Korea's collapse would be an epic and unmanageable debacle. So why is a leading Republican musing so casually about it?
Congressman Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, thinks the international community should "collapse" the North Korean regime by squeezing its money supply.
These kind of glib statements aren't really surprising given North Korea's worrisome antics and atrocious human rights record (who wouldn't want to see the regime swept away), but they do highlight one of the deeply problematic aspects of the standoff. No one wants to see the Kim regime endure and no one wants to see it end chaotically.
I'm still in the camp that thinks it's unlikely that North Korea will start a full-blown war, but there's less doubt that the collapse of the regime would cause immediate havoc in both China and South Korea and very quickly in the U.S. as well.
The South Koreans have looked at German reunification and, according to Jochen-Martin Gutsch, here's what they found: refugees will flood into the country "rapidly, in large numbers and inexorably." South Korea has a vibrant and healthy economy, but not healthy enough to add millions of starving and under-educated civilians to its institutions instantly.
China has its own interests in keeping the status quo in tact: it not only doesn't want the refugee influx, it's worried about a reunified peninsula under South Korean control hosting American military facilities.
The Brookings Institute's Michael O'Hanlon did a run-down of potential Korean collapse scenarios and none of them look pretty from a U.S. stand point, either:
The problem is more complex than a peacekeeping mission, however. To begin, some significant fraction of North Koreaâ??s million-strong army may fight against South Korea even in an apparent collapse scenario. Collapse is likely to imply a contest for power among multiple North Korean factions rather than a literal, complete, and immediate dissolution of authority nationwide. Some significant amount of the South Korean army could therefore be in effect on war footing, fighting from village to village and city to city.A calculation based simply on overall force requirements also ignores the dimension of time. How long would it take South Korea to spread out and establish control of the North Korean territoryâ??and how much time can we afford? In fact, and of course, speed would be of the essence in any mission to find and control DPRK nuclear-related assets.
The collapse or end of the Kim regime is inevitable -- if not in a "ocean of fire" than in the decay that erodes all political dynasties (especially those built on brutality and oppression). But deliberately provoking it without an adequate plan in place to deal with the aftermath is insane. Things are likely to go awry even with the best unification plan in place.
(AP Photo)
