As an example of a state operating under realist principles,
North Korea is and has been ideal since Kim Jong Il’s father took control of
the country praising self-reliance. North Korea exemplifies statism, for as the
government is so oppressive, the state is the only significant player; one only
sees the North Korean people mentioned in terms of their suffering. The
prevailing theme behind the North Korean policy and propaganda has been self-help, though it seems to fail often, degenerating into isolation instead of independence, since the country relies heavily on food and energy aid
from stronger states. Nevertheless, if survival is defined as a state’s grip on
sovereignty, North Korea is a wily beast that has eluded capture and death for
much longer than any would expect. Now that Kim Jong Il’s successor, Kim Jong
Un, has taken power and made some surprising moves, many are wondering what
North Korea’s game-plan looks like.
Superficially at least, it appears that he is shifting away
from the stringently realist values of his father. Kim Jong Il ran the country
further into starvation as he fed the military first and the people second,
neglecting to address the issues of a poor food distribution system and lack of consistently arable land, instead preferring to obtain
food aid from countries that astonishingly gain no power over North Korea in doing so. He ran
concentration camps and propaganda centers to keep the people under control,
and worked on nuclear weapons in order to make the country a threat—all to
establish a condition of anarchy.
Reducing
the role of the military? Kim Jong Un fired the previous senior
general of the army, while promoting a civilian to a role that places the party
over the military—a role that had long been vacant while his father was in
power. Some believe that this reflects a shifting of priorities that will lead
to friendlier foreign policies. Others understand this to be a consolidation of
Kim Jong Un’s power. The regime has often fired or assassinated top officials
to ensure loyalty and subservience (Sang-Hun). He could also be reigning in the military
to keep all aspects of North Korea under his control, an hypothesis supported
by the fact that Kim was recently appointed marshal over the country’s army.
Lack
of aversion to Western culture? Kim Jong Un seems to have much more
transparency with his private life and speech than Kim Jong Il. He has recently
gone out in public accompanied by a young lady, while his father’s mistresses and wives were
kept more secret, and speaks in public far more often than his father ever did.
Speaking from a country which demands long-form birth certificates and tax
return forms from potential leaders, this may seem excessively secretive still,
but one must remember what sort of tripe Kim Jong Il fed his personality cult
for them to believe about him.
More telling, when Kim Jong Il went out with his paramour,
they saw a concert in Pyongyang that was performed by “pop stars with
miniskirts with violins” and featured “Mickey Mouse, Rocky Balboa, and Frank
Sinatra” (Disneyland). Be careful not to jump at the suggestion that the new
regime is any more open to outside influence than it was; even Kim Jong Il was
suggested to have a tremendous foreign movie collection and favored Elizabeth
Taylor (Savage). Indeed, Kim Jong Un is still running the concentration camps
and failing to provide human rights to his people. It is likely that he is
merely strengthening his personality cult by allowing the North Koreans to
think that they know him and promoting his youth as a source of fresh ideas
rather than inexperience, while trying to set the international community at
ease, making them more willing to provide aid as a reward for this façade of
openness.
Suffice it to say, North Korea is in dire straits right now,
and its leader is responding in realist fashion. Of course the country usually
is in trouble, but after they had just last month suffered a debilitating
flood, inundating about 65,000 hectares of farmland, Kim Jong Un must certainly
feel the warring desires to push for more food aid yet remain politically
independent, as they have managed in the past. After all, he did dramatically refuse the United States’ offer for
aid when it was tied with a security caveat to end his nuclear/missile program. Mitt Romney has recognized the curious relationship aid-granting countries that dislike North Korea's missile programs have with North Korea:
Well, we've had very little progress over the years in dealing with North Korea. From time to time, they decide to negotiate with us. And in the negotiations, we promise to give them certain things they want, they promise to forebear from nuclear ambition. And then of course, we give them what they want, and they go ahead and pursue their nuclear ambition.
I.e., none. North Korea has retained autonomy despite dependency. Kim Jong Un knows that his people need to be fed, and at the beginning of his rule, he gave them hope for this, yet proceeded with the nuclear program instead, breaking the UN sanction. Why? He most likely feared exploitation through showing that North Korea is willing
to succumb to influence by other countries in return for help, thus inching
towards instable sovereignty. Instead, if he can control the terms of
engagement by acting first, perhaps he feels he can achieve a halo effect with
the rest of the international community, leading to more aid without strings
attached, and making up for his aforementioned missile gaffe.
