Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and the Return of the Plan

If you want to know the future, imagine a vast, centralized superintelligence, feeding on big data about all manner of production and consumption, allocating resources throughout the economy in accordance with the dictates of a class of somewhat pudgy old men who dye their hair jet black, smile with all the comfort of cats in a bathtub, and believe themselves to be enlightened.

Wang Huning, the fifth-most-enlightened (Xinhua)

Certain observers have claimed ever since 2012 that President Xi Jinping’s long-term intention is to further open up the Chinese economy, i.e., downsize China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and allow more room for market competition, private enterprise, and free trade. According to this narrative, Xi has been accumulating the authority which will be necessary to overcome the bureaucratic vested interests who oppose free markets, waiting until his power is sufficient to push through the necessary changes. I feel that this claim is absurd, a naïve reiteration of the age-old myth of the well-meaning emperor surrounded by corrupt officials. It is no coincidence that the people making this claim are mostly Western businesspeople and financiers on the one hand and Communist Party members speaking to a Western audience on the other. I’m sure businesspeople are generally smart and all, but when it comes to China, they are too willing to delude themselves, tempted as they are by the prospect of a billion customers. And the Party is happy to string them along because it wants them to invest in China. Here’s my rule: if the Party says something directed at the foreign audience in a speech, disregard it; if the Party says something in internal documents, pay attention.

The party-state desires and has been implementing more control of the economy, not less. I would point to four pieces of evidence: one, the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s $4–8 trillion (allegedly) international infrastructure-building plan and Xi’s signature foreign policy initiative, is essentially a way of winning global goodwill while propping up China’s SOEs by providing them with markets to soak up their productive overcapacity; two, more and more enterprises in China are being required to host Party organizations inside their operations—now including jointly owned foreign-Chinese enterprises; three, the rollout of the social credit system represents a massive increase in party-state regulation of the economy; four, the Party has recently released a number of documents which explicitly call for increased planning in the economy—most intriguingly, the New Generation AI Development Plan.

Issued by the State Council on July 20, 2017, the New Generation AI Development Plan calls for the party-state to invest in AI research and nurture the AI industry, laying out various goalposts for its development. By 2020, China’s AI technology is to keep pace with the level of AI development globally, and AI and AI-related industries are to reach a value of $148 billion. By 2025, the goal is for AI to lead China’s economic growth and industrial transformation, reaching a value of $740 billion. By 2030, the target is for China to “occupy the commanding heights of AI technology” and become the world’s leader in innovation, with AI and related industries attaining a value of $1.48 trillion.

The plan also calls for the creation of laws, norms, ethics, and policies regarding AI, so don’t worry, friends, the Communist Party is going to be totally responsible about this. Of course, two of the big areas of planned use for AI are facial recognition and biometrics, but it will be, you know, responsible surveillance. It’s not like they intend to use it for prurient purposes—they just want the tools to track down thought criminals (by the way, thought-reading is also a thing now). The plan calls for AI to be “safe, reliable, and controllable,” but I can’t help but think that the Party’s concern here is not so much a Skynet scenario as the possibility that AI might enable disruption of China’s social order: they don’t want the AI to decide that the Party is an irrational factor in the equation.

Just as the CCP is banking on the potential of new surveillance technologies to address the trust deficit in Chinese society (via the social credit system), they hope that AI will enable China’s economy to escape the middle-income trap. As China’s economic growth slows down, the Party worries that the people will become restive, because ever since the 1979, the Party’s legitimacy has primarily rested on its ability to provide the people with higher material standards of living. If you buy the thesis that the Party’s only real goal is the perpetuation of its own power, then it is easy to explain the urgency of three initiatives which have been carried out under the aegis of Xi Jinping: the anticorruption campaign, the re-emphasis on socialist ideology, and now the push for AI-driven economic growth. These are all intended to boost the Party’s legitimacy.

It is entirely in keeping with the Marxist ideology that the Party should hope for technological solutions to its problems. Technological progress represents a disruption in the economic structure which lies at the foundation of society, and disruption and transformation of the economic structure is what brings about the movement of human society through the Marxist phases of history. More specifically, history is moved by technological breakthroughs which bring about productivity growth and economic growth (economic growth = population growth + productivity growth). According to orthodox Chinese historiography, farming brought about the transition from primitive communism to slave society, bronze-working brought about the transition from slave society to feudalism, the industrial revolution brought about the transition from feudalism to capitalism—and now, it is hoped, AI will bring about the transition from capitalism to socialism.

If this story strikes you as a bit lacking in detail, or omitting a certain socialist phase of Chinese society from 1949 to 1979, you’re right! The Party insists that at present, China is in the “basic stage of socialism,” a newly identified phase of history which it places between capitalism and socialism. The basic stage consists of a mixed economy: as a phase of transition, it includes both the market economy and the planned economy. Private enterprises “continue” to coexist alongside the SOEs, but eventually, the “socialist market economy” will have worn out its usefulness, and China will move on to socialism proper—that is, a fully planned economy. This narrative of course conveniently ignores the fact that there was already a phase under Mao in which there was no market, meaning China has already experienced the purely planned economy of socialism.

Certain thought leaders in China have now accepted the following explanation of the Soviet Union’s demise: the planned economy was less efficient than the capitalist economy because the capitalist economy was able to allocate resources in accordance with market signals (supply met demand), whereas the planned economy, in its attempt to process all economic signals through a central planner, was unable to identify the real needs of the economy. In other words, the planned economy couldn’t process data as well as the capitalist economy. Implicitly, the same critique applies to Mao-era China.

Jack Ma, for one, believes that big data will be able to replace market signals and allow for a planned economy more efficient than the market economy. As he told the China International Big Data Expo in May 2017: “With the help of artificial intelligence or multiple intelligence, our perception of the world will be elevated to a new level. As such, big data will make the market smarter and make it possible to plan and predict market forces so as to allow us to finally achieve a planned economy.”

Ultimately, the goal of socialism is to increase productivity to such a degree that economic growth nears infinity. This is because communism can only be attained when productivity is so great that humans are entirely free from want. Communism is an inherently utopian goal. It is the end of history. It is a society in which activity is entirely free from coercion. 

As Marx writes in The German Ideology, in all the phases of history after primitive communism and before communism—all the phases in which division of labor exists—a person “is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman, or critic.”

That is communism. The CCP of course does not claim that this is the picture of China at present. Communist parties are named after their aspiration, not their means. The means is socialism. And in the case of the Chinese Communist Party, the means is the “socialist market economy” of the “basic stage of socialism,” at least for now. Wisely, no date has been set for the realization of communism, but the stated goal of the party-state is to attain true socialism by 2049.

