North Korea, Part II

I blogged earlier this week about the purging of Jang Song Thaek as part of a power play by the new leader Kim Jong Un.  Apparently in a more overtly feudal manner of dealing with one's potential rivals and usurpers of power, Kim had Jang executed yesterday.  The execution of Jang highlights three things.

First, the absolutism of family authority in North Korea has been put on full display.  Kim Jong Un has notified the country that the Kim family is still firmly in control of the government.  Jang Song Thaek had risen to number two in the DPRK governing hierarchy.  Jang had his own supporters and a history of power-seeking.  Kim Jong Un is reminding the country that he and the Kim dynasty are still in control of the country.

Two, I believe the execution is a signal that easing of market restrictions and liberalizing the economy will not occur as a systematic program sponsored by the government.  Jang was responsible for attempting Chinese style market reforms in North Korea and had close ties to Chinese business and industry.  The message of Jang's execution is North Korea will have market reform only when the public distribution system of the socialist state is failing and when it recovers the market still belongs to the state, not to any private holder.

Three, the execution illustrates Kim Jong Un is young, untried, untested, with little governing experience.  Kim Jong Il had nearly twenty years as a government and party official and a decade of military policy-making before he became the ruler of North Korea.  Kim Jong Un has about eighteen months before becoming the leader of the country.  No time existed for allowing Kim Jong Un to build his own reputation and governing persona under the watchful and powerful eye of his father.  So, Kim Jong Un was given power and has to prove he alone wields the power.  Kim Jong Un will make sweeping uses of power and we should expect more attempts to demonstrate his mastery of the leadership of the DPRK.  At least this is my two cents about the matter.

Caveat or Just (Insert your own word here)?

Hey, I actually did start this post in November, but never finished it, now I finished it.

I was just reading an article at ForeignPolicy.com about the al-Shabab attack on the UN compound in Mogadishu.  I was struck by one thing in regard to the June 19 attack;  the Ugandan peacekeeper's response.

"Ugandan peacekeepers arrived on teh scene about 30 minutes after the attack began, but they declined a request to enter the compound to take on the remaining al-Shabab militants, saying that was the job of Somali security forces."

I considered the potential that there are caveats that are made by states when they send their forces into harm's way.  Stephen Saideman has talked about caveats in Afghanistan and what they really mean for alliances.  In fact, he and David Auerswald have a book where caveats are probably considered; caveats like certain NATO allies not being allowed to do patrols after dark.  Now, the situation in Mogadishu is one in which there are UN personnel, but the security mission is African Union, and apparently there is a Ugandan contingent to that mission.  I am at this moment unaware of any caveats (based on reading about this mission in several publications) but they might exist.  For my two cents, however, I choose to put a different word in place of caveat--dereliction.  Your job as peacekeepers is to protect the UN personnel, so protect them.  Unless, of course, the caveat does exist and is just not really publicly acknowledged.

Apologia to my Few Readers

Sorry to take so long between postings.  November was an extremely busy month for me.  I'll try to post more frequently in the next few weeks.  In terms of extremely busy, please recall my blog a long time ago about watching leaves fall (read grading papers), well I watched a lot of leaves falling in November. 

Thoughts on North Korea

I am teaching a course on Asian Politics in the coming spring semester.  I focus primarily on comparative foreign policy in southeast and east Asia.  So China, the Koreas, Japan, and the ASEAN states get covered in terms of security issues, economic interactions, etc.  Realizing that I have spent a great deal of time reading about, studying, writing about China and ASEAN states, I decided this fall to read more about the Korean peninsula, demographics, geography, society, culture, history, contemporary political structures, and so forth.  As with most people it is the last book/article/information you covered that sticks in your mind.  The last book I read about the Korean peninsula is Victor Cha's* The Impossible State; North Korea Past and Future.  I find Cha's argument about why North Korea's government behaves as it does to be very compelling.  I also find it to be very telling about recent events in North Korea.

Cha argues that North Korean ruling behavior can be understood as grounded in the desire to exercise absolute control to maintain the Kim family's position.  Additionally, North Korean behavior can be understood as a desire to remain grounded in the first half of the Cold War.  The first half of the Cold War was the heyday of the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea).  In the 1950s to early 1970s North Korea produced more heavy machinery, more electricity, and was generally much more economically viable than South Korea.  The Juche mentality was developed in the 1970s and reinforced in the 1990s as a means of controlling a population that was increasingly lacking food, electricity, modern technological development and conveniences as the reality that the heyday of DPRK economics and political clout ended with normalization of relations between the U.S. and China and the normalization of trade with a surging South Korea and China and improved South Korean-Russian relations.  North Korea's heyday fades as Chinese and Russian direct payments and loans fade away and North Korea's government refuses to alter economic policy to recognize the new realities of East Asian politics and economics.  The Kim administrations (Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il) both worked harder after that point in time on control of the population and control of the agencies of government (primarily through a military first policy of income and food distribution). 