The US seems to believe that giving North Korea aid will gain their alliance and put an end to their nuclear ambitions. However, according to Stephen Walt, bribery is a weak form of power and ironically gives the recieving country power over the donor country. This realist theory seems to be the case with North Korea, which has been able to take aid to mantain its survival, while still mantaining statism. If so, what other ways can the US and other major powers effectively gain influence over North Korea?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, as you may have noticed in the blog article, North Korea is very suspicious and reactive; they prize very dearly their independence, and are willing to allow their people to suffer more rather than to cede any power to external bodies.
ReplyDeleteThe only reason they are still able to operate as such is that the countries that currently provide them aid are asking no caveats, and the reason that countries such as the US are unable to use caveats are because countries like Russia and China are more than willing to prop North Korea up, caveat-free. In this way, because the US is not doing what it would prefer, one could indeed infer that North Korea holds power over the United States. We give them aid because we feel ethically bound to feed their people, while North Korea operates under a much less liberal ruleset, thus granting them tacit blackmail power. (Some say that North Korea has much more vocal blackmail power with their nuclear arsenal, but I express skepticism at precisely how effective that is... Certainly it can cause alarm amongst peoples, which states react to, but nuclear weapons are to be used as threats, not serious weapons, so I believe it's more impotent than one may automatically assume.)
Realism postulates that power (in this case over NK) is zero-sum, as you know, and currently Russia, China, and the US hold large chunks because they give the most aid. One would assume that the power is divided roughly in thirds, without numerical backing to prove otherwise, but you will remember from the Walt article that intentions matter. North Korea was backed heavily by the former Soviet Union, and is still supported by Russia, so North Korea can rely on Russia. That gives a huge chunk of the pie to Russia. Thus, there's less for China and America can have, and I'm inclined to think that North Korea is a bit less trusting of the US than of China, though I don't have evidence to support the latter. (North Korea did declare the US its enemy, but NK receives a lot of aid and diplomats from its "declared enemies," so I'd take that with a grain of salt.)
The bottom line is that the US can gain influence over North Korea through aid with strings; aid is not the same as bribery because a country like NK desperately requires aid in order to feed its people. Bribery is superfluous, while aid can make a country dependent on another if used in that way. However, the effectiveness of the aid as an instrument of power depends on how much of the pie the US takes up, and in order for the US to hold more pie, the international community would have to ally with the US.
In other words, if Russia was less of an unconditional source of support for North Korea, then the US could gain from granting aid.
I'll leave off by noting that this would be a prime time for the US to consume a larger piece of the pie. North Korea needs more aid than ever, since so much farmland was destroyed, and thus have less food of their own. I proposed in the article that Kim's facade of openness to the West was a sign of desperation for aid... If they're feeling like they need to cater to the West in order to curry favor, then it's possible that they don't anticipate enough aid from their usual sources.
I don't think that the US will try to bargain aid again so soon after the last PR fallout. Indeed, the "openness" is one way for us to provide more free aid while saving face: to pose it as a reward. It would be especially imprudent for the US to bargain and fail so close to the elections, should we attempt to give aid before election day, for opposing political forces would be able to seize on that as him using "old tactics that don't work, and look how inept he is at foreign policy."
TL;DR: The US can gain favor by using aid as a bargaining chip, as long as Russia doesn't offer a better deal. Right now is the perfect time for that tactic, but the US is unlikely to use it.
Sorry for the essay! I didn't realize how long it was getting when I wrote it...
DeleteThanks for the great response. You might find this article interesting: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/gordon-g-chang/north-korean-aid-and-american-interests
ReplyDeleteIt talks about the benefits of supplying food to North Korea. The article points out that much of Kim Jong Un's power rests in the fact that the people of North Korea are cut off from other countries, therefore making them ignorant to the truth of their goverment's practices. By supplying food, the citizens are exposed to foreign food monitors and from them, foreign ideas. Government officials that escort these monitors are also being exposed to the failures of their regime.