Since taking power, Xi has repeatedly stressed the Two Centenary Goals: China is to become a 小康社会 (“moderately prosperous society”) by 2021, the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, and “a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, and harmonious” by 2049, the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In the case of the first centenary, 2021, the Party has set some clear quantitative benchmarks: double China’s 2010 per capita income, achieve a 60% urbanization rate, and build a space station and an aircraft carrier. Such qualitative measures have not yet been set for 2049, but the transition beyond the basic stage of socialism and into socialism proper must by definition entail massive productivity growth; therefore, the Party is serious about the push for AI and, ultimately, an economy planned by AI. They believe (or at least Xi believes) in their own Marxist historiography and the incontrovertibility of its law: productivity growth advances human society through the stages of history. Hence, AI or some other, as-yet-unidentified supercharger of productivity is a necessity.

Xi himself has set this goal, so it is the standard by which he invites the Chinese people to judge him. Failure to reach this goal could represent a severe crisis of legitimacy for the party-state. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that by 2049, the party-state’s control of China’s information ecosystem will be so comprehensive that they could fully erase and rewrite the past with impunity (“Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia” and “China will be a modern socialist country by 2099”). But for now, I believe Xi is serious about the goals he has articulated. Whether the CCP are true believers or mere power-mongers, as they have staked their legitimacy to the Two Centenary Goals, it amounts to the same thing.

Look Beneath the Surface of "Nambia"

(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

The substance of President Trump’s “Nambia” speech was a step in the right direction.

Trump’s mispronunciation of Namibia was not, but it was also unsurprising. It is no secret that most Americans are terrible at geography (which is, however—ahem—not a uniquely American shortcoming), and I don’t think anyone who likes Donald Trump likes him because of his presumed familiarity with the globe. I am sure his supporters feel indignant that we mean old coastal elites should mock him over a matter as piddling as this. But it is not a piddling matter, we anti-Trump folks instinctively feel, because it symbolizes his willful ignorance and privilege. Despite being a buffoon, he has the privilege of leading the world’s most powerful country and thereby obliging other world leaders to deal with his buffoonery. And the problem for America is that although ignorance, clownishness, meanness, and mendacity may play well with Trump’s fans, they are not a good look for the United States. Other countries see what we are now, and they are repulsed.

Or are they? Africans, apparently, took the speech in stride. As explained on the China in Africa Podcast, the response to the speech on African social media was mostly good-humored. Notably, Namibia’s President Hage Geingob said, “That ‘Nambia’ put Namibia on the map, huh? They have to explain, while they are—think they are teasing the president, they had to explain Namibia: where is it and so on, and so we got good publicity from that. So… and I was also very much impressed meeting the president. We had different expectations, but, uh, to tell you the truth he spent two hours with us at luncheon, and he listened.” The podcast’s Kobus Van Staden pointed out that throughout the continent of Africa, President Trump was largely regarded as a joke already, which may account for the lack of anger.

But the substance of Trump’s speech was a more important reason for the willingness of Namibians and other Africans to overlook his ignorance. The speech talked up increased American trade and investment in a variety of Africans countries, and that is good for Americans as much as Africans. The future of Africa matters for the United States because African economies are growing rapidly—more rapidly than most Westerners are aware. 

As for the specific manner in which Trump expressed America's economic interest in Africa, he again received criticism for saying, “Africa has tremendous business potential. I have so many friends going to your countries trying to get rich. I congratulate you. They’re spending a lot of money. But it does: it has a tremendous business potential—and representing huge amounts of, uh, different markets, and for American firms, it’s really become a place that they have to go, that they want to go.”* The tone is unmistakably paternalistic and classically Trumpian in its narcissism, but beneath that is a positive message: we want to trade with you. That is exactly what African governments want to hear. Earlier in the speech, he said, “In this room, I see partners for promoting prosperity and peace on a range of economic, humanitarian, and security issues. We hope to extend our economic partnerships with countries who are committed to self-reliance and to fostering opportunities for job creation in both Africa and the United States.” Boring and unspecific? Sure, but also respectful, and ritual affirmations of respect and vague commitments to cooperation are the essence of diplomacy.

Prior to the “Nambia” speech, Trump’s views on Africa hadn’t made any headlines during his presidency, except for headlines pointing out that he hadn’t expressed any. The fear among American foreign policy wonks has been that by completely ignoring Africa, Trump is letting the continent fall into China’s sphere of influence or at least—to put it in language less reminiscent of the Cold War—letting China alone take advantage of all the opportunities Africa offers.

In the last decade, China-Africa trade has grown much more rapidly the US-Africa trade, and China surpassed the US as the continent’s largest trading partner in 2009. Africans have long complained that America views Africa as a basket case and a recipient of aid rather than as a potential economic partner. Though the average Zhou also has something of that in his/her view of Africa, the Chinese state most assuredly does not. China’s emphatic official view is that Africa is an economic partner, and it shows in China’s actions. Besides titanic infrastructure investments, China is also building institutions with Africa, the most important being the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, formed in 2000.

On the whole, Africans seem to appreciate this respect. In the 2016 Afrobarometer survey of thirty-six African countries, 63% of Africans reported feeling that China was a positive influence in their countries. To be fair, 30% still reported that America “would be the best model for the future development of our country” versus 24% for the China model. But consider this: the concept of a “China model” didn’t really make its appearance on the world stage until the late 1990s. Since then, it has gained widespread currency and received much debate; the Washington Consensus, the American development model, has meanwhile come in for a great deal of criticism—particularly after 2008. To put it more candidly: since 2000, China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. What has America done other than destroy Iraq and tank the global economy?

If mere opinion polling doesn’t interest you, consider that more African university students now choose to study abroad in China than in England or the United States. What relationships are they forging? What values are they imbibing? With whom will this next generation of Africa’s leaders feel comfortable doing business? This is an extraordinarily important development. America’s closeness with global elites in the last few decades has depended enormously on the magnetism of American universities.

Considering that America’s educational and economic appeal has been weakening, why does our image there remain mostly favorable? No doubt we can thank Beyoncé for that. But democracy makes a difference, too. Democracy remains the most widely respected political concept globally (the list of political entities who deny believing in democracy is motley and short—even North Korea is actually the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). But it remains to be seen how long other countries will believe that America embodies democracy or other admirable values. 

Even if America does maintain the mantle of democracy’s champion, democracy itself is not without competition. At the very same time that regressive kleptocracy in a populist mask has been gaining ground in developed countries, the China model or the Beijing Consensus has been generating more and more buzz among economists and policy makers in developing countries. In a nutshell, this refers to a form of authoritarian capitalism, or the prioritization of economic development over human rights. In the next decade, however, if China’s economic growth slows down and the country fails to escape the middle-income trap (as expected), then the China model will doubtless lose some luster, and other developing countries, including those of Africa, will hesitate to follow China's path. But then again, if America falls into complete Trumpism, the authoritarian capitalism of the China model won’t really be an alternative, will it? In essence, we’ll share the same system.

