Guest Post by Scott Adams
North Korea is playing nice with South Korea lately as they coordinate joint participation in the Olympics. But don’t get too excited about that niceness because it is a wedge strategy to separate South Korea from the United States in our unified position against North Korean nukes. Still, talking feels like a positive step compared to the alternatives.
The big issue, as we all know, is that North Korea wants nuclear weapons and most of the rest of the world, especially the United States, is unwilling to live with that. Hence the economic sanctions.
So what would a solution to this stalemate look like?
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For starters, you need a solution in which both sides seem to have won something. The alternative involves squeezing their economy until we choke it out, and that’s the current default path. The problem with that approach is that it risks pushing them to a war of desperation, and while we wait for that horror, millions of innocents will starve. The United States will come out on top eventually, but not at a cost we can be happy about. So allow me to suggest a winning option for all involved. I call it the Switzerland of the East plan.
Kim Jong Un went to school in Switzerland. He knows it as a country that gets just about everything right and does it without a traditional army. Is Switzerland safe from attack? Yup. Safer than just about any other country. Their famed neutrality is like a psychological army that costs nothing. No one has a reason to attack them, and everyone knows they won’t cause trouble.
Now, who would you rather be — a European country paying for a standing army, always worried about attack — or a country that is enjoying its neutrality while skiing and enjoying hot chocolate? I would argue that the Switzerland model is more stable and more respectable than any competing model, including the United States. And that gives North Korea a winning end state. They can, if they choose to pivot, become Switzerland of the East.
If North Korea traded away it’s offensive nuclear capabilities in return for a UN designation declaring them a neutral country, they could have the protection of China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. Collectively, we would become North Korea’s free military while they prosper. Under this plan, the United States would draw down its military assets in South Korea as well.
On top of such a plan, I have previously suggested creating a 100-year roadmap for Korean unification. The reason for such a long time frame is that it takes pressure off of the living. The next generation would need to close the deal, and that gives lots of time for confidence steps along the way. The Olympic coordination is a confidence step. Increasing travel is another. Then trade, communications, etc. No need to rush.
The key to this plan is that it gives North Korea not just a winning path, but the most winning path any leader ever took. It would lead to a Nobel Peace Prize for sure, shared by other leaders, I assume. And it would give North Korea a BETTER outcome than the one they are currently aiming for. At the moment, their greatest realistic ambition is to survive. Becoming Switzerland of the East is better than that. Way better. So much better it can hardly be compared. One thing we know about Kim Jong Un is that he likes sports and he likes winning. If he pivoted to become Switzerland of the East, he’d win harder than any leader ever won anything.
And the rest of the world would win too.
North Korea would still need a functioning economy that didn’t depend on smuggling arms and other illegal stuff. But the world would gladly help them rebuild. I can see North Korea as a sort of Las Vegas model, where laws about personal behavior are lax and the money flows.
The United States and North Korea are engaging in a psychological war right now. And for the first time in history it is a fair fight. President Trump understands the mental game like no president before him. And Kim Jong Un appears to have a similar toolset. Never have we had such a perfect setup for peace. There is a win here for both leaders, and a win of historic proportions.
North Korea surely holds no hope of conquering South Korea or destroying the United States with fire and malice, despite their colorful rhetoric. Two years ago it was popular to believe Kim Jong Un was nuts. Now we see him as rational and clever. He’ll recognize a better deal when he sees it. And becoming Switzerland of the East could be the best deal any country ever had.
It’s time for some winning all around.
North Korea should become the Las Vegas of the North. Gambling / whores / etc. They would make a lot of coin – and wouldn’t have to worry about being invaded.
What I fear with all this kumbaya during the Olympics is that the maniacal jerk running NK is willing to sacrifice his athletes to lull everyone into complacency and preemptively launch a massive attack on South Korea and anyone they can reach with a missile.
You have come up with a clever and logical proposition, but what makes you think the leader of NK wants what’s best for NK when he shows everyday that his power moves him and not the prosperity of the citizens of that poor country?
