The other North Korean challenge

I don’t write much about North Korea, because I don’t know a lot about it.  But I’m convinced it poses a potentially enormous challenge on two fronts:

1. as a nuclear power
2. as a collapsed state

Bruce Bennett’s presentation on the second challenge at Heritage Foundation October 17 strikes me as generally well-informed, even if might quarrel on details (I don’t much like the idea of airdropping humanitarian assistance, for example).  So I’m posting it here, along with a link to his RAND study on Preparing for the Possibility of a North Korean Collapse.  Those who think the United States doesn’t need a capacity to plan for and deal with weak, fragile or collapsed states–in this case in cooperation with South Korea–should take note:

As Bennett points out, the issue is not whether we would want to intervene, but whether we would have to in order to avoid serious risks to our own national security as a result of North Korean collapse.  It is clear that any intervention would have to be a combined military/civilian operation.

I am hoping to have a post up soon on the UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Public Hearing, held here at SAIS this week.   Human rights violations are a clear warning sign of state collapse.