Understanding North Korea

By Terry Lacey

(May 30, Jakarta, Sri Lanka Guardian) Should Indonesia be worried about North Korea? Perhaps a North Korean rocket with a nuclear warhead could reach Indonesia. But if Indonesia wants to talk to North Korea, they have an Embassy in Jakarta. If North Korea wanted to reach Indonesia, they would probably get as far as Bali, and stay there for most of the trip.

After the latest North Korean nuclear bomb tests, combined with their spectacular but not technically successful missile test, South Korea, the ASEAN countries, Japan, Russia, the US and Western Europe are nervous in case Kim Jong-il manages to get his atom bombs and rockets integrated and working at the same time and then actually summons enough chutzpah to fire one at somebody.

North Koreans and other readers who do not know what chutzpah means are advised to look up dictionaries and learn about a Middle Eastern country which says it does not have nuclear weapons, but reportedly has more than a few just at the point of final assembly.

So they have them and they don’t have them. These people are very good at arguing and always being right. But the US, the EU and the Russians don’t seem so worried about them, although one day they might have reason to be, if they ever decided to make a first strike against someone else who might also be trying to make some.

This feisty little country has quite enough chutzpah to wag the American imperialist dog by his tail, and does so regularly to keep in practice. It seems to prove that if you want the Americans to take notice of you should have more atom bombs not less, which is what the UK and France found out a long time ago.

So if you have 200 nuclear warheads and say you don’t have them, but could change that pretty quick if you needed to, and have chutzpah as well, then that makes you a lot more dangerous and influential than if you maybe have 5 or 6 completed, nearly finished or being painted, and can’t yet get them inside a rocket, and cant get the rocket to land in the right place.

However if the political leadership in charge of this do-it-yourself nuclear weapons program, are apparently as nutty as fruitcakes then it is something to worry about, but it doesn’t do any good to get hysterical.

I am reminded of an excellent quotation from a old-fashioned feet-on-the-ground French general who I quoted many years ago who said “You can do anything you like with bayonets, except sit on them, and with nuclear weapons it’s the reverse”.

In other words there´s no fun any more in love and war, since nuclear deterrence may actually apply to nut cases, or people who seem like nut cases, as well as sane people.

You may be thinking finally that the proof that I know nothing about North Korea is that they don’t speak North Korean. But that’s my point. They do speak North Korean.

“We will respond with a powerful military strike” means please come to dinner.

“We will maintain our capacity to strike through the efforts of our toiling masses who are dedicated to their love of the Great Leader” means please come to dinner urgently, and please bring a pizza because we have no food.

“The American imperialists and their running dogs must learn that our Great Leader will struggle all his life, with the toiling masses, to defend our capacity to strike our enemies with devastating blows” means for God´s sake hurry up because we don’t have full control, our people are half starving and when our wall comes tumbling down we will need a transition and not anarchy.

So North Korea urgently needs food aid, not conditional on nuclear disarmament, but linked to accepting internationally backed programs for public administration reform, small and medium enterprise support, help with agricultural modernization and the beginnings of economic liberalization. Now that might stop a war.

Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world, investment and trade relations with the EU and Islamic banking.

-Sri Lanka Guardian