I think Scott fails to understand the psychology of the communist North Koreans, and Kim Jong Un in particular.
Assuming you enemy (or potential enemy) thinks the same and has the same values as you do is often a fatal mistake.
The only thing that seems to work in that country is its military. I don’t see them giving that up.
Excuse me but once upon a time in this country I live in we took principled positions on foreign regimes. The left insisted a Haitian general had to go because his ‘time was up’ and a leftist priest wanted to rule the country or maybe a SE Asian dictator’s wife had too many pairs of shoes. The right didn’t much care for communist dictators who wore sunglasses or African cannibals who wore field marshal’s uniforms.
Both left and right AGREED that the North Korean regime was an abomination. The fusion of Nazi militarism and Communist totalitarianism that no people should have to live under.
Heretofore we deferred to South Korean concerns that confronting this monstrous regime imperiled the lives of too many South Koreans within range of the North’s artillery. That has all changed in the past year. Now North Korea can imperil not only the lives of its own citizens and those in South Korea but people in Japan, Hawaii and now even the mainland United States!
We hear all this talk about ‘who we are as a people’ and what are our values. Well who are we and what are our ‘values’ if we allow an brutal totalitarian regime to continue to not only torture its own people ( hundreds of ghost boats are washing up on the shores of Japan now with bodies on board) but threaten the entire world!
I prefer the very “old school” version of who we are as a people. All the way back to John Quincy Adams when he was secretary of state. When on the occasion of the 45th. anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Adams in a historic address on foreign policy read the Declaration then went on to say that among other things that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy”. Or conversely in the parlance of our times “Not our monkeys, not our circus.” The part where you state “if we allow” a brutal regime to continue says volumes about where “we” as a people are in our foreign policies.
Perhaps no one attacks Switzerland because all kind of world “leaders” hide their bribes and stolen money there.
This will be unpopular, but North Korea is the way it is because its leaders (and obviously a significant proportion of its citizens) long ago decided that they would rather forego materialism and “freedom” than be the USA’s bitch, like every other country on earth (by varying degrees).
Given what Trump Derangement Syndrome has shown us about the power of our MSM, I don’t believe a single word about what has been said about North Korea over the last 70 years. It may well be every bit the shithole that we’ve been told it is, but chances are we’ve been lied to. Given that they were close to being complete annihilated (literally) in the Korean War, I don’t blame them for not trusting anything the US or UN says.
Really, if you were a regular Joe in say, Belgium, who hadn’t been exposed to Trump (the real estate magnate, author, reality TV star) until you started seeing CNN’s and MSNBC’s coverage of him, would you think Trump is any less sane or out of control than how the Kim dynasty has been portrayed? There are millions of people who truly believe Trump is a psychotic megalomaniacal racist serial sex abuser that lusts after his own daughter and is going to press the nuclear button at any minute. Almost everyone on this site knows that to be false. How is the typical Western attitude towards Kim Jong Un any different?
The “typical Western attitude towards Kim Jong Un” is “any different” because it is based on what Kim is actually saying and doing and on the conditions under which the North Korean people are being forced to live.
You’ve been there have you? The millions of people who feel such animosity towards Trump are seeing the very same Trump on TV that you see on TV
Yeah, I’ve been there.
And if you don’t believe it go fuck yourself.
So let me ask you a simple question you little shit: How many people are fleeing South Korea and China to get to the North and how many are fleeing North Korea to get to the South and China?
And if you can’t give a real answer to that go fuck yourself again.
Let’s ask Otto Warmbier, shall we? He’s been there. Oh yeah, he’s now dead. We could probably ask Shin Dong-hyuk. He wrote a book about it.
Oh, I forgot. The U.S.A. has the most objective and fair justice and penal systems in the world. The 95%+ conviction rate in criminal cases is because your DAs and States Attorneys are the smartest, most judicious human beings in the world – their powers of perception let them hone in on virtually every criminal in America. That’s how they’ve managed to get their prison population to the top, both in absolute and per capita terms by wide margins. Just think how many unapprehended criminals are on the loose in countries with incompetent courts and police forces, like Switzerland and Japan. I don’t know how people would feel safe walking down the street!