*Addendum: 

A lot of progressive pabulum was tweeted about how money, rich people, Donald Trump’s friends, corporations, and colonialism are bad. Yet money, rich people, Donald Trump’s friends, corporations, and colonialism are all different things and therefore should not be conflated. Do Donald Trump’s purported friends have money? I’m sure. Do many of them run corporations? Seems likely. Do they want to make more money in Africa? It would seem so. Does that mean they want to pillage? No, not necessarily. Does any involvement of Euro-Americans in Africa constitute neo-colonialism? No.

Colonialism is a system wherein a state (the colonizer) seizes control of another state or region (the colony) by means of military force and occupation, and then extracts the raw materials of the colony, ships them back to the colonizer, uses them to manufacture finished goods, and then exports those goods to the colony.

Neo-colonialism is an ill-defined term, but it should refer to a system wherein the economic aspects of colonialism still obtain—that is, an economic relationship wherein a developed country (the neo-colonizer) traps a developing country (the neo-colonized) in a cycle of dependency wherein the developing country remains reliant on the export of raw materials to the developed country and bound in some way to rely on imports of high-value-added products from the developed country.

But this is by no means the essence of trade. It is but one system of trade. Is this what Donald Trump’s alleged friends intend to do? We don’t know. What we do know is that trade is indispensable for developing countries, so let us leave behind the patronizing assumption that Africans will inevitably be victimized.

Chinoptimism

In the 2012 movie Looper, Jeff Daniels imparts some advice to Bruce Willis in his juvenile form (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Upon hearing of his protégé’s study plans, he asks, “Why the fuck French?”

“I’m going to France,” Bruce Willis Gordon-Levitt replies.

“You should go to China.”

“I’m going to France.”

“I’m from the future: you should go to China.”

And so young Bruce-Joe goes and spends three decades doing drugs and dirty deeds in his über-minimalist apartment in an admittedly somewhat hitman-ridden but nevertheless comparatively secure and prosperous China.

This was but one of a number of upbeat Hollywood depictions of China that seem to have kicked off around 2009, when China saved the world in the apocalypse film 2012. China also saved the world that same year as it drove the global economic recovery from the Great Recession.

Admittedly, China receives positive depictions in Hollywood films not because Americans like China, but rather because Hollywood likes Chinese moviegoers. But even if these films aren’t reflecting public sentiment, it is possible that they may be influencing it. There has been a gradual generational shift in American perceptions of China. According to Pew, 55% of Americans ages 18-29 report a positive view of China, while only 41% of those ages 30-49 agree, and those ages 50+ are mighty suspicious at 27%. Perhaps media depictions don’t matter. Perhaps it’s simply that the more distant in one’s memory the Cold War is, the less one regards Communist states as a rival.

“What’s that?” you object, “China isn’t Communist!” Actually, I expect my intelligent and attractive readers are savvier than that, but if the thought did cross your mind, you’re not alone. I have met many people and—sad to say—read the Facebook comments of many more who are under the impression that China is a capitalist country now (sad because I’m reading Facebook comments, not because they’re wrong). This misperception is forgivable, but considerable. As the ruling Chinese Communist Party itself says, China is a “socialist market economy,” and the more you learn about China’s economy, the more you will find that is an accurate description (I will convince you in a future post).

Regardless of the actual degree to which China is capitalist or socialist, the market is (somewhat) open, and many young Westerners with positive perceptions of it have dived in. More hope to do so, and many people plan for their children to do so (Chinese nannies are in demand). Run across any of these aspiring foreign entrepreneurs in China, and you will find it isn’t just that they regard the Chinese people as one billion customers; in the minds of many, China is the future.

China is also the future in the minds of many Americans and Europeans at home, who may or may not regard this as a good thing. China also looks like the future to many Africans, Central Asians, Southeast Asians, and South Americans, because China is where investment is coming from, China is where you can get a scholarship, and China seems to be led by rational people. The futurism of Chinese cities has been acclaimed by one Paris Hilton who, on a 2007 visit, said, “Shanghai looks like the future!” Shanghai looks much more futuristic now than it did then, and it looks even more futuristic when Bruce Willis Gordon-Levitt arrives in 2044.

Super-Pudong 2044 (Source)

China is also the future in the minds of most Chinese. Optimism is said to be a trait in the Chinese character. Chinese kids, as so many envious American education writers tell us, have grit. They are taught that success comes not from innate talent, but from hard work, and I personally would attest that this truly shows in the attitudes of the Chinese people I know. And it is admirable.

It would be hard not to be optimistic, perhaps, when you experience wealth and security that your parents did not, when your grandparents lived through famine and civil war, and you have an iPhone—or even if you don’t have an iPhone, you are at least able to support your extended family by working in the factory that makes them.

There is another side to the coin, of course. Decades of bullet-fast economic growth produce externalities, as the air, water, earth, expropriated villagers, bewildered elders, and powerless promoters of civil society attest.

Yet money has a way of healing all wounds, and China’s pervasive atmosphere of optimism remains alluring. A few of my Chinese friends make cynical remarks about the government, but very few of them think their country is falling apart, and almost none of them think the world is about to end. It is deeper even than the economic. While America sighs with postmodernism, China enthuses modern: progress, enlightenment, socialism, science, education, improvement, prosperity!

I would wager that this is something inconceivable to American Millennials, unless they should have the opportunity to go a place such as China and experience it for themselves. American popular culture has overflowed with apocalyptic imagery for more than a decade now. This is what Confucius called 亡国之音, the pitiful cries of a doomed country. And why not? To progressives, humanity is a despoiler of the earth, and America is the bandit extraordinaire: climate change is going to destroy everything, and it’s all our fault. Or if not that, automation apocalypse or AI apocalypse or virtual reality apocalypse or colony collapse syndrome. As H. Bruce Franklin said, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” But regardless of their politics, most young Americans feel the truth of this: Millenials are the first generation in American history to experience less prosperity than their parents. This is entirely the opposite of young Chinese, and God bless them.

Yet here is the rub: today’s young Chinese will soon be crushed by the economic burden of the old. China is rapidly aging just as the economy is slowing down. It will get old before it gets rich. Not only will China not escape the middle income trap, it may not even surpass America as the world’s largest economy (in nominal GDP). Chinese demographer Yi Fuxian once told the New York Times, “People say we can be two to three times the size of America’s economy. I say it’s totally impossible. It will never overtake America’s, because of the decrease in the labor force and the aging of the population.” China’s population is expected to fall below one billion by 2060, at which time the US population will be over 400 million. By 2050, China’s median age will be 48.7, while America’s will be 40. Meanwhile, China’s GDP growth will continue to slow. The recently established pension system remains to be worked out, and lifestyle diseases are expected to spread. Chinese a few decades hence will probably remember the 1990s through the 2010s as a golden age of expanding prosperity in much the same way that Americans remember the 1940s through the 1960s.

