'Very, Very Bad Behavior': North Korea's War-Tuned Diplomacy

It was “very, very bad behavior” for North Korea to fire artillery at South Korean soldiers and civilians on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island, according to the U. S. Department of State.

State appreciates that North Korea has inverted the trope that “war is diplomacy by another means” into the practice of “war as diplomacy.” The long series of brinksman’s actions by North Korea would suggest that the practice has been honed into an art form. Only a few months back the rogue state torpedoed a South Korean naval vessel, claiming the lives of some 46 sailors. The four lives lost and score of injuries suffered today (November 23) is but another episode of continuing behavior, that seems to be more dramatic and more insistent than ever since the January 2009 announcement by North Korea that it was withdrawing from all military understandings with South Korea. That particular announcement has been largely explained away as a protest of the withdrawal of South Korean economic aid in retaliation for continued North Korean nuclear development. However, coming with the advent of the current U. S. Administration, there is good reason to think that it has larger significance – namely, signaling President Obama that he must come to a new, original understanding with North Korea.

What, then, might be the point of this behavior? If we discount the likelihood of a 1914-like effort to leverage strategic alliances into a grand war for the sake of petty objectives by a smaller, weaker state, then we must turn to North Korean confidence that war is not a likelihood no matter how severe the provocations it inflicts. This cost-free assault upon the U. S. alliance, then, would seem to imply an argument that this is the surest way to achieve diplomatic objectives. Those objectives would be to consolidate North Korea as an independent state (anti-unification) and a Chinese strategic buffer to U. S. influence in East Asia. The attitudes of the Chinese toward North Korean provocations would seem to support such a conclusion, from China’s unwillingness to respond to the torpedoing of the ship Cheonan last spring to its state-media’s embrace of North Korea’s thin “they fired first” excuse for today’s barbarity.

When the U. S. State Department declares that this is “very, very bad behavior,” therefore, it tacitly acknowledges that it receives this as an approach to diplomacy. While it does not condone diplomacy practiced with such extreme means, it does intend to steer policy toward further diplomacy – the civilized diplomacy of “good behavior.” Unfortunately, that can only mean that North Korea’s approach to diplomacy is successful, no matter the ultimate result.