Alex WellersteinVerified account

I gave a talk to some very bright high schoolers a few weeks ago, about how they should think about North Korea when they read about it in the news. Here is the gist of what I tried to get across: (thread)

1. Be wary of anyone who tells you they are "crazy." "Crazy" is the 21st century way to dehumanize your enemies, to make it easier to say, "they can't be dealt with like rational human beings."

The DPRK leadership are dictators with no regard for their people or human rights. That, unfortunately, is not because they are crazy (and hardly makes them even unique). When it comes to nukes, they are acting like textbook "rational actors."

2. Be wary of anyone who tells you the only options are to attack them now or attack them later. For the last 50 years the USA has blundered into a nearly unbroken string of wars on this kind of logic. It has rarely turned out to be true, and the consequences have been severe.

(Anyone who wants to argue that the DPRK cannot be deterred has a high bar to clear. Why think deterrence won't work here, when it seems to have worked against Mao's China, Stalin's Russia, etc.? Why assume DPRK is more suicidal than other states?)

Each war the US had gotten into had generally led to the exchange of old problems for new ones. *Sometimes* you may have to go to war — WWII qualifies for that for me. Even then, the world that came after was not exactly an easy one.

(It is a broader point, but I think it is deeply disturbing that, after a half-century of mired conflicts, while we are still stuck in two of them, the broader US public, and many politicians of both parties, still seem to treat going to war rather lightly.)

3. It is difficult to do so, but try to put yourself in the DPRK's position. They are a small, poor, weak, isolated country. They have one half-friend (China) who benefits from their being a point of attention for the rest of the region. They are otherwise surrounded by enemies.