Our national salvation (Source)

China is set to suffer the burden of an aging population (as are Europe and Japan), but America is not. America’s fertility rate remains high because of immigration, and as long as it keeps the door open, a continually rejuvenated population will ensure that its prospects for economic growth and national security remain equally high. At the moment, most Americans would agree that the nation seems hell-bent on committing suicide. To the Trump-right, immigration is that suicide; in reality, America's path to suicide would be to succumb to the nostalgic and racist authoritarianism that would lock us into a monochromatic, geriatric destiny. But bad presidents come and go, xenophobia ebbs and flows, and politics sway between left and right. If America can remember its better self, it may find reasons for optimism that most of the world will lack.

Anonymity's End

The Chinese government has sentenced anonymity to death.

On August 25, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued new regulations intended to tighten up real-name registration requirements for online forums. Real-name registration has been in the works for years, with gradually tightening implementation. According to the notice issued by CAC, beginning October 1, the burden will fall upon tech companies themselves to verify the identities of their users. The rules apply to all social media platforms, forums, comments on news websites, and “any other communication platform that features news or with the function to mobilize society.” The form which this registration takes usually consists of signing up for a service using one’s actual phone number, because phone numbers must be registered under one’s real name in China. Chinese service providers themselves will also be required to report any forbidden speech activities which take place, for a list of which see here. It’s a fairly comprehensive roundup (since the final listed activity is “violating any other laws and regulations”). One of the items, “spreading rumors and disrupting social order,” has seen quite wide-ranging and flexible use as a legal charge against presumed speech criminals in recent years.

Anonymity may be marching to the gallows, but it isn’t necessarily going to hang on the appointed date. As with all Chinese laws, we need to wait and see before we can make informed comments, because implementation may be slow and patchy. VPNs, the primary method for circumventing the Great Firewall, have long been illegal, but that hasn’t stopped people from using them. There has been a crackdown on VPNs in recent months, however. Apple has agreed to remove some of them from the Chinese App Store, and China’s three state telecom providers will be required to prevent individuals from accessing any and all VPNs beginning next February (or at least those whose existence they are aware of). Again, we must wait for the implementation, but if there are no more VPNs, make no mistake: the Internet and the Chinanet will become two different networks with, with the very little shared between them turning into less and less.

In The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the Twenty-First Century, Stein Ringen argues that China is a latently totalitarian dictatorship of an entirely new style. What makes the Chinese dictatorship “perfect”—or what will make it so if current trends continue—is the complement of thought control techniques employed by the Chinese Communist Party. The techniques of mental domination being pioneered by the CCP today are far subtler than anything practiced by totalitarian regimes of the past. According to Ringen’s argument, the key to CCP thought control is not censorship but self-censorship: as he sees it, the party aims to establish a society which needs no policing, because people will ultimately choose to comprehensively police themselves. This is a matter of setting up a society in which there are very clear incentives for cooperation. The Chinese state wins legitimacy by offering the Chinese people the chance to participate in economic prosperity. In this bargain, a free and just life is sacrificed in favor of a secure and comfortable one.

The CCP prefers to rely on soft incentives. A recent study of Chinese online censorship by Gary King of Harvard found that the prevalent method in recent years is not to delete criticisms but rather to drown them out with a flood of comments swelling with positive energy. The idea is to distract rather than engage. One advantage of this method is that defenders of the Party-state can point to the many critical comments which do indeed get posted as evidence of China’s freedom of speech. Nor are the posters of critical comments hunted down and jailed. Until now, the only kind of criticism which has been likely to result in a knock on your front door is that kind which moves beyond the mere airing of grievances to the point of actually advocating organized political activities of resistance (such as public protests). This is a noteworthy departure from old-fashioned methods of censorship, which consist of silencing critics.

Real-name registration places responsibility for one’s speech in one’s own hands. The new regulations make clear that there is a comprehensive list of forbidden speech acts for which one can be punished. But one still has a platform, one still has a microphone, one still has a voice. The internet is still there. The choice of what to do as a being with a voice is your own. Should you choose to speak, however, they know who you are. But self-censorship is more ingenious than the threat of consequences. The perfect dictatorship takes self-censorship to a new level. People are not only reminded of the consequences of criticism but are also given an example of what “good” public speech looks like. This good form of speech is referred to as “positive energy.” Positive energy is the quality of any speech act which praises the Communist Party or China (and conflates the two, ideally), and it is the crux of thought control in the perfect dictatorship.  You are not just told to shut up or else; rather, you are told, “This is how you should talk instead. And if you do, you might just go viral.”

In 2014, previously unknown netizens Yu Runze and Xu An released a music video about the love between President Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan which, with some nudges from the state media, has racked up several hundred million views. You really must watch this video. Its lyrics, such as “Xi dada loves Peng mama, love like theirs is a fairytale. Peng mama loves Xi dada, a world with love is the most powerful,” are similar in structure to those of “The East Is Red,” a Cultural-Revolution-era song which praised Mao Zedong.

President Xi himself echoed Mao in his October 14, 2014 talk at the Beijing Forum on Art and Literature (whose name recalls Mao’s famous/infamous speeches at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art. The bottom line of Xi’s speech was that “The arts must serve the people and serve socialism”—a message essentially the same as that delivered by Mao seventy-two years before. In the speech, Xi showered praise on Zhou Xiaoping and Hua Qianfang, two nationalistic young bloggers whose work he identified as being powered by positive energy. Their commentary typically consists of screeds against Japan and America, which country Zhou has accused, for example, of “opposing humanity,” seeking to “destroy Chinese beliefs,” and being engaged in a Cold War against China. Interestingly, the shout-out to Zhou was scrubbed from later transcriptions of President Xi’s speech after another prominent blogger pointed out factual inaccuracies in one of Zhou’s posts and Zhou subsequently faced widespread online ridicule.

The desire for positive energy also may partly explain why Chinese television is so boring. Satirical comedy does not transmit positive energy, nor do morally ambiguous dramas. Antiheroes who reflect social problems certainly do not embody positive energy. As Xi remarked at the aforementioned Beijing Forum on Art and Literature, “In some of their work, some artists ridicule what is noble, distort the classics. They subvert history and smear the masses and heroes. Some don’t tell right from wrong, don’t distinguish between good and evil, present ugliness as beauty, exaggerate society’s dark side.” Such artists are transmitting negative energy (a.k.a. critical thought). A good recent example of art which does transmit positive energy is the action film “Wolf Warrior 2,” whose poster reads: “Anyone who offends China, no matter how remote, must be exterminated” (by the way, with Chinese box office earnings of $867 million USD so far, it is the second-highest grossing film of all time in a single market). This line was paraphrased on a sign used by Chinese students at a protest in Sydney against India over the recent China-India border dispute.

