Teleidoscope

Thu, Dec 28, 2006

North Korea and the US Military

Posted at 2:18 pm MST to Current Events

OK, bear with me here..

The blog MakingLight has an article titled "January 2007: United States Conquered by Canada; Pockets of Resistance Quickly Suppressed" in response to a news article "Currently there are no active or reserve Army combat units outside of Iraq and Afghanistan that are rated as 'combat ready.'". Some of the comments are very funny, with people having sarcastic fun with the idea of the US being conquered by Canada, or partitioned between Canada and Mexico, (or even Canada, Mexico and Jamaica).

One of the more serious comments worried about North Korean responses to any weakening of US military strength in Korea, and Charlie Stross responded:

Kid: you don't need to worry about North Korea, their foreign policy is entirely sane and perfectly rational ... once you understand that the USA isn't the centre of their world, or even particularly important to them.

NK is economically weak and surrounded by enemies that have territorial claims to their land -- SK, China, Russia, Japan (over the water) and so on. Therefore, NK foreign policy is predicated on the need to maintain a strong outside military presence in the peninsula as a stabilizing force. That outside military presence is conveniently provided by the USA, which has no territorial claim on NK and can be led around by the nose if you simply threaten to test a missile or refine some uranium. As long as the USA is present in force, nobody else dares to make a move. So whenever it looks as if the level of tension is dropping too low and the USA might start to think about disengaging, the NK government does something whacky like releasing a video of Kim Jong-Il foaming at the mouth or biting the heads off a live cobra, or lobbing a rocket at the Tsushima Straits.

Basically, the USA is in the peninsula because the North Koreans want the USA there, in order to deter the Chinese/Russians/Japanese/South Koreans from starting something.

Clear?

This makes a lot of sense.

Charlie Stross is one of the best current SF writers, and until recently he was a journalist (mostly technology-related). He pays attention to the way things inter-relate, and, being British, he has a usefully different perspective than US commentators. So he often has very illuminating ideas about world affairs.

I wonder where one gets multiheaded cobras, though.

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