Post-Collapse North Korea Could Be Worse Than Iraq, Afghanistan

From The Marmot's Hole:

Post-collapse N. Korea could be worse than Iraq, Afghanistan: US colonel


by Robert Koehler on September 5, 2010



in North Korea



If you’re like me and think North Korea will end with regime collapse, here’s more reason for optimism [sarcasm off]:



In the view of one US military strategist, a collapse of North Korea — an impoverished nation with an indoctrinated population and nuclear-armed military — could result in no less than the greatest world crisis in modern times.



Colonel David Maxwell, who heads the Strategic Initiatives Group at the Army’s Special Operations Command, said that the United States needed to invest more planning for the most dire scenario, even if it does not transpire.



[...]



“I believe a conventional attack by the North would be the worst crisis that the international community has faced since the end of World War II,” Maxwell said in a presentation at the Marines Corps University in Quantico, Virginia.



“But I think the real worst case would be regime collapse,” said Maxwell, who stressed he was speaking in a private capacity.



So how bad could the real worst case be?



Well, pretty f*cking bad:



If the regime collapsed, foreign forces would likely face a major threat from insurgents whose belief in the Kim family’s philosophy of “juche” — or self-reliance — resembles religious fanaticism, Maxwell argued.



“The North Korean people will not welcome the South Korean military, international forces or anybody outside of North Korea,” Maxwell said.



“We made that assumption recently that we would be welcomed as liberators and we know how that turned out,” he said, referring to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.



And an insurgency in North Korea would be “far more sophisticated than what exists in Iraq or Afghanistan now,” Maxwell said.



He said an insurgency could tap into North Korea’s military might. Despite its meager economy, North Korea has more than one million standing troops — one of the largest forces in the world — along with nuclear weapons.



Ooo, guns, guns, guns, to quote RoboCop:







Then there are the North Korean special forces, who have given new meaning to the term “circle jerk”:



North Korea also has elite Special Operations Forces who are among the world’s most committed units, with members forming suicide pacts, said Joseph Bermudez, an expert on Pyongyang’s military who has spoken to defectors.



“They literally sit in a circle, they put their gun to the person’s head in front of them, they yell, ‘Long live Kim Jong Il!’ and they pull the trigger,” said Bermudez, a senior analyst at Jane’s Information Group.



Not everyone thinks it will be so bad, though:



L. Gordon Flake, who heads the Mansfield Foundation think-tank, questioned whether average North Koreans had a “guerrilla ethos” that would survive the fall of the top leadership.



“North Korea is a society that is specifically designed to avoid initiative at the local level,” Flake said.



Pointing to the resistance to the currency revaluation, Flake said: “To assume that guerrilla ethos continues, you almost have to assume that there’s been no impact over the last two decades from famine, economic collapse, government graft and a tremendous increase in information flows.”



Well, if the shit really does hit the fan in North Korea, some might take comfort in the fact that North Koreans could be shooting each other as much as they’re shooting at us:



Mr. Kim, the defector, said oppressed North Koreans “harbor a grudge deep inside” against those in the ruling class. The regime has crushed revolts in the past, and there is no indication more are in the offing.



But Mr. Kim said many in the country would welcome conflict with the outside world—not out of the nationalistic fervor the country’s bellicose leaders have sought to instill, but as a pretext for uprising. “North Koreans say in unison they want a war. … I think if that happens, North Koreans will fight more between themselves than with South Koreans,” Mr. Kim said. “Families say, ‘OK, when a war breaks out, I will shoot this, this and this person to death.’ “



Ghastly as all of this might sound — and hey, we haven’t even discussed how by the time this happens, half the United States will probably be in hock to the Bank of China — it’s still no reason to frown: