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Well, certainly you can't absolutely rule out anything. Maybe the earth will be hit by a meteor and we'll all be incinerated; maybe tomorrow alien fleet will attack earth and enslave us all; maybe some blackholes will grow so powerful that it'd reverse the expansion of universe and suck everything back into singularity. Who knows? Nonetheless, assuming there is no out of blue changes than blows all assumptions and everything we know out of the window. There will be no 2nd Korean war in the foreseeable future. To explain the conclusion, I need to first explain some assumption/logical ground rules:
1. North Korea is led by a rational leadership pursuing a rational foreign and defense policy. The biggest problem I see with US media and its portrait of the world is its gross, almost cartoonish simplification of everything and everybody into at best schoolyard brawl, at worst, batman style fantasy. If you carefully examine the evidence, you'd see all of the current boogymen demonized by the US media: Iran, North Korea, even Bin Laden, are all more or less rational players in a game that has been played by different players at different stage of history ever since there was human beings. They might be your enemies, you certainly don't have to agree with their design, plan and priorities. But it'd be terribly unhelpful or even downright ignorant to assume your opponents are guided by some cartoonishly juvenile reasoning. In short, one must understand there is a reason behind the decision they make and there is a cause for what they do before a rational examination of evidence could start.
2. The world is NOT governed by some Wilson style international institution, certainly it's not governed by some idealistic moral framework. The world simply doesn't work that way, it never did, and it never will. Not to mention neither Wilson nor the currently moral framework, as understood by people in the west, are as noble as many of their believers would like to believe. Any history book can give you at least 100 grossly grotesque crimes from ancient times to yesterday committed by the people admired and held as role models by many other less informed people. Again, this is politics, not Jedi vs Sith. (even Jedi vs Sith is much more complicated than its name suggests) So stick to the fact and reason, not imagination and hyperbole.
Now, let's examine some history:
1. Korean war at the 50s didn't happen in a vacuum. It was but it was not all about a strongly nationalistic people yearning for political unification (it's a big deal with both North and the South, the only difference was and still is what system to adopt and who'd be in charge.). It happened in the larger capitalism vs communism context. In another word, the larger cause of the war can be attributed to Washington, Moscow, Beijing rather than Seoul and Pyongyang. In particular, US and Soviet Union's mixed signals toward each other and misunderstanding of each other played much bigger role in causing the war than any plan by Kim. US's misunderstanding of China's historical geopolitical interest on Korean peninsula contributed to the later escalation and subsequent Chinese intervention. To put it simply, without wrong signal from the US, Soviet Union would have vetoed Kim's plan for war; without Stalin's greenlight, there'd not have been a war; without Truman's dismissal of Chinese warning, the war would not have lasted 4 years.
2. North Korea didn't invade South Korea out of pure ideological fever. It did so with a substantial chance of actually winning the war. That's why the war broke out in 50, not 49 or 48. Chinese decision to release substantial number of highly experienced battle-hardened ethnical Korean soldiers serving in Chinese military as well as Soviet decision to provide large amount of heavy weapons to North Korea built up a formidable force with the capability to carry out a Blitzkrieg style war against the South. The establishment of People's Republic of China with jurisdiction spanning pretty much all of territory of the previously anti-Communism Republic of China removed threat to North Korea's back and replaced it with a large, friendly and powerful neighbor that directly bordered Soviet Union. (means that North Korea could access Soviet and Chinese support without going through 3rd country) In short, North Korea invaded with a pretty substantial military advantage that offered pretty reasonable chance of success and two big nations behind its back that could directly supply and support North Korea in case of failure on the battlefield.
3. The result of the war, namely millions of death, large amount of money spent, in exchange for almost exactly the same political and military situation as it was before the war eventually made all sides realize the futility of their respective attempt to unify Korea by force. On the other hand, the war reinforced and institutionalized US support for South Korea, as evidenced by US military presence in South Korea; And it drove a wedge between North Korea and its great power supporters, namely, China and Russia, North Korea felt somewhat betrayed by China and Russia for their decision to seek negotiated settlement and basically agreed to return Korean peninsula to pre-war status quo, as evidenced by North Korea's latter political estrangement from both powers and its emphasis on self-reliance. In short, the war's hard result taught all the players on both sides that a military solution to the unification problem is not likely to succeed while the war's soft impact changed, subtly but quite decisively, the political alignment among all players involved.