In a recent online poll, netizens were asked to choose the news photos which best transmitted positive energy. The winners mostly include pictures of police in action, military parades, and disaster relief efforts.The Chinese media regularly put out Buzzfeed-esque, list-heavy articles about how great it is to live in China as compared to America or "the West," citing such advantages as Chinese cuisine, excellent public transportation, and the wide availability of dirt-cheap next-day delivery services. News stories in general, even when covering tragedies or crimes, tend to end on an upbeat note about how the police, the city government, the local Party secretary, or some other authority figure has taken vigorous measures to rectify the problem. But inasmuch as the media address goings-on abroad, they tend to emphasis the chaos of the outside world in contrast to the safety and orderliness of China. Censors have also urged economists to put out more stories with positive energy. 

Rampant self-censorship and positive energy don't result in the sort of drab, gloomy country which you picture the Soviet Union to be in your head. Chinese cities are full of color and light, hustle and bustle, advertising and entrepreneurialism. Shanghai is full of bikeshares, old streets lined with new cafes, and young people with disposable incomes experimenting with fashion. In other words, it often feels much the same as any other global city. And Chinese people do speak their minds about as much as any other people—at least in a one-on-one setting.

 

Yet I think of the people in my graduate program in Hong Kong, an autonomous region of China which, under the principle of “one country, two systems,” has legally protected freedom of speech and academic freedom. Our course was on Chinese politics, and in a society with freedom of thought, one expects graduate students in a political science course to have something to say. Yet extracting opinions from most of the mainland Chinese students was like pulling teeth. There were some who became more outspoken over time, but not before more than one professor admonished the class that “You can feel free to say anything here. No one is going to report on you.” (Nervous titters.) Those who did grow more outspoken certainly had insightful criticisms to share. So why did it take so long to draw them out? One might say that their reticence reflected fear, and that may be true to some extent, but I am afraid that in the case of many of my Chinese friends, their silence on political matters is not a matter of fear so much as apathy. Time and again have I heard variations of “Why should I worry about politics? I can live my own life.” There are, of course, plenty of people who would say the same in democratic societies. But I think the reticence of many of my classmates reflected something more than fear and apathy. One of those who did eventually speak up more often generally insisted on speaking English because “I want to think in English, not Chinese. I am in Hong Kong, and even though it is part of China, when I am studying here, I should try to think like a foreigner, not like a Chinese.”

Besides the promotion of positive energy and self-censorship, the Chinese state still relies quite heavily on cruder methods of social control. For years, China’s budget allocated more to “stability maintenance” (funds which are spent on state security police, censorship, surveillance, etc.) than to the military. The most recent year in which these figures were published was 2013, when stability maintenance received 769 billion RMB while the military received 741 billion. Since then, the central government has wisely ceased releasing comprehensive figures on stability maintenance. Old fashioned censorship thus chugs on, the recent Cambridge University Press scandal being a prominent example. And the fate of Liu Xiaobo reminds us that the Party-state is willing to straightforwardly crush freethinkers who get too popular. His death also reflects an old-school totalitarian reliance on the memory hole: thanks to pervasive targeted censorship, few Chinese people know who he was. It is therefore quite accurate to say that the Chinese state still relies on brute force and the traditional methods of social control.

But the CCP is also constantly innovating. Real-name registration will not be the last new censorship technique, and such techniques, combined with the incipient social credit system, will soon create an atmosphere so positive that certain people will find it difficult to breathe.  

How to Deal with North Korea

The bad options

The common refrain one hears in discussions of North Korea policy among US policymakers is that “there are no good options.” I’m not going to be senselessly iconoclastic and claim that I have found a good option, but I will tell you the two least bad options. But first, here are the bad options:

A limited military strike would almost certainly result in retaliation against South Korea, incurring massive casualties. It is also possible that it would result in full-scale war, including the possibility of war between the US and China. The same of course applies to invasion. Besides, it is almost certain that a limited strike would not take out North Korea’s entire nuclear arsenal. The US intelligence community hasn’t had a solid lock on the locations of all of North Korea’s nuclear facilities since the nineties.

Sanctions have proven ineffective over the past couple of decades, though it is conceivable that they would be more effective if heretofore lax participants, most notably China, enforced them rigorously. But it is possible that sanctions would lead to humanitarian disaster in North Korea if the economy were severely damaged, as the state might allocate resources away from the populace to the military and elite. And there is also the question of whether sanctions ever really work. A study of sanctions from 1915 to 2006 showed they work about 30 percent of the time, but the key is that whether they work depends on other factors in the country, and given the tightness of the North Korean state’s control, this is questionable.  

Alternatively, China could be coerced into cooperation on the DPRK (whatever cooperation entails) by means of US sanctions against Chinese officials who are involved in commerce with North Korea. This would damage the US-China relationship, and the likelihood of successfully coercing China into a cooperation with the US would probably be limited, because the Chinese state is huge and uncoordinated. Central directives in China are much less effective than outsiders think.

There is also the option of asking China more or less politely for its help, with which President Trump and President Obama before him found no success.

Then there is Obama’s “strategic patience” doctrine. What was strategic patience? The strategy of waiting. Waiting for what? God only knows. For North Korea to collapse under its own weight or for China to decide to help, I suppose. The result was eight years in which the US government did next to nothing to address the fact that North Korea was rapidly approaching ICBM capability.

We might also mention the absurd notion of simply assassinating Kim Jong-un, which, besides being illegal, would doubtless entail a great chance of failure and massive military retaliation (again, mostly against South Korea).

Info-bombs

Some have suggested that a concerted effort at information warfare would prove the most effective policy at present. North Koreans are hungry for information about the outside world, and they are savvier than you might think. In recent years, South Korean, Chinese, and other electronic media have flooded into North Korea on USB drives, often carried into the country by North Korean migrant workers returning from China. The US and South Korea could cooperate to increase the amount of information entering North Korea from various avenues. Needless to say, this should not consist of crude propaganda, least of all denunciations of the North Korean state or the Kim dynasty. Defector Hyeonseo Lee argues that K-drama and K-pop are far more powerful tools for opening the eyes of ordinary North Koreans, because they can see for themselves, through a non-confrontational medium, the prosperity and openness of South Korea. As North Korean knowledge of the outside world grows over time, the possibility of North Korean civil society and internal political change should grow apace. That was, after all, part of the downfall of the Eastern Bloc.

I remain skeptical about the possibility of this sort of change in North Korea. It is difficult to predict what sorts of political changes could come about as the result of internal dynamics. Advocates of information warfare believe that in theory, we might expect North Koreans who have seen images of the wealth and personal freedom available in the South to demand the same in their own country. As the theory goes, the North Korean elite would perceive this desire for change, and bet on the people rather than the Kim family. To continue this line of speculation, perhaps they would push for the opening of markets, which would lead to the opening of minds, greater contacts with the South, and in the end, they might be willing to attempt to push a reunification scenario in which their own personal wealth and security is guaranteed, but the reunified Korea adopts the political and economic systems of the South.

