This makes a lot of sense. If ever there was a time for increasing the pressure on North Korea, it's now: after the latest nuclear test, with Pyongyang's sole backer China increasingly frustrated, and with rumours of increased dissatisfaction inside North Korea itself:
Really? Is there nothing we can do about North Korea?
Pyongyang’s Kim Jong Un celebrated his 33rd birthday with a bang, telling the world he’d tested a hydrogen bomb that can “wipe out the whole territory of the United States all at once.”
No, he can’t. Not yet. Experts think he didn’t even really detonate a thermo-nuclear bomb. Nah. It was merely the North’s fourth nuclear test.
The White House shrugs: Let the Norks be Norks. Kim went unmentioned in President Obama’s State of the Union address.
But ignoring a problem won’t make it go away. Living at Krazy Kim’s mercy is no longer an option. The megalomanic and mercurial tyrant’s missiles already can hit parts of the United States. Our Asian allies are threatened by his nukes and missiles.
And closing our eyes isn’t just a bad policy in itself. It also sends all the wrong signals to others who wish us ill.
So let’s take a cue from Michael Corleone: Where does it say that you can’t kill a regime?
After all, we’re talking about a crooked gang that’s mixed up in the rackets, proliferates arms, behaves like a neighborhood bully and starves its own people to death. We’re talking about a regime that never heard of the Cold War’s end, and that still reads George Orwell’s “1984” as a how-to book.
True, regime change is no longer in vogue. Yet it’s been America’s official policy for decades, and still is — except we call it Korean reunification. Now we must get serious about it.
A year ago, South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye said her free country must launch “meticulous preparations” toward reuniting the Koreas.
But Korean reunification is seen as a bit like awaiting the Messiah: We believe, but beyond prayers, there’s little we can do to hasten his coming. Thus, rather than vowing to get rid of the Kim regime, we call for “peaceful and gradual” unification, and then wait patiently.
Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (in his second term) even tried to appease the North by awarding incentives, including sanctions removal, in return for promises. Even Obama — always eager to humor America’s enemies — saw the futility of that policy. So instead, he just ignored the problem altogether.
One reason: China has long opposed the collapse of a fellow Communist regime.
Beijing fears a flood of Korean refugees that’d tax its resources, and dreads the prospect of a powerful pro-Western unified Korea on its border. So it has propped the Kims up and assured their survival.
But two years ago, Kim the Third executed Jang Sung-taek, his uncle, a trusted adviser to his father — and, crucially, Beijing’s man in Pyongyang. Since then, the Chinese have become increasingly impatient with Kim’s irrationality, and he, largely, stopped listening to them.
As trouble brews in the Beijing-Pyongyang paradise, and as the North menace grows, some in Washington believe it’s time to strike. On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan sanctions bill that, according to its initial sponsor, House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.), will “help cut off Kim Jong Un’s access to the cash he needs to fund his army, his weapons and the continued repression of the North Korean people.”
Royce’s plan to end carrots and return to sticks is a good start. The Senate is expected to soon pass its own sanctions package. Royce has consulted with the White House, but it isn’t clear whether Obama will play along or revert to his “strategic patience” with Kim.
Serious sanctions can force China to choose: Do business with America or prop up North Korea. Not both.
Joshua Stanton at One Free Korea has long argued that sanctions against North Korea need to be strengthened. Here's his latest piece.
As for the increasing coolness in China's relations with North Korea, see here.
And here's the latest from the Daily NK (previously) on what the North Koreans outside Pyongyang really think of their porcine leader:
Kim Jong Un’s decision to conduct a fourth nuclear test, despite the prospect of increased international sanctions, is drawing criticism among Party cadres, who are stating that the reckless pursuit of nuclear testing is the fault of his “irresponsible and immature personality.”
On the 12, a Daily NK reporter spoke with a source in Pyongyang, who said that lately high-ranking party cadres have been whispering stories of Kim Jong Un’s aggressive personality as a child. Kim Jong’s Un decision to push ahead with a hydrogen bomb test without deliberating about the international ramifications is said to have precipitated these discussions among astonished Party cadres. There is also other talk of how Kim Jong Il, deeming his son’s impulsive drive to get whatever he wanted without consideration for the consequences a virtue, began to groom Kim Jong Un as his successor accordingly.
Corroborating this news was an additional source in Pyongyang and another in North Hamgyong Province.
“One morning he purges some cadres and then makes this kind of sudden reckless decision [nuclear test]; seeing this, cadres can’t help but stay on their toes, wondering what on earth Kim Jong Un will do next,” he said.
“He’s a loose cannon.”...
This side of Kim Jong Un’s personality is also evident in his foreign policy gaffes, the source added, giving examples like the young leader’s sudden and unilateral decision to cancel the Moranbong band’s tour in China that led to embarrassment for North Korea’s greatest ally. One day before UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon was slated to visit the North, Kim Jong Un abruptly canceled the visit.
“Kim Jong Un has been treated like a king since he was a child and has a difficult time hearing other people’s points of view. Actions like the execution his uncle, Jang Song Taek, seem to indicate that Kim Jong Il raised a tyrant of unparalleled proportions,” the source asserted.
“Nervous about what he might do, both Party cadres and citizens tread lightly around Kim Jong Un. But if he were to put their backs up against the wall there is a certain possibility of backlash. Many among them point out that if Kim Jong Un fails to figure out how to properly interact with and support people he’s not going to last long.”
Irresponsible and immature personality? When has a responsible and mature personality EVER been in charge of NK?
NK is insane and has been so from day 1. Just how much crazier, really, is this guy than his father or his grandfather?
Posted by: Gene | January 15, 2016 at 09:43 PM
Oh I think there's something in that charge. Kim Il Sung was clearly a highly charismatic and intelligent man, however ruthless. Like Mao, perhaps. Jong-il was completely lacking in charisma, but he possessed enough cunning and political nous to keep the whole lousy show going. Jung-un, by contrast, does seem dangerously impetuous and hot-headed.
Posted by: Mick H | January 15, 2016 at 11:35 PM