By Oh Young-jin
There is a long lineage of villains, who are pilloried, ridiculed, mocked and feared. We love to hate them and sometimes act as if we can't live without them. A check with them can give a lesson or two about how to deal with today's most-wanted villain in North Korea, a.ka. Rocket Man.
The roster includes Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Muammar Gaddhfi of Libya, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Benito Mussolini of Italy, Adolf Hitler of Germany, Pol Pot of Cambodia, Idi Amin of Uganda, Hideki Tojo of Imperial Japan, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the three stooges of North Korea's Kim dynasty, from its founder Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il to his grandson Kim Jong-un. The youngest is one side of the ultimate contest of brinkmanship currently underway with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Our history of dealing with villains shows we overestimate, underestimate or misunderstand them. That leads us to take countermeasures leading to overkill, under-kill or cluelessness.
On Hitler, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was branded a cowardly appeaser. If he had showed some backbone to the Nazi megalomaniac and refused to sign the Munich Treaty, World War II could have been avoided. Then, millions of Jews could have been spared from death camps, the devastation of Germany avoided, and the glory days of Europe continued. The world could have been a better place for that. This assessment amounts to scratching the surface. There were a lot of other factors that contributed to the outbreak but it was in a nutshell a rebellion of Germans who couldn't bear the burden of war reparations imposed on them by the World War I victors.
Lesson 1 for dealing with the North is to try and see more than what meets the eye. We have to know why Kim Jong-un is acting as he has been ― is it for survival, conquest of the South for unification, confrontation with the U.S. or none of these?
For Saddam, we all know there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. But the U.S. needed a whipping boy after the 9/11 attacks and Saddam happened to be in the right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time. With Iraq liberated and Hussein captured after a long game of hide-and-seek, did the world become a safer place? The absence of the dictators didn't mean the instant flowering of democracy and freedom.
Lessons 2 and 3 are: We shouldn't target the North with our emotional outbursts and must have a plan after its weapons of mass destruction are dealt with. The world is witnessing an escalating duel of egos with fireworks of emotion. One miscalculation and we would be sent on an unintended path.
The U.S. has been sucked in by its own nation-building efforts with tens of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans killed in factional fighting and terrorist acts by indigenous and pan-Arab forces.
The power vacuum in Iraq has led to the toppling of dictators in the Middle East and northern Africa in the Arab Spring at the cost of contagious instability. Sweeping away the dictators is a moral triumph and realization of poetic justice. The terroristic Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is flourishing, taking advantage of the shaken balance of power and turning Arab hatred toward the West in a holy war for a great Islamic empire.
Now, Bashar al-Asaad is not just surviving U.S. attempts to remove him by playing it off against other powers in the region. The result is not just America's bruised pride but a state of disarray in the region that is divided by regional alliances, tribal ties and big-power politics.
Lesson 4: With the North out of way or in the process of its removal, there is a high possibility the U.S. and China will clash for hegemony in the region. This clash would be the mother of all battles. Do we have a plan to keep the two powers apart?
Even more worrisome is an incessant flow of refugees from the region where dictatorship has been the only established rule the people have known for decades or centuries. Although their numbers have reduced to a trickle for now, it looks ready to turn into a flood at any time. It is a ticking time bomb that can make Europe more destitute and demographically divided. We now see hints of clashes of civilizations ― Christian and Islamic.
The U.S. has lost trillions of dollars, damaged its global leadership and is reduced to the position of being challenged by China and Russia. It has blown up the chance of being the one big nation left at the end of history but even Francis Fukuyama retracted his theory. For that, the world is in balance, dangerously.
Lesson 5: The U.S. may become much weaker. It could trigger a seismic change in the world order and pave the way for "Pax Sinica." Have we imagined living under the new superpower, China, an authoritarian and bullying descendant of the Middle Kingdom?
Finally, what is left with the three Kims?
They have been footnotes on the margins of global politics. The North's nuclear and missile programs have changed it all. With Kim Il-sung, the U.S. was tempted to mount a strike to take out its nuclear facilities. Then, Kim Jong-il represented a chance for negotiated settlement or at least toward that end. It was let go of. Now, the youngest has taken the South hostage and is threatening the U.S.
If it succeeds in becoming a nuclear weapons state, the North would still be a poor country with nuclear weapons. We are richer and more powerful than that nuclear-armed destitute country. And time is with us because the North does not have much to rely on to sustain itself, being cut off from the outside.
Lesson 6: Sometimes, it can be the best policy to bury your head in the sand and wait for the enemy to disappear. Sounds cowardly? But do we need to rattle the hornets' nest when they disappear at the end of autumn?
Chances are we will never heed the lessons of history and plunge head-first only with a plan to win. We would rarely think about the aftermath ― that's human nature.
