What’s Really Going on In Pyongyang

Gabriel Rom

North Korea’s recent nuclear tests as well as their repudiation of their long standing armistice with South Korea signals a radical change in the way North Korea’s leadership would like the country to be perceived by the rest of the world. Blatant, aggressive, volatile…North Korea can no longer be put on the backburner. Nations across the world have condemned the tests with varying degrees of intensity, but North Korea has got what it wanted: Attention.

Do these actions make strategic sense? The short answer is no. “The suddenness of the  nuclear test shows North Korea following military, not diplomatic logic,” Hideshi Takesada, a Korea expert at Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies, told Bloomberg News.

The Koreans have completely put diplomacy out of their minds, and are acting with military goals in mind, not diplomatic ones. Whether this change in attitude is an act to try and make diplomacy easier for the NoKos, or if it truly is the beginning of a military conflict in the area, is something no westerner and probably no one else besides Kim Jong-il and his closest advisers can know.

What we can deduce is this though: “During the past 40 years North Korean leaders have been blustery but fundamentally risk averse. They have done nothing that would risk the total destruction of their state…until now.”

The way Pyongyang has been acting in the past week demonstrates that they are willing to accept much larger and destructive risks than they were before. The question for Barack Obama and the rest of the world is this: Are the North Koreans posturing?

Consider this analogy (this will take a cursory understanding of Texas Hold Em’ poker): We’re at a poker table, and it’s North Korea’s turn to act. They raise big (the nuclear tests). Sitting across from NK is America and effectively all of the  Western powers.  Now it’s our turn to act. We have three options. Fold (Take no diplomatic, economic, or military action, basically keeping the situation static. Call (Some combination of economic and diplomatic response. Basically acknowledging that North Korea is a serious threat and that our response, whatever it is, must keep them in check. The risk level would be higher if we choose to call as we must remember exactly what we’re calling: A nuclear detonation from a rogue regime with a potentially mentally unstable leader. Finally, we can Reraise. This course of action would most likely include massive economic restrictions and likely be accompanied with a military campaign in the region. This response would obviously entail the most risk, but potentially the most reward.

Note: This analogy is simply meant to give context to an extremely complex situation. The Fold, Call, Re raise terminology is not hard and fast. For example one word, “call”, entails an indeterminable amount of strategies, contingency plans, and diplomatic philosophies of which any combination could be used. The only thing that unifies these responses under the word “call”, is that they maintain a certain level of restraint and risk aversion, as this is what philosophically defines a call in the poker world as well.  The world of geopolitics does not have to follow all the rules of the poker table. Additionally, remember that there are many other actors in this conflict (South Korea, Japan, China, etc)

These are Barack Obama’s options. Our next article will delve deeper into these options, discussing which action or combination of actions are the most rational and effective.