The Tale of Princess Olga of Kiev

 

Gather 'round children and hear the tale of Princess Olga.

 

Olga was a brave and brilliant princess, but she was married to a bit of a jerk. It’s true.

Her husband was the Prince of Kiev, Igor. He held his lands with an iron fist and demanded huge tributes from his neighbors. Yet, she loved him with all her heart and gave him a son.

One day in 945, the Drevlian tribe got tired of paying tribute and killed him in a most cowardly manner. After killing Prince Igor, thinking that she was merely a weak and scared woman, they tried to get Princess Olga to marry one of their princes so that they could take over all of Kievan Rus – the most powerful Slavic kingdom of the age.

But Olga wasn’t weak. And she wasn’t scared. She was pissed.

Welcoming the Drevlian messengers into the city as they carried their deceitful offer, the people of the city seized their boat, dragged it onto the land, and tossed them all in a ditch, burying them alive.

But the Princess’ honor was not yet satisfied. Before word reached the Drevlians about the fate of their men, she asked for a second delegation to come so that their “distinguished men” could take her to their lands in honor before she married the new prince.

Excited that their ploy worked, the Drevlians came to Kiev. She offered up her own bathhouse to them for their comfort. As they sat in the hot steam, relaxing after their long journey, the vengeful princess had the doors barred and set the building on fire, burning them alive.

Still enraged at the slaughter of her husband and the Drevlians’ devious attempt to usurp her kingdom and kill her son, the unforgiving Olga left her palace to visit the tomb of her slain husband.

Acting as the grieving widow, she once again invited more Drevlians to hold a final funeral feast. Once the gullible horde was drunk, her army came out of the woods and beset the blurry-eyed crowd, killing 5,000 of them.

Now on the march, the Princess of Death reached the enemy’s capital, the city of Korosten. The city where her husband had been killed.

Her army besieged Korosten but the Drevlians held out for a year. Princess Olga beseeched them saying that all of their other cities had been conquered, pay tribute again, and now the people live their lives and tend to their fields, so why should Korosten resist and continue to suffer?

Our clever princess offered terms of peace to the city’s leaders. She acknowledged that her husband’s greed was tyrannical and only asked that if the city paid her a tribute of three pigeons and three sparrows for each household, they would all be spared.

The city rejoiced at such an offer and readily sent her the birds. But at night Princess Olga, the Regent of all Keivan Rus, the widow of the mighty Prince Igor, the mother of the future of his dynasty that would last a further six centuries had one last trick in store for the people who dared defy Kiev.

She had her men tie bits of sulfur and cloth onto the birds. They lit the cloth on fire and sent the birds back into the city where they landed in the homes of their former owners, carrying flaming, melting chunks of sulfur over the people’s heads.

This mighty princess firebombed her enemies a thousand years before airplanes, before carpet bombing, before Dresden became a byword for destroying a city by fire.

That night, all of her enemies perished. That night, Princess Olga guaranteed the survival of Kiev. 

*This is based on the life of a real princess, Olga of Kiev, who was born in either 890 or 925 and died in 969. The information comes from the Rus' Primary Chronicle. 

--Jacob Bogle, 2/27/2022

2020 - The Lost Year

As 2019 drew to an end, we began learning about a weird, unknown virus hitting eastern China. At the time, like most, my family was more focused on the upcoming year. 

We were planning on growing our savings so we could buy a new home in 2021, we were preparing to visit some close friends in Florida, and we were looking forward to taking an international trip to celebrate my partner’s 33^rd birthday.

Then the economy collapsed as that wired little virus turned into a monster. My partner was furloughed as Nashville shutdown, Florida became an epicenter of the pandemic in America, and thanks to rising case numbers, many countries won’t even let Americans visit anymore. And there’s still four months left to go in the year.

Individual years, decades, even whole generations have been referred to as “lost”.

During the American Civil War about 2% of the population was killed. By one estimate, over a fifth of all Southern men aged 20-24 died in the war. One hundred and fifty-five years later, the American south now seems to be bearing the brunt of COVID-19 as well.

World War I is said to have cost the “flower of European youth”, and World War II resulted in the worst carnage imaginable. But as bad as they are, wars are expected to cost lives and destroy families. Unfortunately, economies can too.

During the Great Recession, approximately 10,000 people took their own lives in the US and European Union, and countless millions had their worlds turned upside down from the hardship. Japan “lost” an entire decade from 1991 to 2001 as economic stagnation took over and the country couldn’t crawl its way back to the prosperity that had marked the second half of the twentieth century.

