An Opportunistic Game beyond the Brink

It has been 57 years since the two Koreas were at war. Never formally ended, the conflict was the first of the many standoffs during the Cold War between Washington and Moscow. Since 1953, an armistice ruled the relationship between North Korea and South Korea. North Korea has, as a country, converted itself in terms of economic power and has been ruled by an extravagant dynastic communist regime that has been marked by its unpredictability and resorted to the extortion of weapons to survive. The shock from yesterday was part of an ongoing escalation since March, when 46 sailors drowned after a North Korean ship sank a South Korean naval vessel. Several days ago, Pyongyang revealed the progress of its nuclear laboratory that implied a much more formidable arsenal than was originally thought. All this ruckus has been part of a gateway for the rise to power of Kim Jong Un, the son of the current dictator Kim Jong Il, who has decided to give his son the mark of a warmonger as part of the transition.

We should avoid viewing North Korea too simplistically at all costs. While the dictatorship has a critical alliance with China, it has continued to exhibit aggressive behavior and extortion towards the West to obtain food and energy. The problem is the timing of these conflicts. These conflicts have come at a time when world leaders are confronted by a crisis that goes to the foundations of the capitalist system of accumulation and, as happened in the ’30s, is faced by the major economies together. The North Korean regime has seemed to have thoroughly investigated and anticipated the implications of this crisis and is using it to their advantage to extend their boundaries and show itself as a nuclear power with unlimited rights.

Pyongyang has no money, and their products are rudimentary with a negligent amount that could be exported. The famine that occurred there in the ‘90s killed two million people. However, it has the fifth largest army in the world, with enough force to wipe out Seoul or Tokyo in an instant. It obtained its current nuclear power from one of the strongest U.S. allies. The father of North Korea’s bomb is Ayhbu Qaadir Khan, the man who turned his country, Pakistan, another ally of China, into a nuclear power to compete hand in hand with India. If South Korea hits back, it is quite difficult to estimate the consequences — especially because, although it is clear that Beijing cannot control his ally, they could hardly leave if the crisis escalated to an unpredictable scale.