Oh Young-jin (foolsdie5@ktimes.com and foolsdie@gmail.com) is The Korea Times' chief editorial writer.
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The roster includes Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Muammar Gaddhfi of Libya, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Benito Mussolini of Italy, Adolf Hitler of Germany, Pol Pot of Cambodia, Idi Amin of Uganda, Hideki Tojo of Imperial Japan, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the three stooges of North Korea's Kim dynasty, from its founder Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il to his grandson Kim Jong-un. The youngest is one side of the ultimate contest of brinkmanship currently underway with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Our history of dealing with villains shows we overestimate, underestimate or misunderstand them. That leads us to take countermeasures leading to overkill, under-kill or cluelessness.
On Hitler, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was branded a cowardly appeaser. If he had showed some backbone to the Nazi megalomaniac and refused to sign the Munich Treaty, World War II could have been avoided. Then, millions of Jews could have been spared from death camps, the devastation of Germany avoided, and the glory days of Europe continued. The world could have been a better place for that. This assessment amounts to scratching the surface. There were a lot of other factors that contributed to the outbreak but it was in a nutshell a rebellion of Germans who couldn't bear the burden of war reparations imposed on them by the World War I victors.
Lesson 1 for dealing with the North is to try and see more than what meets the eye. We have to know why Kim Jong-un is acting as he has been ― is it for survival, conquest of the South for unification, confrontation with the U.S. or none of these?
For Saddam, we all know there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. But the U.S. needed a whipping boy after the 9/11 attacks and Saddam happened to be in the right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time. With Iraq liberated and Hussein captured after a long game of hide-and-seek, did the world become a safer place? The absence of the dictators didn't mean the instant flowering of democracy and freedom.
Lessons 2 and 3 are: We shouldn't target the North with our emotional outbursts and must have a plan after its weapons of mass destruction are dealt with. The world is witnessing an escalating duel of egos with fireworks of emotion. One miscalculation and we would be sent on an unintended path.
The U.S. has been sucked in by its own nation-building efforts with tens of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans killed in factional fighting and terrorist acts by indigenous and pan-Arab forces.
The power vacuum in Iraq has led to the toppling of dictators in the Middle East and northern Africa in the Arab Spring at the cost of contagious instability. Sweeping away the dictators is a moral triumph and realization of poetic justice. The terroristic Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is flourishing, taking advantage of the shaken balance of power and turning Arab hatred toward the West in a holy war for a great Islamic empire.
Now, Bashar al-Asaad is not just surviving U.S. attempts to remove him by playing it off against other powers in the region. The result is not just America's bruised pride but a state of disarray in the region that is divided by regional alliances, tribal ties and big-power politics.
Lesson 4: With the North out of way or in the process of its removal, there is a high possibility the U.S. and China will clash for hegemony in the region. This clash would be the mother of all battles. Do we have a plan to keep the two powers apart?
Even more worrisome is an incessant flow of refugees from the region where dictatorship has been the only established rule the people have known for decades or centuries. Although their numbers have reduced to a trickle for now, it looks ready to turn into a flood at any time. It is a ticking time bomb that can make Europe more destitute and demographically divided. We now see hints of clashes of civilizations ― Christian and Islamic.
The U.S. has lost trillions of dollars, damaged its global leadership and is reduced to the position of being challenged by China and Russia. It has blown up the chance of being the one big nation left at the end of history but even Francis Fukuyama retracted his theory. For that, the world is in balance, dangerously.
Lesson 5: The U.S. may become much weaker. It could trigger a seismic change in the world order and pave the way for "Pax Sinica." Have we imagined living under the new superpower, China, an authoritarian and bullying descendant of the Middle Kingdom?
Finally, what is left with the three Kims?
They have been footnotes on the margins of global politics. The North's nuclear and missile programs have changed it all. With Kim Il-sung, the U.S. was tempted to mount a strike to take out its nuclear facilities. Then, Kim Jong-il represented a chance for negotiated settlement or at least toward that end. It was let go of. Now, the youngest has taken the South hostage and is threatening the U.S.
If it succeeds in becoming a nuclear weapons state, the North would still be a poor country with nuclear weapons. We are richer and more powerful than that nuclear-armed destitute country. And time is with us because the North does not have much to rely on to sustain itself, being cut off from the outside.
Lesson 6: Sometimes, it can be the best policy to bury your head in the sand and wait for the enemy to disappear. Sounds cowardly? But do we need to rattle the hornets' nest when they disappear at the end of autumn?
Chances are we will never heed the lessons of history and plunge head-first only with a plan to win. We would rarely think about the aftermath ― that's human nature.
Oh Young-jin (foolsdie5@ktimes.com and foolsdie@gmail.com) is The Korea Times' chief editorial writer.
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