcase no sensible party can trust, leaving only Europe of course. 
Well, that’s maybe oversimplifying it, as there are other people (Kim’s kids, the Generals, etc.) who will want to keep the game going so * they* can sit in the big chairs. But fundamentally, it’s an apres moi not my problem approach. Just MHO, and I don’t think anyone really knows the inside story of Pyongyang.
And intended or not, I think the deluge will come when Kim dies. And I think revelations will be stunning. In terms of “net human suffering inflicted,” the Kim dynasty might well be Hitler-level.
Y’know, one part of this that I’ve never heard addressed is that Marxist rhetoric aside, the traces of Confucianism run very, very deep in traditional Korean society; in Kim’s childhood, Korea was more Confucian than China. I’ve always wondered how much of a role this played in Kim’s mindset.
A good son, according to Confucius, runs the farm exactly the way his father did. I’ve always wondered if some part of Kim knew that the regime he inherited was fucked up and wrong, but kept going out of filial piety.
The trouble is that eventually (and IMO “eventually” has long since arrived for this game) people figure out that the alternation is simply another permanent “fuck you” mode.
Conveniently, though, there’s always a new generation of rubes willing to be taken in by such tactics and loudly, passionately and stupidly protest to their governments to give NK (or any dictatorship, really) a fair chance.
Nope. There will always be well-meaning but naive fools, or politicians who want to undermine whichever party is in administration by saying they’d do better, or people on the world stage who want to use it as a way of “proving” the US really is a warmonger that refuses to negotiate.
Do any of you wonder if, kind of like the abused spouse coming back for more, this time it’s “really different”. Y’know, that this time these hystrionics are really nothing more than the hollowest political theater designed to allow Kim to save face, and behind the charade they’re desperate for change, that something is really very wrong and they’re willing to do what it takes to fix it?
Crazy, I know, but I imagine that’s what keeps people returning to the negotiating table.
lol, nope. I’m not buying that Loopydude. Oh, I have no doubt that they see the problems…but I seriously doubt that they acknowledge them or want to truely change. I think its all another move in their extortion racket to get us, South Korea, Japan and Europe to pay some hard cash to buy them off again for a while. Then I believe its in mad Kimmy’s mind to rinse and repeat. YMMV…though I think its a fools bet to trust that idiot and that completely corrupt regime, or even take anything they say as representing reality in any form.
-XT
Let’s not pretend that the idiotic handling of NK by Bolton, Bush et al wasn’t part of of the problem that they saw:
North Korea and the Bomb
North Korea has nukes. When do we go to war?
I don’t have the energy to look it up right now, but IIRC didn’t NK start to secretly re-open their nuke program BEFORE Bush took office? If so…then aren’t we pretending that Bush is the problem here, and not the NK’s?
-XT
This sounds like a convenient exuse made by NK for something that it was intent upon doing anyway.
Yes; hence “There will always be well-meaning but naive fools.”
Correct. The announced they had been working on it for several years, dating back to the 90s. I doubt they ever stopped at all.
I’ve also seen those stories, and I too lack the energy to look them up right now. However, I’ve also seen many other stories about Saddam’s nuclear program and his weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be administration spawned horseshit. John Bolton was called out by Germany just a year or two ago for lying about Iran’s putative A-bomb program. Without hard evidence, there’s little reason to believe anything the administration says about members of the ‘Axis of Evil’.
Just last week, before the ‘breakthrough’ I ran across a headline stating that the US planned to go into the talks with the intent of trying to ignore the light water reactor issue, despite the fact that the plant’s been under construction since the 90’s. Why the hell would they do that? Did they imagine that a phoney agreement would somehow bring North Korea to heel? We’re back to the same pissing match we’ve been in for the last three years.