But our understanding of North Korea’s elite politics is not solid enough to make firm predictions. Jang Song-thaek advocated for economic reforms modelled on China’s, and he was executed for his trouble, though Kim Jong-un’s precise motivation for the execution is not entirely clear. On the other hand, we do know that the North Korean state has allowed gradual development of markets in recent years, and Western visitors to North Korea have reported an improvement in materials conditions within the country during this time, so perhaps the winds are indeed blowing toward economic opening.

To some extent, this scenario of free markets followed by free minds followed by free politics is obsolete. This idea comes from the way the Cold War ended in Europe, but I think the Chinese case has proven that a Communist state is entirely capable of opening its markets without opening its politics (In fact, China shows that a one-party state can persist even when its people have a relatively high degree of economic freedom and access to the outside world and don't particularly like the state). And North Korean elites are aware of the Chinese playbook. Even if they wanted to open up their economy on the basis of the Chinese model, why should they want to accept a South Korean takeover and political revolution? They would need to be in a position where they perceived a South Korean takeover as inevitable anyway, due to combined internal and external pressures.

Korean nationalism is very much alive in North Korea, arguably much more so than socialism. North Korean propaganda typically depicts the South Korean government as a prostitute regime, selling the Korean people out the Yankees, while South Korean people are shown as victims. After all, according to North Korean propaganda, the Korean race is inherently childlike and innocent (hence the need for the Kim family’s firm protection). North Koreans would most likely welcome the opportunity to reunite with their national cousins, particularly if they have come to perceive those cousins as more prosperous and willing to help.

The option nobody in Washington mentions

But this strategy sounds suspiciously close to one reliant on dialog, which is apparently heresy in Washington, because I have heard very few people suggest negotiation. The notion is dismissed out of hand by many in the national security establishment, a good example being Chris Hill opining that North Korea “sneers at international standards of behavior” and that North Korea does not seek regime security but rather seeks to hold its neighbors hostage.

No doubt the Kim dynasty sneers at us, but hey, how seriously do we take them? Now that they’ve launched an ICBM capable of hitting Chicago, it seems like Washington is maybe kinda starting to take them seriously, and yet whatever next stage they reach, we always have our corps of analysts who say, “Well, they can't attach a warhead to their missiles,” “Well, their fueling procedure is highly unusual,”  “Well, they still can’t do a re-entry vehicle,” or “Well, it can't reach New York.” As Jeffrey Stein and Aaron Lewis of the Arms Control Wonk Podcast point out in their latest episode, people are always dismissing North Korea’s ability to take the next step. Essentially, people are in denial. Why is it that people are too terrified to admit the possibility that North Korea is capable of nuking the US? We lived through the Cold War, during which we learned to accept the weight of thousands of Soviet nukes hanging over our heads, and yet we seem psychologically unprepared to accept a single Korean nuke. Why is that?

(KCNA)

I generally agree with what Larry Diamond proposes in this op-ed for the Atlantic. We must rediscover the use of diplomacy. That means making concessions and using inducements, with both China and North Korea. If China pressed North Korea to negotiate with the US, and if the US and South Korea appeared conciliatory, I see no reason why North Korea wouldn’t talk.

It’s been more than a decade, so you kids today may not remember, but negotiations came quite close to success under Clinton. Under the Agreed Framework of 1994, the DPRK agreed to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections at its nuclear sites, the replacement of their existing nuclear reactors with light water reactors provided by the US (light water reactors being harder to make bombs with), and continued participation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The US agreed to gradually lift sanctions and normalize relations with North Korea. Did we?

No. Congressional Republicans, regarding the plan as appeasement, blocked the lifting of sanctions, and relations were not normalized. North Korea, meanwhile, kept producing highly-enriched uranium, which they warned us in 1998 that they would do if we didn’t hurry up with the installation of the light water reactors, and indeed, we were years behind schedule. So sure, they were intransigent in that they continued enriching uranium, but so were we, in that we didn’t lift sanctions, didn’t normalize relations, and didn’t supply the light water reactor in accordance with our own timeline. In 2002, the US suspended work on the reactor soon after beginning construction, and the DPRK withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003, leaving the Agreed Framework a failure.

The fact that a negotiated settlement failed when we didn’t adhere to the terms of the settlement does not mean that North Koreans are inherently unable to adhere to agreements and therefore unworthy of negotiating with. Both sides were at fault. Heck, they could be forgiven for saying that it means Americans are inherently unable to adhere to agreements and therefore unworthy of negotiating with! We should perhaps try negotiating and then holding up our end of the bargain. Even if that doesn’t work, well, you try things, and sometimes you fail. It’s better than not trying.

So how could we set about negotiating? China indeed has leverage over North Korea, as I discussed in my last post. Due to the myriad security, economic, and other connections that we have with China, the US has ample opportunity to exert leverage over them. We could try all sorts of sticks, from denying visas to the 300,000 Chinese students in the US to banning food exports to China. The options are essentially limitless. As for carrots, in terms of assuaging the fears China has regarding the American presence on the Korean Peninsula, we should offer long-term withdrawal of US military from the South Korea, perhaps on a step-by-step basis premised on verifiable stages of denuclearization in the DPRK. If indeed we are not determined to contain China, as Washington consistently asserts, then we have no reason not to do this.

But what could the US offer North Korea? To begin with, we could halt joint military exercises with South Korea (as Russia and China have proposed), since, after all, the DPRK uses our exercises as the pretext for many of its weapons tests and specifically complains about the threat which they pose to its security.

Another step to take would be to agree to bilateral talks without preconditions, which is precisely what the DPRK has been asking for for years. The major reason why we haven’t done this already is obstinacy and our conviction of our own moral superiority.

I would like to reiterate: North Korea has been telling us, consistently, for years, precisely what they want: 1. Bilateral negotiations with the US, aimed at 2. A peace treaty formally ending the Korean War (which I’m sure I needn’t remind you, gentle reader, is currently in a state of armistice) followed by 3. Full normalization of US-DPRK relations and 4. Integration of the DPRK into the international community as a normal state. Unreasonable?

Of course there are reasons not to take this path, and of course it is no guarantee of anything. The one objection to the whole idea of negotiating and making concessions to North Korea which I certainly consider to be legitimate is that it encourages other states to seek security through nuclear proliferation. But I would argue that although this point is valid, it’s too late to worry about it now. We should act more decisively when intelligence indicates that other states are pursuing this path in the future. Indeed, the key lesson of North Korea should be that inaction doesn’t stop arms proliferation. But we must choose among the options we have in our present reality. North Korea may not budge, but trying something is better than whining about China on Twitter.