But, from Japan’s lost decade to the lost generation of Europe, one thing all of these examples share is that they’re local or regional. The American Civil War was, well, American. Even a global war like WWII didn’t actually rage across every inch of the planet. No battle was fought in Nigeria and the harbor of Rio De Janeiro was never a prime target of Hitler’s. COVID-19 on the other hand has swept every corner of the globe.

Unlike artillery shells whizzing by that you can hear (and even see), trillions of invisible viral bullets permeate our environment, waiting to take another victim. And in the battle against it, we have been forced to alter the lives of far more people than were ever affected by war.

From the gay couple living near Nashville, Tennessee trying to survive the entertainment industry shutdown of “Music City USA” to the citizens of Mumbai, India where upwards of half the population living in its sprawling slums may have contracted the virus, it seems no place has gone untouched.

With four months in the year left and 4.6 million US cases already, it’s not unreasonable to suspect the United States will have 9 million cases by Christmas, and that a million people will have died worldwide.

Economically, US GDP fell 32.9% (the worst quarterly drop ever) and that trend is being seen everywhere. The European Union has entered into a recession and the World Bank predicts that Russia’s economy will contract by 6% (deepening their economic crisis). In fact, the World Bank predicts that the global economy will shrink by a combined 5.2%, “with the largest fraction of economies experiencing declines in per capita output since 1870.”

COVID-19 has resulted in a lost year in more than just Brazil or Europe or in rich countries or poor countries. It has taken away an entire year of family plans and of people’s education and graduations, a year of savings and a year of vacations, it has placed millions at risk of eviction and caused emergencies throughout the medical community as routine screenings go unperformed and patients stay at home with their chronic illness rather than risk catching COVID-19 by seeing their doctor for regular care.

It has done this everywhere. On every continent, every country. Even in the few with no reported cases, the effects of COVID-19 have probably touched more individual lives in one way or another than any other pandemic in history.

The upshot is that while 2020 may be a lost year for many, it doesn’t have to be a genuinely lost year in terms of the lives of thousands and thousands of others. And COVID’s death and economic ruin doesn’t have to carry on into another lost year and beyond.

Managing economies made up of millions of businesses and billions of customers is complicated. Managing a pandemic is actually pretty simple. 

It may take a few years at a university to learn about things like “behavioral economics” but the blueprint for controlling infectious diseases has its foundations dating back to the Plague – the one that burned through Europe 667 years ago.

We know how to limit the damage of outbreaks without having a vaccine. It was done with polio, it is being done with HIV/AIDS, it has been done with each Ebola recurrence, and it can definitely be done with COVID-19. The specific rules may vary depending on the exact disease, but in each case those rules can fit onto a single note card. For the current pandemic that has stolen so much and is trying to steal so much more, the rules are basic:

1. Everyone sneezes or coughs on their hands, so wash yours

2. Don’t make it easy to spread, so socially distance yourself

3. Assume you have it, so wear a mask while around others

4. And don’t let false information stand in the way of keeping others safe

These are fundamental to stopping a disease like COVID-19, and that’s what makes them so effective. If we collectively can’t follow such simple tasks for the benefit of others, then 2020 won’t be the last lost year.

For my family, the jury is still out whether we will be able to safely see our friends (as Florida grapples with continual daily case records) or if a new house is coming next year, but we will keep looking out for each other the way all families are supposed to.

--Jacob Bogle, 8/4/2020
www.JacobBogle.com
www.JacobBogleWrites.com

Ask Me Why I Think I Need A Gun

I first wrote about gun control in 2012, unfortunately things only seem to have gotten worse. There have been more mass shootings and calls for outright gun confiscation have commensurately grown louder.

There are a few main arguments for and against gun control. The pro-gun control crowd talks about "common sense" solutions and questions why anyone would "need" a "weapon of war". The pro-Second Amendment folks also hold a very diverse range of views with some supporting universal background checks and a tiny minority of others genuinely believing that the right to defend one's self is unlimited to the point that tanks should be sold at gun shows. And while it's true that most Americans fall into the middle of the extremes, popular opinion doesn't really matter much if you're talking about something that's a fundamental right.

