By Denny Roy
Candidates for the U.S. presidency are worryingly ill-prepared to deal with North Korea’s provocations.
North Korea’s claim of a successful H-bomb test provided an opportunity for the U.S. presidential candidates to demonstrate their expertise on a major policy issue about which they all should have been well-briefed by their handlers. Unfortunately for the country they aspire to lead, their initial comments were less than impressive.
Two points were common to many of the Republican Party candidates. The first was the familiar characterization of the North Korean government as irrational. Billionaire reality show star Donald Trump called DPRK paramount leader Kim Jong-un a “madman.” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Kim is a “megalomanic.” To Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Kim is a “lunatic.” Perhaps former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wins the prize for the strongest personal epithet against Kim, referring to him as “North Korea’s mega-maniac dictator with the funny haircut.” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was relatively restrained, noting that “There doesn’t seem to be the same rationality in North Korea” as in other nuclear states such as China and Russia. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democrat, had a more nuanced view, describing the DPRK as “a paranoid, isolated nation.”
Calling Kim crazy displays ignorance of strategy in general and of the North Korea issue in particular. In fact, the DPRK displays remarkable consistency in pursuit of its top-ranked objectives – the very definition of rationality. The North Korean leadership ruthlessly strives for regime security. Fundamentally a small and weak country and acutely aware of its vulnerability to attack or subversion by its arch-enemies South Korea and the United States, the DPRK has purposefully employed a strategy of highly bellicose posturing both to intimidate its external enemies and to appear heroic in the eyes of the North Korean public. One thing that is clear from the behavior of North Korean leaders is that the regime is not suicidal. Yet the image of the DPRK as a crazy state has the potential to warp policy-making, because this image exaggerates the likelihood that Pyongyang’s leaders would without provocation launch a nuclear attack against the United States or a U.S. ally – a suicidal act, because the inevitable U.S. retaliation would result in the physical destruction of the regime and the demise of the DPRK. It is disheartening that despite coaching from expert advisers, these candidates for the position of U.S. commander-in-chief either fail to grasp this situation or are unwilling to explain it to voters.
Read the full story at The Diplomat