Why China Won't Help with North Korea

At the meeting of the UN Security Council on July 4th, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley called upon the UNSC to condemn North Korea’s ICBM test and impose further sanctions. Russia and China made it very clear that they do not view the situation as terribly urgent, with the Russian ambassador questioning whether the missile should even be considered an ICBM. Ambassador Haley was visibly agitated in her response, saying “If you are happy with North Korea’s actions, veto it (the resolution). If you want to be a friend to North Korea, veto it.”

In 2016, China and Russia allowed the adoption of UNSC resolutions 2321 and 2270, which expanded sanctions on North Korea, but despite their cooperation on sanctions thus far, both countries’ statements at the July 4th meeting included mention of an alternative plan which they referred to as “dual suspension and parallel progress.” They called on the DPRK to suspend nuclear and missile tests and called on the US and South Korea to halt joint military exercises, with both sides thus making concessions in order to lay the ground for negotiations. For a while now, Chinese and Russian diplomats have (rightly) been pointing out that the US and North Korea have set mutually incompatible preconditions for negotiation: the US demands that the DPRK give up its nuclear weapons before talks can proceed, while the DPRK has written its status as a nuclear power into its constitution and demands that the US enter bilateral talks with no preconditions. 

Would China and Russia veto the upcoming resolution, and maybe even propose an alternative resolution condemning the provocative actions on both sides? Given their votes last year, that would surprise me. But given their chaffering about whether or not this was really an ICBM, and their mention of the alternative “dual suspension” plan, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if they abstained. Nor would I be surprised if they voted to adopt, but then quietly continued to violate whatever new sanctions were adopted.

President Xi offered his view on the matter a couple days later at the G20, saying, in essence: China supports peace and stability, China supports the existing sanctions (no word on new sanctions), China favors dialog and negotiation, and Seoul should address “China’s legitimate concern” (translation: China will not lift a finger until the US removes THAAD from South Korea).

Remember this tweet?

I consider it quite questionable whether China ever tried. Many observers took heart when China announced in February that they would be reducing coal imports from North Korea, in keeping with Resolution 2321, but there are reasons to think that this had to do with China’s domestic market. Regardless of coal, trade in other goods has continued apace. As Trump noted in a more recent tweet:

Oh well! Had to give it a try! China-NK trade increased 37.4% in Q1 2017, according to China’s official data. That probably does not reflect the full extent of their bilateral trade, as there is considerable black market cross-border trade. And whether or not China has cut coal imports because of Resolution 2321, China has continued importing various minerals from North Korea in violation of Resolutions 2321 and 2270.

So why is China so wishy-washy when it comes to North Korea?

There is reason to expect that China might be willing to cut North Korea loose. Neither the leaders nor the people of China have much respect for Kim Jong Un. He is widely mocked on Chinese social media, where netizens have nicknamed him “Fatty Kim the third”. The last couple years have also seen China issuing harsher rebukes to North Korea via its state media, and in May, North Korean media directly criticized China for the first time, stating: “The DPRK will never beg for the maintenance of friendship with China, risking its nuclear program which is as precious as its own life, no matter how valuable the friendship is.” Also, a somewhat under-reported angle of Kim executing his uncle Jang Song-thaek was that Jang was one of North Korea’s leading advocates for closer ties to China and Chinese-style economic reforms. In short, the relationship is at an all-time low.

China’s relationship with the US may seem quite sunny by comparison. Sure, we have our differences, but whether you label us “strategic rivals” or “frenemies”, it’s hard to deny that China gets a lot out of its relationship with the US, with a trade relationship worth $648.2 billion in 2016 and 300,000 Chinese students in the US. But when it comes to national security, no matter how deep our economic and cultural ties, the Communist Party of China still regards the US as its greatest threat, far more dangerous than North Korea.

The DPRK is an official ally of China, with the Sino-North Korea Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty of 1961 still in effect. The longstanding view in China is that China and North Korea have a relationship “forged in blood” in the Korean War. As Mao used to say, China and North Korea “are like lips and teeth.” On a more analytical level, the Chinese military regards North Korea as a buffer against the United States. That is, a buffer against the 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea. If the North Korean state collapsed, China would face a flood refugees, the possible proliferation of nuclear materials into China by the hands of non-state actors, and a united, democratic, capitalist Republic of Korea which might allow US troops to be stationed on its northern border, across the Yalu River from China.

This view of the DPRK as a security asset to China is not unchallenged in Chinese academia and think tank-dom, where a number of prominent scholars have criticized China’s North Korea policy (and yes, scholars are allowed to criticize state policies in China—scholars who are Party members doing research at Party think tanks publishing in Party journals and Party newspapers). Shen Zhihua and Yafeng Xia[1] have argued that the Chinese state is essentially deluded about North Korea. According to them, the Party believes that North Korea, as a socialist state, automatically shares China’s values and therefore is deserving of China’s loyalty. But actually, North Korea is more akin to a militaristic hereditary monarchy, and therefore not ideologically compatible with China. Furthermore, with his erratic and insulting behavior, Kim Jong Un does massive damage to China’s international image. Shen and Yafeng therefore advocate that China should cut off all economic support for North Korea and cooperate with the US in denuclearization. Shi Yinhong[2] has made similar arguments, saying that China cannot simultaneously support the DPRK, uphold stability on the Korean Peninsula, and push denuclearization. His view is that China should use its economic power to punish North Korea for its arrogant attitude toward China.

For now, however, the traditionalist line holds. However much China's leaders are willing to trade with America, send their children to American universities, and buy American real estate, they still don’t trust America when it comes to China’s national security. And why should they? As they see it, America is the only reason they are unable to reunite their country by taking back Taiwan, America backs a newly militaristic Japan which means China ill, America further tries to undermine China’s territorial integrity in the South China Sea, America creates chaos in China’s backyard (see: Afghanistan), America harbors dissidents who would like to topple the Chinese state, America supports “color revolutions” to topple authoritarian governments around the world, and America has military bases in various countries around China’s perimeter. Furthermore, the official line in China is still that America started the Korean War (or as it is known in China, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid North Korea). In short, the Party believes that America and its puppets have long pursued a conspiracy to hold China down and overthrow the Chinese state if possible. And are they wrong?

What about America’s endgame on the Korean Peninsula? Would America really be satisfied simply to get rid of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities? Once we had the DPRK in that position, wouldn’t regime change be next on the list? Or suppose the North Korean state collapsed. When exactly would America withdraw those 28,500 troops? Wouldn’t we want to keep them there, to support South Korea in securing their new borders, reconstruction, whatever?

