History has a sad way of repeating itself when it comes to
state-abetted tragedy. During famines in the 1920s in the Soviet
Union and in 1950s China a sickening phenomenon was hidden from the
world’s eyes. Horses and other large animals disappeared first, and
then smaller animals like cats and dogs. Not long after, people
traveling through remote villages on foot simply vanished. The
recently dead were then found missing from their graves. Finally,
young children disappeared from streets. As people later admitted,
they all became food for the desperate.
That pattern is repeating itself in the last Stalinist nation
left on our planet. Refugees fleeing North Korea have reported that
some farmers’ markets are trading in “special meat” and bodies are
being dug up just hours after burial. Most horrifically, children
are disappearing with the grisly conclusion that they are being
killed for food. International organizations are being barred from
investigating the reports for “security reasons.”
All of this goes on while North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il
spends enormous sums of money to build, as Christopher Hitchens
termed it earlier this year, his “plutonium god” to prove to the
world that his nation is a real power. Dangerous technologies are
exported to other trouble spots like Pakistan, potentially
spreading death and destruction. Giant parades and rallies are held
for his children-eating subjects to have an opportunity to laud his
greatness while North Korea’s economy continues to implode. It’s
virtually a carbon copy of the insanity practiced by the Soviet
Union and China decades earlier, except that Kim’s mental stability
is questionable at best.
That rabidly totalitarian North Korea is a danger to its own
citizens and to others hopefully isn’t in question. Its hostile
actions against its neighbors are regular and likely portents of
things to come. Its declaration that it needs nuclear weapons, of
which it likely already has several, to deter a potential conflict
with the United States makes a mockery of its claims that its
nuclear program is designed to produce electricity for civilian
needs. Half the 22 million people of North Korea are malnourished
even while Pyongyang pumps ever more resources into its million-man
army. North Korea’s work on intercontinental ballistic missiles not
only threatens our allies South Korea and Japan, but also all of
North America.
Admittedly none of these things individually necessarily make a
case for a more confrontational approach to North Korea. Taken as a
whole, however, they create a powerful moral argument for
abandoning U.S. President George W. Bush’s policy of containment or
pursuing it in tandem with policies designed to destabilize Kim’s
regime. While opponents of a more aggressive policy could argue
that whoever replaces Kim may not be better, it’s also quite safe
to argue that it’s doubtful they would be any worse.
If we do proceed with regime change we can be certain of a few
things. It will continue to send the message to rogue nations
around the world that threats to global security will be dealt with
either peacefully or with force. If removing Kim rescues North
Koreans from starvation and anarchy then a moral point is made. The
third member of Bush’s axis of evil, Iran, may also learn that
ignoring its nascent democracy movement may prove to be a mistake.
Repressive regimes everywhere, especially those in Asia, will note
that a moral dimension now influences the West’s foreign
policy.
There were many in the run up to the war against Saddam Hussein,
myself included, who argued that the justification for regime
chance in Iraq did not necessarily lead to the same conclusion for
North Korea. Those arguments ignored the morality of why regime
change is necessary. Hussein’s Baathist regime and Kim’s communist
tyranny share the same characteristic. They are built upon an
inverted pyramid with the wealth of a nation cascading down to a
few. It would a firm nudge to push that pyramid over and give North
Koreans some semblance of a life back. We have only two choices
when that fall finally occurs — we can be there and help or we can
sit back and pretend that the issue doesn’t concern us.
