I am glad Steve is writing about this. It is important that we recognize the likely resistance that will occur if the Kim Family Regime collapses (and very similar conditions will exist in post-conflict after the regime is destroyed).
My work on this can be found here:
"Unification Options and Scenarios: Assisting a Resistance" (2015)
"Should The United States Support Korean Unification: And If So, How?" (2014)
"Thoughts on Irregular Threats for north Korea Post-Conflict and Post-Collapse: Understanding Them to Counter Them" (2010)
I would say this to Steve (and anyone else who cares about this): The war, regime collapse, post-conflict, and post-collapse operations will be the biggest "by, with, and through" operation in which the US has ever participated. We owe it to our blood ally (and to the American people) to help them lead their own unification process but not lead it ourselves. north Korea is not Iraq and Afghanistan and the ROK military and ROK government is not the Afghan and Iraq military and government. We cannot approach the north Korea problem the same way we have Afghanistan and Iraq even though the conditions, conflict, and resistance will likely be far worse in north Korea than anything we have encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan (or Syria - and there are lessons there to be learned with the great and medium power interventions). We are going to have to enable and assist our much more capable partner and blood ally the ROK. But we cannot occupy the north with US forces and we cannot take the lead in the stabilization and unification process. If we do we will create a quagmire that will be far worse than the quagmire we have in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria and far worse than the one in which the ROK will find itself if they are leading and we are assisting (but it will be a quagmire nonetheless).
If the Kim Regime Falls in North Korea, Sustained Armed Resistance Could Follow
Steven Metz Friday, Jan. 26, 2018
At some point, the brutal and parasitic Kim family dictatorship in North Korea must end, but it is impossible to tell whether it will happen sooner or later. Many predictions that the regime would fall have proven false, but it simply cannot last forever. Whether by internal conflict or by provoking a war with South Korea and the United States, the Kim regime eventually will go.
Stressing that “Korean unification is a Korean affair,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in is convinced that whenever reunification comes, it should be under the leadership of the democratic and economically vigorous south, rather than the decrepit, economically incompetent and brutal regime of Kim Jong Un in the north. Seoul has prepared extensively, establishing a National Unification Board in 1969 and later upgrading it to the Ministry of Unification, which has made substantial plans for a post-Kim stabilization of North Korea.
This would certainly be a good thing for everyone, except Kim loyalists. In addition to the Korean people, other nations, including the United States, would benefit from a unified, peaceful, democratic and prosperous Korean Peninsula. The problem is getting there: The Kim regime will not go easily, and even if it is gone, the job will have only just begun.
Today, South Korea recognizes that stabilizing, rebuilding and integrating North Korea will take a massive effort, but it also believes that it will be relatively peaceful. History has made Koreans leery of external intervention, but Seoul assumes most North Koreans will see South Koreans as fellow countrymen and therefore accept—even welcome—unification engineered by their southern brethren and immediately embrace democracy, the rule of law and the free market system.
Stressing that “Korean unification is a Korean affair,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in is convinced that whenever reunification comes, it should be under the leadership of the democratic and economically vigorous south, rather than the decrepit, economically incompetent and brutal regime of Kim Jong Un in the north. Seoul has prepared extensively, establishing a National Unification Board in 1969 and later upgrading it to the Ministry of Unification, which has made substantial plans for a post-Kim stabilization of North Korea.
This would certainly be a good thing for everyone, except Kim loyalists. In addition to the Korean people, other nations, including the United States, would benefit from a unified, peaceful, democratic and prosperous Korean Peninsula. The problem is getting there: The Kim regime will not go easily, and even if it is gone, the job will have only just begun.
Today, South Korea recognizes that stabilizing, rebuilding and integrating North Korea will take a massive effort, but it also believes that it will be relatively peaceful. History has made Koreans leery of external intervention, but Seoul assumes most North Koreans will see South Koreans as fellow countrymen and therefore accept—even welcome—unification engineered by their southern brethren and immediately embrace democracy, the rule of law and the free market system.
(Continued at the link below)
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