Instead of complaining about China’s lack of cooperation, perhaps Washington should ask itself: why should China care? How does China stand to gain from cooperating with us? Is a defanged DPRK really in China’s best interest? Have we demonstrated how that may be so? What have we done to reassure China that we respect its national security interests? I believe that a denuclearized North Korea would be in China’s best interest as well as America's. As Zhu Feng and Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga have pointed out, the security risks which the DPRK presents to China include: “unintended war, endangers Chinese citizens [via radiation], refugee issues, crime, nuclear blackmail, illicit nuclear proliferation, […] ballistic missile defense, regional nuclear proliferation, regional arms race, damaged credibility, legitimizes US ‘rebalancing.’”[3] That is a not inconsiderable list. And now North Korea has taken to openly criticizing China. So one has to wonder: how is it that America’s government continues to do such a bad job of convincing China that we are trustworthy—or at least worthy of cooperation?

---

[1] In Freeman, Carla P. (Ed.). (2015). China and North Korea: Strategic and Policy Perspectives from a Changing China.

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid, p. 43

Who's Nuking Whom?

North Korea’s first successful test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday has made a big splash, and well it should, but in reading the media commentary, I have heard a lot about how the president has or has not bungled North Korea, whether or not China is responsible, and so on, but fairly few details about the precise level of threat posed by the DPRK’s nuclear weapons. Let’s pause for a moment to take nuclear warfare seriously. What is North Korea capable of? What defenses do South Korea, Japan, and the US possess?  

America is not going to be nuked (by North Korea)

Back in May, the US conducted the first ever successful intercept of an ICBM, using the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system stationed at Vandenburg Airforce Base in California. The missile was launched from the Marshall Islands and intercepted over the Pacific Ocean. I think for people who grew up during the end of the Cold War, it may come as something of a surprise to learn that no one had ever successfully conducted a test-interception of an ICBM before. This does not mean, of course, that this particular missile defense system would intercept ICBMs with a 100% success rate in the future. The system has successfully intercepted only 9/17 short- and medium-range missiles launched in tests since 1999. However, our sensors would detect an ICBM fairly soon after its launch, which means we would have the opportunity to launch multiple missiles to the intercept it, so the chance of our successfully intercepting an ICBM is definitely better than half.

Not comforted? Well, ok, but I would also argue that North Korea is not going to launch such a missile for one very important reason: Kim Jong Un does not want to die.

North Korea is a rational actor

People tend to think of North Korea as the wacky land of perfectly synchronized kindergarten accordion ensembles and baffling hairdos. This leads us to a number of illusions, the foremost being that the Kim dynasty is simply crazy. The problem with the label of crazy is that the attribution of a total lack of rationality to a person shuts down any attempt to understand that person’s actions.

North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is a rational response to its national security concerns. The conventional (non-nuclear) military capabilities of the US-South Korea-Japan alliance far, far outweigh North Korea’s capabilities. If there were a war, there is basically a 99% probability that North Korea would lose. They are not at all confident that China, their treaty ally, would assist them. Facing this reality, and considering the fact that a state in possession of nuclear weapons has never been invaded, they made the rational choice to equip themselves with a deterrent. A nuclear arsenal gives them Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) vis-à-vis South Korea, and the closer they get to having an arsenal of ICBMs, the closer they get to having MAD vis-à-vis the US. They are simply trying to survive.

America could obliterate North Korea – not to mention planet Earth

Of course, North Korea is still very, very far from having MAD capability in light of the fact that America possesses an estimated 4018 nuclear weapons. Should North Korea launch a first strike, it is a distinct possibility that the president of the United States would decide to use a certain number of those missiles to end the existence of North Korea. For that matter, America has enough nuclear weapons to end all life on Earth. By the way, exactly the same thing could be said of Russia, which possesses 7300 nuclear warheads. If all of these were simultaneously launched at the US, for example, regardless of whether we could intercept a fair number of them, enough would land that it does not take a great leap of the imagination to suppose that humanity would face a nuclear winter scenario.

North Korea is a real threat… to South Korea and Japan

Although I have argued that North Korea is a rational actor, and although I do not believe that Kim Jong Un personally would be willing to face the consequences of launching a nuclear strike, let’s suppose I am wrong. North Korea does not yet possess many ICBMs, but it certainly has enough short- and medium- range ballistic missiles to hit South Korea or Japan with one or more nuclear warheads.

This map shows us how far some of North Korea’s missiles reach (though targeting is another matter). Among those listed here, Nodong is the important one, because this class has been successfully tested numerous times, and they possess a stockpile of a few hundred. These could be used to hit South Korea or Japan with nuclear warheads. The missile which you see Alaska in range of, Taepodong-2, is actually a rocket which has been used to launch a satellite, and there is no evidence that it is intended for use as an ICBM.

Missile defense systems offer South Korea and Japan limited protection

Both South Korea and Japan deploy Patriot missile defense systems from the United States, an earlier version of which had a 40% to 79% success rate against SCUD missiles launched in the first Gulf War. Though the system has since improved, one would like to see a 100% success rate, were one expecting to be attacked.

That's where THAAD comes in. South Korea now possesses another defense against short-range ballistic missiles in the form of the THAAD missile defense system which the US recently deployed in Korea despite strong protest from China (about which more in another post). THAAD has had a 100% intercept success rate in the last eleven trials, and includes "up to 72 interceptors per battery." I take that to mean that if North Korea launched 100 ballistic missiles at once, the single THAAD battery stationed in South Korea would shoot down 72/100. 

As I mentioned above, North Korea has a few hundred Nodong missiles, so the current THAAD battery appears to be a step in the right direction, but it isn't perfect protection. If North Korea launched 300 ballistic missiles at once, aimed at various targets throughout South Korea, this would be what defense experts refer to as a "needle in a haystack" strategy. The idea is that regardless of how accurate one's missile defense system is, if the number of incoming missiles is greater than the number of a defending missiles, some of those incoming are going to get through. The "needle" in this haystack refer to a missile tipped with a nuclear warhead. Some say that there would be no way to defend against this form of nuclear attack, because the missile defense units wouldn’t know which missile to target. Indeed, supposing North Korea used all 10-20 of the nuclear warheads believed to be in its arsenal, attached to 10-20 Nodong missiles, and launched in a barrage of a few hundred, this appears to be a guaranteed method of hitting some targets.

Conclusion: Americans can breathe easy; people in East Asia, not so much.

The even more serious threat which North Korea presents to South Korea is in the form of conventional artillery. North Korea has thousands upon thousands of artillery pieces aimed at Seoul, and should North Korea choose to use them, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in South Korea would die. And that’s only the opening salvo of the war. 

America is not going to be nuked anytime soon, let alone invaded. I could not confidently say the same of North Korea, which is inhabited by millions of real human beings who have thoughts and feelings like you and me. Nor of South Korea.

President Trump might want to consider filling that vacancy.