Kim Jong Il - a brief reflection

I've given serious thought to Kim Jong Il during two phases of my life. First, during high school and college CX debate. You could construct disadvantages with consequences involving nuclear war very easily by invoking the specter of North Korea. And, as every good high school debater knows, nuclear war is the inexorable outcome of virtually any policy resolution.

My second encounter with Kim Jong Il, however, changed the way I thought about the world. I had a U.S.-China foreign relations course in which the professor, Robert Ross, was dedicated toward debunking narratives. Two matters still resonate very strongly. The first involved Professor Ross's observation the week of 9/11: "Terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Cruise missiles are the weapons of the strong. Radical Islamists don't have cruise missiles, so they fly planes into towers. That doesn't diminish the personal tragedy of the victims." That didn't entirely sink in at the moment.

Given the subject of the course, our class examined the impact of North Korea on Chinese-U.S. relations in a more routine manner. Professor Ross didn't like calling Kim Jong Il crazy, and he was rather contemptuous of those who did. He scorned political scientists and politicians who fancied themselves capable of divining the mental-state of a human being based on foreign policy. Kim Jong Il engaged in high-risk brinksmanship. Those risks paid off, in the sense that his regime was comparatively stable and he had survived in an era when most dictators had fallen. Sure, the US could crush him. China could crush him. But, neither had--because Kim Jong Il cannily converted his apparent "craziness" into leverage when, by rights, he should have very little. What others labeled "crazy" could very easily be viewed as "rational." Again, Professor Ross thought Kim Jong Il a tyrant. He didn't approve of his brutality or disregard for the welfare of his people. But, he detested the easy narrative that our enemy was a lunatic incapable of acting in his own self interest.

I was largely persuaded at the time. Over the years, however, Professor Ross's teachings have reverberated in my mind when I've considered all sorts of issues. Strip away the narrative. Who benefits from an action? Who loses out? Those questions explain far more of human behavior than most of us would believe. Or, as Curt Schilling more pithily put it, "Aura and mystique...those are dancers at a night club."

I don't know if Kim Jong Il was a madman. Certainly, he was a wretched human being, who lived a life of unimaginable luxury while his people starved. But, in my life, Kim Jong Il was a lesson that profoundly altered the window through which I view the world.