Why North Korea Gets Away With It
Pyongyang's Skillful Deterrence
Article Summary and Author Biography
Before North Korea conducted its latest missile test, President Barack Obama and other world leaders were condemning the regime for its act of aggression. But North Korea will inevitably go unpunished for this provocation -- just as it has in the past. The country's nuclear arsenal, potential for collapse, and reputation for unpredictability all keep its foes from retaliating.
Jennifer Lind is an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth College and the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics. She is on Twitter at @profLind.
Postscript
The suddenness of Kim Jong Il’s death has sparked fears of instability on the Korean peninsula and beyond. Fearing a messy collapse, Beijing and Washington are trying to promote a smooth transition. But rooting for stability means rooting for the continuation of arguably the most despicable government on earth.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. (Courtesy Reuters)
U.S.–North Korea relations recently enjoyed 16 optimistic days: between February 29, when Pyongyang signed the “Leap Day” arms control agreement with the United States, and March 16, when it announced plans to conduct the very kind of rocket launch that it had just forsworn. Reacting to the announcement of the satellite launch, which is intended to commemorate the centenary of founding father Kim Il Sung’s birth, U.S. President Barack Obama warned North Korea about the consequences of provocation and called on China to stop “turning a blind eye” to the North Korean nuclear program. The denunciations Obama and others have been making sound like a familiar refrain. “Rules must be binding, violations must be punished, words must mean something,” Obama said in his now-famous Prague speech, in which he condemned North Korea’s April 2009 rocket launch. But the rules aren’t binding, North Korea’s violations aren’t meaningfully punished, words are mostly just words, and China does little...
