Anti-Regime Activities In North Korea

[Eddie]

Contrary to conventional wisdom, a wide spectrum of evidence shows that a significant number of North Koreans are not brainwashed slaves to a nightmarish regime. Joshua, who served as a JAG in USFK from 1998-2002, has a terrific breakdown of anti-regime resistance at the Korea Liberator./

A portion:

Opposition to Kim Jong Il is as old as the regime itself. I’ve met a number of ex-North Koreans, from a soldier who once served on the opposite side of the DMZ while I was an American soldier in South Korea, to a man who had joined other students in Pyongyang to sow anti-Kim Il Sung leaflets in the late 1940s (he left town, one step ahead of Kim Il Sung’s police). During the Korean War, U.S. forces discovered an indengenous, anti-Communist guerrilla movement fighting against Kim Il Sung’s army, near the mouth of the Yalu River. The U.S. supported and advised these “White Tigers,” who grew to a force of 22,000 by war’s end. The U.S. promptly betrayed them on signing the Armistice.

While the options of the US in helping to forment resistance are limited, we can still do far more than we are this point. James Forsyth at FP Passport points out the tragedy inherent in how all of us (Americans, Japanese, Europeans, etc) view North Korea:

If you approached random wonks on Massachusetts Avenue, Washington's think tank row (and home to FP), and asked what concerns them in the world, you'd get a fairly standard response. In some order: Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Darfur, AIDS, and climate change. Before July 4th, North Korea wouldn't have instantly sprung to mind for most people, your correspondent included. But forget for a second Kim's nuclear ambitions and just think about what he does to his own people. Here's a regime so barbaric that people are burned at the stake with their own relatives lighting the fire. If that wasn't enough, it also tests chemical weapons on its own citizens detained in concentration camps. ............................................... In a few months, this current crisis will have simmered down and the Hermit Kingdom will return once more to the back of our minds. All of which makes one realize quite how hollow our recitation of the mantra "never again" really is. As Applebaum wrote, sixty years from now "no one will be able to understand how it was possible that we knew of the existence of the gas chambers but failed to act." The real tragedy of North Korea is that we only really think - or care - about it when Kim Jong-Il fires off one of his missiles.

Given North Korea's affinity for violating agreements and telling the rest of the world to screw off, perhaps Pres. Bush's example ( I loathe Kim Jong Il! ) should inspire us to bring the full bear of our soft power, our moral outrage and our ingenuity in doing everything we can to break his regime down and foster and support resistance in North Korea. Its becoming increasingly clear that anything short of this effort makes a terrible mockery of both our national security and the ideals that we strive to live up to.

Any new ideas or proposals to improve our current anti-regime activities (i.e. our successful anti-counterfeiting campaign)? We've got some intrepid thinkers here at MIl Blogs....

Before there was Lex...Merchant Aircraft Carriers

[Eagle1]

A little ship history here.

And if you flew a Hawker Sea Hurricane off a CAM, you never had to worry about Landing Signal Officers...

Of course, this was a little before Lex started learning how to fly at P-cola. Well, maybe a lot before...

Re: Peace in Our Time

[Grim]

OK: the Philippines gets two separate entries (though really the Moro problem is complicated enough that it arguably deserves to be two or three separate entries on its own).

But what about Thailand? There are zero mentions of Thailand in the summary PDF. There's been a bloody separatist insurgency in Thailand that raged on during 2005, as it did in earlier years and does still. It's got all the usual elements: a separatist ethnic group (ethnic Malay Muslims), a definable homeland (the southern provinces of Thailand, which are majority Malay Muslim whereas the rest of Thailand is majority ethnic Thai Buddhists, with only minority Thai Muslims and ethnic Chinese), ethnic cleansing, accusations of government oppression/overreach, etc.

What's the threshold that the Philippines' conflicts have crossed, but that the Thailand one hasn't?

By the way, Hawk, the problem you mention apparently gets its own Appendix.:

Appendix 2C, by Neil J. Melvin, considers Islam, conflict and terrorism. With the end of the cold war, religion has increasingly been viewed as a key element in many of the world’s conflicts. In recent years, and particularly after the events of 11 September 2001 in the USA, radical Islam has been identified as a source of violence, including terrorism. While some observers have seen in the growth of religious extremism a ‘clash of civilizations’ in which Islamists are taking a leading role, recent research has shown a more complex picture of Muslim societies and their relationship to the rest of the world. From this perspective, internal transformation and conflict within the Muslim world as a result of globalization is promoting the emergence of new, dynamic and, in some circumstances, violent movements that are often opposed to traditional Islam. The diversity of contemporary Islamist movements and the variety of factors that shape the role of Islam within conflict suggest the need for more sophisticated development of security policies intended to prevent and terminate conflict involving individuals and groups linked to the Muslim world.

So there you are -- we need a more sophisticated approach. Which is fair, I suppose, given that I was just arguing that the Moro problem by itself is pretty complex, and may really be two or three separate problems.

Re: Peace In Our Time

[Soldier's Dad]

via SPIRI 2006 Yearbook Summary (PDF)

No interstate conflicts were active in 2005, for the second year running

In recent years, Africa has provided pointed illustrations of the negative impact of weak governance and conflict on economic development—as in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia and Zimbabwe—and of how strong the turnaround can be when governance problems and conflict are resolved

IMHO The fundamental difference between Iraq, Germany and Japan at the end of the conflict was that the civil governments of Germany and Japan were left intact and Iraq didn't have a functioning civil government.

We have Infantry Brigades, Armor Brigades, Air Wings as deployable modular components. What we need is Brigade sized Civil Affairs "Governments in a Box" if we are ever going to solve the failed state problem.

If we don't solve the failed state problem, we can never solve the non-state actors problem.

Peace in our Time

[Greyhawk]

Most of the world has rarely been more peaceful than it is today, according a report from Sweden's Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The institute's recently released Yearbook 2006, drawing from data maintained by Sweden's Uppsala University, reports that the number of active, major armed conflicts worldwide stood at 17 in 2005, the lowest point in a steep slide from a high of 31 in 1991.

But one interpretation of that statistic is that wars simply ain't what they used to be...

...the face of conflict is changing, they say, and free-for-all violence in such places as the Congo can defy their definitions.

“To say conflict as a whole is in decline, I could not draw that conclusion,” said Caroline Holmqvist of Sweden's Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

So while an increasingly small percentage of the world experiences the horror of 21st-century armed conflict, most of the world confronts the great challenge of defining just what those conflicts are - and how to respond to them. In fact, arguing that issue is the closest thing to combat 90% (or more) of the world's population will ever know.

The linked article provides a list of the world's 17 conflicts. Along with Afghanistan and Iraq, any good Soldier of Fortune should still be able to find gainful employment in Myanmar, Burundi, Uganda, the Darfur region of Sudan, Colombia, Peru, Turkey, Israel/Palestine, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Nepal, and two insurgencies in the Philippines.

The 17th is "the global U.S. campaign against al-Qaeda".

The article divides these conflicts into the regions where they occur - Asia, South America, Middle East, etc. - and presents various hypotheses for the decline in wars in recent years. Both discussions may be useful, but they're also a great way to ignore the very obvious gorilla in the living room. But I suppose pointing out that Islam is somehow involved in the majority of the world's wars and almost wars would be boorish and thuggish, so I'll refrain too.

Here's to peace in our time.