Fast forward to 2009, we still pretty much have the same players involved, albeit Japan played much more important roles now than it was then. But the conditions which precipitated the Korean war in the 50s are long gone and not likely to come back in the foreseeable future:
1. There is no more common ideological bond among China, Russia and North Korea any more. And there is no more ideological confrontation any more. Politically speaking, economically speaking and militarily speaking, China and Russia won't gain anything out of a new war on Korean peninsula. The strategic interests of China and Russia are perfectly served by a divided but peaceful Korea peninsula with occasional flare-up in tension.(China wants a buffer and a peaceful border. Russia wants a venue to politically annoy the US if necessary and strategically distract the US if possible.) The genuine help and strong support from China and Soviet Union back then which was in no small part the result of shared ideology simply isn't there any more for North Korea. The US, on the other hand, is firmly, unambiguously and institutionally committed to coming to South Korea's aid if war broke out, though anybody can change and these kind of promise historically are never as reliable as it was advertised, it did remove ambiguity which at its worst, resulted in the very damaging signal sent by the US regarding if it'd support South Korea militarily in case of a war immediately before Korean war broke out.
2. Make no mistake, North Korea's military and economy are in shambles. With the cold war gone, so are gone the larger economic system North Korea relied on. China is willing to provide certain support to prop up North Korea economy. But its intention is clearly more about keeping everything from falling down rather than beefing up the North and allowing it to if not prosper, at least function normally, like it was before the end of cold war. Comparing to the 50s, the substantive advantage North enjoyed economically and militarily are long gone. On the other hand, the same geopolitical interest China and Russia have in keeping North Korea alive, and North Korea's substantial ability, even if you didn't take the nukes into consideration, to wreck havoc on the South and Japan in any kind of military conflict still serve as powerful deterrents against any funny thoughts on the side of the US regarding regime change.
Basically, it's a stalemate. North is too weak to attack anybody or even defend itself in a drawn-out war but still more than capable enough to inflicting devastating damage on both South Korea and Japan, even without any help from China and Russia. That, coupled with the vital strategic interest China and Russia, in particular China, has in keeping alive North Korea, are enough of a defense to keep the North Korea from really collapsing or being attacked, as envisioned and predicated by many less than savvy commentators in the US, in the foreseeable future.
3. On a personal level, if you were Kim, why'd you start a war? You know you're pretty much without real ally. You know your military is not in a good shape. And you know US probably will come to South Korea's aid if there were a war. Why attack when the odds are stacked up so heavily against you? On the other hand, you also know you have nukes which are more than enough to dissuade even the looniest warmongers in Washington from even suggesting pulling a "regime change" trick against you like what they did to Saddam Hussein; You also know your deployed missiles and artillery pieces can devastate South and Japan and will convince them to vote against any real attempt to militarily attack you by the US; You also know that China has a history of intervening in Korean peninsula against intrusion by other powers that goes back centuries and transcends ideology, why would you attack since there is clearly no danger to you or your regime? Trust me, he knows ALL of these and judging by the political maneuvers he pulled off and all the assessments provided by people who had talked to him, he's very savvy, knows reality of himself, his country, his pseudo-allies and his opponents and very much on top of his game, he's weak but by no means desperate.
To sum it up, all the conditions that contributed to the break-out of Korean war simply aren't there today. There is a stalemate and a strategic balance in place right now that may not satisfy anybody but is good enough to be tolerated by everybody. To put it bluntly, nobody, including Kim and North Korea, can gain anything out of a new war and everybody, including Kim and North Korea, runs the risk of losing A LOT if there were a new war. So, there WON'T be a war.
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