Another thing they excel at is managing to somehow divine which cars that happen to be driving by contain criminals carrying laundered money and proceeds of crime. They are so awesome that now they’re able to beat them at their own game! Last year the government took back more money that the bad guys even stole in the first place!
And I’ve been all over the US. Your Interstate highways really let tourists see into the heart of America. I’ve been to Bar Harbour, Boston, Orlando, Denver, Vegas and LA. I just know that the rest of the country would be just as cool. I hear Chicago and Baltimore are nice places to visit too….maybe I could do a Cubs\Orioles interleague home and home.
And man, I’ve never felt so safe as when I fly there. You can tell by the thorough and technologically advanced security that the really care. If it takes a missed connection here and there or the ol’ obligatory enhanced pat down for everyone to save one life, its worth it. No more 9\11s on their watch!
And where would we be without their peerless coverage of world and domestic events. At first I thought it was odd that pretty much every correspondent and pundit said the same things, but then it dawned on me that the USA so rich and committed to the welfare of its citizens that they have graciously taken over management of the media, sort of like how they do healthcare in some countries. That way more jobs can be created and filled to do the same amount of work. It really works out great for all those BA Communications grads.
I could go on. Needless to say, the USA as it stands today is not in a moral position to dictate to any country or “regime” on matters of governance, no matter how odious you perceive them to be. If there is anything the world justifiably despises about Americans its the smug, misinformed, arrogant USA! USA! USA! attitude. At times in your history it was probably less grating because you had something to brag about. You may (doubtfully) have that again. You do not now and have not for decades, so shut the fuck up and accept that the ratio of what you know to what you don’t know, like all of us, is 1:infinity. I was expressing skepticism of the 70-year long unified, unwaveringly consistent portrayal of North Korea by the MSM, and comparing it to an ongoing psyop of theirs that has hundreds of millions of people believing the opposite of what they’ve witnessed first hand for two years.
This certainly does not apply to many here, but thanks for fulfilling the dumbshit limbic-driven American stereotype.
I am afraid that David has it right. Nobody is going to attach the little country where they have stashed their wealth. Oh and by the way, every single person in Switzerland is in the military. The all have guns and they all know how to use them. My best friend got to shoot a rocket. Just once cause they are expensive but he got to shoot it. You would invade Switzerland at your peril and all Europeans know this.
and welp, the biggus centralus bankus counterfititus, unless ol Kim accepted the bending over of his nation….its not going to happen. NK is enemy because it has not bent over for centralus bankus counterfeititus.
Interesting suggestions. Maybe not realistic but not crazy. Seems like a first step has started in the Kim Jong Un is talking to the South Koreans, at least about the Olympics. Along these lines no one of importance in the US, as far as I know, has talked to him.
Maybe he and Trump could meet on a golf course in Guam or Hawaii and over a few beers talk about the world and their respective countries – like who has the most “sh****les”. Or compare golf handicaps. Or Trump could inquire about a Trump Hotel in Pyongang. Maybe Dennis Rodman could go along as a mediator. On the other hand, if Mr Rodman’s upset with Trump about his alleged “sh****le” comment, Trump could invite Jimmy Carter (have to hurry though).
I’d like to thank Mr Adams for thinking outside of the box.
Scott Adams and another head up his ass article.
Libya. Iraq. America has a great track record dealing with dictators who surrender. I’m sure Kim has no idea about this. Right? America never breaks treaties whenever it suits us. Right? We are most honorable, especially if we do a double pinky shake. Right?
SA is dumber than Dilbert.
Except that a reunification would put the little Rocket guy and his descendants out of power which is the last thing he wants. Right now he gets to be a dictator, what after that? A nobody?
Out of power in 100 years. Would Kim even know who he is in his late 120’s?