No how does this tie to the new Kim administration (Kim Jong Un) and current events?  In the late 1990s as an expedient means to deal with failure of public redistribution systems (remember that a communist/marxist/authoritarian state operates by redistributing the benefits/wealth of production to the population), due to lack of production in industry and agricultural disasters of the mid to late 1990s, the DPRK introduced some minimalist market reforms.  Leading this effort on behalf of Kim Jong-Il was Jang Song Thaek who was purged by Kim Jong-Il in 2004, but resurrected in 2010.  Why was Jang resurrected, well he does happen to be the husband of Kim Jong-Il's sister, Kim Kyong-hui.  Kim Jong-il used his sister and brother-in-law to help ensure ease of transition to the sudden emergence of Kimg Jong Un as the heir to the Kim dynasty in the DPRK.  Last year some analysts even speculated that the real power of the government was in Kim Jong Un's aunt and uncle and that he was possibly a public figurehead (a not too unreasonable analysis based on the very limited information we had regarding Kim Jong Un).  So now forward to the current situation, Jang Song Thaek has been purged again from positions of power in the DPRK (vice-chair of the National Defense Commission and department head Korean Worker's Party).  For my two cents this move is designed to consolidate the position of Kim Jong Un and who was the easiest target among those who could challenge Kim Jong Un's authority.  Well of course the easiest target is the one who was in charge of liberal reform of the economy that has failed (because it was not really liberal reform at all).  And so the effort maintain total control of the population under the thumb of the Kim family and the new leader Kim Jong Un continues and it targets anyone and anything that might challenge the belief that the DPRK should return to the heyday of the 1950s to early 1970s.  

Rubber Duckie

So, the rubber duck made famous in the Rubber Duck Project of artist Florentijn Hofman, has arrived in the U.S.  First stop, Pittsburgh, PA fifty miles from the house, so I had to go see it yesterday.  Kinda got all Bert and Ernie nostalgic for a moment, thought it was interesting that real ducks were swimming around the big rubber duckie. 

 Today, posting this pic made me think about the Ducks of Minerva.  I think a good post was made there today about the "taboo" of chemical weapons use. 

Logic Behind Using Chemical Weapons

One the blog, Political Violence @ a Glance, Barbara Walter gives a Friday Puzzler.  Today the puzzler is:

Given Assad’s extensive conventional weapons capabilities, why use chemical weapons? What’s the logic behind using them?

My first thought on the matter is signalling.  Non-conventional weapons use sends a signal to the opponent targeted by the weapons use.  The signal here is that the massive conventional arsenal that will destroy urban centers does not have to be used.  Weapons of mass human destructive capacity can be used instead to kill and seriously incapacitate opposition members.  The second part of the signal to the opposition is that Assad has the will to use internationally unpopular weapons, not being deterred by statements from international leaders about the unacceptability of using chemical weapons.    Of course, the second part of the signal also has some consequences, namely what will the international community at which Assad thumbed his nose do as a response to the use of chemical weapons? Of course, I am also not considering here the rationality of the decision to send the signal.

Some Observations About....

Ok, so I haven't blogged since June.  I took the summer off from blogging.  But I am back, hopefully I still have something to say on occasion.  Observation #1: I really did not miss blogging, so maybe I am not really good at blogging and maybe I should just quit blogging altogether.  Nah, I just focused on my research and reading this summer and did not take the time to share my thoughts with the world.

So what are the topics most prominent in our minds these days.  Observation #2:  we really did not get that upset about finding out the government was really listening to our conversations.  Oh well, I have been saying that the government is listening for years, Snowden just confirmed it with his admissions.  And then, Observation #3: my opinion, personal opinion, about Snowden is worth as much as anyone else's opinion.  My opinion is that he should have stayed to face the music here in the U.S. running just make you look less courageous.

Observation #4:  I was right, I told you so, etc.  Syria, well, I said over one year ago to expect this one to be ugly because Assad is not going quietly into the night.   But this does bring me to Observation #5: strange world when I wake up and Sec. of State Kerry is more "hawkish" than I.  I mean, which of the following represents Kerry:

or,

Ok, the difference might not be as dramatic as these clips, but...

Final Observation:  I bet most of you reading this have no clue how many people were trapped at the airport in the capital city of the Central African Republic when they ran there for looking for shelter from violence in the CAR last week.  You also probably do not know the name of the capital of the CAR.