For Kim, his regime 'ain't broke.' So why fix it?

The agreement that President Donald Trump is offering Kim Jong Un carries uncertain rewards and considerable risk for Kim. Trump’s offer is based on the false assumption that Kim wants a prosperous country from which he and the people of North Korea can benefit.

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A Grand Bargain on Korea

North Korea has become an intractable problem for the United States. But there may be a way forward in the form of a grand bargain that requires fewer U.S. concessions than expected. In fact, the resolution of the Korean conundrum may be less challenging than containing Iran. A rejection by North Korea’s Kim Jong-un of such a deal would provide evidence of his irrationality and confirm the regrettable need for non-diplomatic measures.

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What Comes After Kim Jong Un?

Kim’s inner circle would also characterize themselves as holders of Khrushchev’s lucky cards. Like their Soviet and Chinese counterparts, they would retreat to the relative safety of collective rule in his absence. Less fearful of violent overthrow, they would be inclined to make life better for their people and rely less on military adventurism.

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Korean Unification: Do Not Be Surprised If It Comes Soon

The most significant geopolitical events of the past half century have been unanticipated. Not that we did not expect them, but they were supposed to happen in the distant future, not now.  The North Korean regime could collapse in the same unexpected way, leaving shocked politicians, diplomats, and pundits to fend with its consequences.

While it is comforting to believe that predictable rational calculation and self interest determine the course of human events, the timing of the most significant changes in the world order is  heavily influenced by chance, personalities, emotions, and miscalculations. We expect the two Koreas to muddle along in a shaky equilibrium that will result in the end of  the Hermit Kingdom in the distant future. A collapse of the North Korean regime in the near term would send pundits in vain searches of past writings for hints they saw it coming.

Unfolding events in the Koreas and their respective mentor states, the United States and China, resemble the run ups to the collapse of communism in the USSR and Central and Southeastern Europe and the reunification of the two Germanys. Few foresaw that both would collapse as abruptly as a house of cards. The intelligence community did not foresee the end of the USSR – an intelligence failure greater than its weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco.  Likewise, it will likely categorize the near-term collapse of the North Korean regime as a “highly unlikely” outcome.

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Kim Jong Il: The Passing Of A Tyrant And The Ensuing Power Struggle

Kim Jong Il, who died Saturday at the age of 69, was the last leader of a Stalinist state held together by a Stalin-like cult of personality, brutal repression and disposition of rents to supporters. Like Stalin, Kim Jong Il rid the North Korean leadership of any possible independent-thinking rivals. There are no Gorbachevs or Dengs in the wings. But the grooming of his chosen successor, third son Kim Jong Un, remains incomplete, and this throws something of a monkey wrench in succession plans.

Kim Jong Il leaves behind a failed economy and a starving people. He built a regime that could survive the grossest of economic failures by means of a blustering and threatening foreign policy, an oversized military that sucked up huge resources, strategic payments to key supporters in the party and military from arms and drug sales, and absolute repression of his people.

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