North Korea: Madman's End Game

North Korea, or specifically, Kim Jong Un, appears to be trying to find a reset button for dealing with the global community, or in particular, with the United States. But time may have passed the pudgy-cheeked little dictator by and left him in the ditch. After all, it’s hard to move from espousing the bright red LAUNCH button on your desk for one that quietly reads, reset, adjust rhetoric, kiss baby.

Why, you ask in a civil tone and with eyebrows properly furrowed, would Kim Jong Un even want a reset? After all, he is a third generation murderous lunatic who kills his former supporters and relatives with everything from mortar shells to bullets. He starves his population, feeds mainly the military that feverishly applauds his every decision, and runs the harshest political prisons this side of, well, everywhere. He survives by threat, bluster, and the occasional attack on shipping or the border that separates the two Koreas. “He is the poster boy for crazy,” you state with finality and flaring nostrils.

But what if, I ask with all due respect, that if under that outlandish and possibly irretrievable haircut, there lurks a plan, or dare I say it, an endgame? And what if that endgame was simply the ability to wage nuclear war and the means to wage it on foreign soil? If that is the case, then the little demon has achieved his goal, and no amount of negative publicity, American or United Nations’ sanctions will get that ability out of his hands.

But now what? Having nuclear capability doesn’t mean you can use it. On the contrary, if you use yours, then the real super powers will use theirs, and it is the end of the line for a one-trick-nuclear-pony. No, the only benefit of nuclear capability is the rational understanding that no sane nation wants to see that capability exercised.  This is why Kim wanted to meet with the South Koreans regarding the Winter Olympics. This is why the verbal salvos to Trump have been more muted. Kim Jong Un is now ready to walk on the international stage as an equal, as a part of the global community, to have his say in world affairs, to make trade agreements and other treaties. And all of this goes hand-in-hand with the understanding that other nuclear have-nots will see North Korea as the global banker whose nuclear expertise can be bought. And on the other side of the coin, the Western powers will have to court Kim Jong Un to keep him in line and his arsenal unpilfered by such louts as Hamas or ISIS.

But then there is the ditch that I mentioned earlier, the one that history may have already planned for the likes of Kim Jong Un. You remember the recent fiasco in Hawaii over the non-existent incoming missile that convinced Jim Carrey he was down to just ten minutes to live.  (In only ten minutes, how do you reconcile your self-worth with Dumb and Dumber To in the equation?)  More importantly, it scared the living daylights out of millions of people and probably pushed the inevitability factor toward the front of the military planning scenario.

The planning meetings might proceed in this vein. The Hawaii event demonstrates that we have millions of Americans that truly live in fear of a madman in North Korea. Without any known plan of his own, Kim Jong Un now knows that we were basically unprepared to massively retaliate for a perceived strike. Now, since we also realize that Kim Jong Un will think in this manner, our determination to retaliate moves closer to the trigger. But more importantly, we know that a nuclear exchange will be messy. But then, we think, the exchange could be manageable or, possibly not at all, if we strike them first? And of course, this same thought worms its way through the bad haircut and into the brain of Kim Jong Un. You know, the same guy who may or may not be, a mad man.