A 'soft-response' to North Korean threats

By Guest Column -- K.J. Dolney —— Bio and Archives October 2, 2017

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As North Korea ramps up its ballistic missile saber rattling, America should take a page from the teachings of the early 19th century military thinker Carl von Clausewitz who tells us, “The probability of direct confrontation increases with the aggressiveness of the enemy. So, rather than try to outbid the enemy with complicated schemes, one should, on the contrary, try to outbid him in simplicity.”

We prepare for Kim Jong Un's belligerent behavior, but give him something else to think about while on he's still on his back foot. His regime's greatest weakness is an entire population that is starving for knowledge, as much as it is food; and his Chinese neighbor's biggest fear is of the North Korean populace finding out just how well the Chinese are living and eating by comparison and deciding to bum rushing their porous common border. Our objective should be to redirect Kim 's focus to an internal threat of a mass defection by his people to neighboring China, which would certainly incur the wrath of his PRC minders. We ‘soft-threaten’ Comrade Kim with a high-altitude balloon drop of light-weight, full-color, waterproof and indestructible mylar leaflets launched from a ship in the international waters of the Yellow Sea west of Pyongyang. This "gift of knowledge" to his people, revealing the sumptuous foodstuffs and better life-style, that may be found with the "lights on," just across their porous northern border with China on the Yalu River should be enough to keep him occupied. It would be a safer defection for North Korean citizens than risking death trying to cross the highly-fortified DMZ to reach Seoul in the south. However, in the interests of peace, prior to any release, we should show a sample of the intended leaflets to the leaders of the People's Republic of China, as 'encouragement' to either reign in or replace Little Kim and his bankrupt juche political philosophy.