Humans have always made weapons for hunting and defense, and they've also made them to conquer, rape, and pillage. The technology has decidedly changed over the years but that doesn't mean basic human rights change. In the past a trained archer might have been able to fire a bow at a rate of 10 arrows a minute. Can you imagine when the crossbow was invented and any regular guy (or woman or even child) could accurately knock out a bad guy with bolt after bolt after bolt? I can hear the calls for regulation even now. 
The gun, simply defined, has been around for a thousand years. It took the place of the crossbow, the arrow, and the sword because it is immeasurably more efficient. But like the old days of arrows and bolts, a gun that can fire 5 rounds a minute verses multiple rounds in a second doesn't change the ultimate fact: a person's ability to provide for their families and to protect is inviolable.

The Bill of Rights is called that because it lists well understood rights. Not privileges. Rights. The founding documents of the country and the countless letters and articles written at the time all go on at length about how humans are endowed with inalienable rights, that those rights don't become unnecessary when opinions change, that they can only be denied on an individual bases because that person did something wrong, and that the purpose of the Constitution is to limit the power of government, not the person.

While it is certainly true that America has never been able to fully live up to that promise of life, liberty, and happiness for all, the entire purpose of the country is that never-ending struggle to create a more perfect union. To that end, slavery was abolished and a woman's inherent right to vote was recognized. The whole course of the nation's history has been one of expanding liberty, not taking it away.

Sadly, when bad things happen people have a natural tendency to attack everything associated with the tragedy. After Pearl Harbor, we threw Japanese-Americans into prison. After 9/11, we eviscerated privacy rights, and many wanted to actually ban an entire religion. And after each senseless mass shooting, many want to restrict fundamental liberties for a false sense of security - regardless of the fact that this inherent right to personal, individual gun ownership is something the Supreme Court has validated.

The right to self-defense is both an individual right and a collective right. The individual has every right to defend themselves from a home invader and, collectively, we have the right to defend the nation from hostile forces. Neither the individual nor collective right can firmly be protected if the other isn't also protected. A country with a well-regulated military can still be invaded and overcome. But a country with millions of citizens who can all exercise their own right to defense is a whole lot harder to subdue, as history has shown many times over.

Mass grave of victims of the Srebrenica massacre.

My early childhood coincided with the end of the Cold War, and in that relatively short time countless tragedies have been visited upon the world by governments, criminal cartels, and terrorist groups. I don't consider these things merely distant and foreign warnings, nor do I think of them as some truism of the world that doesn't really mean that much. These are real events affecting real lives, and I think it's important to keep them in mind. There's little need to search the far-off past for examples of unarmed people being dragged off in cattle cars, a quick review of some of the things that have happened in my lifetime should be more than sufficient warning.

In my lifetime a terrorist group managed to take over one of the oldest societies in the world in Afghanistan, which also enabled the events of 9/11 a decade later.
I've seen the Chinese government engage in cultural genocide against millions of Uyghurs. It has imprisoned upwards of a million of them with no due process, broken up thousands of families, and created a biometric database to track the entire population.
I've seen civil war in the Balkans. And wars where the government turned completely against its own people in Libya and Syria.
I've seen genocides in Rwanda, Sudan, and against the Rohingya of Myanmar.
I watched as ISIS nearly overran two countries, killing thousands in the process.
I've seen the governments of Poland, Russia, and others take draconian actions against peaceful LGBT citizens, and the establishment of concentration camps for them in Chechnya.
I've seen drug cartels take over entire swaths of Central America.
I've watched Venezuela go from one of the richest countries to hell on earth.
As a North Korea analyst, I can see each and every day prison camps operating that hold upwards of 200,000 people.
I saw human rights abuses in Chile and throughout South America that resulted in the torture and deaths of tens of thousands. All with the backing of our own government.
And, yes, I also learned about Nazi Germany where six million died in the Holocaust. I learned about the Soviet government-sponsored famine in Ukraine that resulted in over three million deaths - and that even today evil men are prolonging a war in Ukraine with the backing of Russia. I learned about the killing fields in Cambodia, the mass purges in the Soviet Union, and the extensive crack downs on speech and religion that has never stopped in China.


Yet, despite the countless examples of international repression it is still hard to ever consider such tyranny happening in the United States. But the fact is most Americans actually think the federal government is a threat to liberty instead of the protector of liberty it was meant to be. And in 2017 only 23% felt the government had the consent of the governed - something that is the very cornerstone of the concept of government itself. Sadly, you don't need to look at polls or even consider the horrors foreign governments have visited on their own citizens. The concern about tyranny, government oppression, and state-sponsored violence can be dramatically justified by looking at our own history.

The US is no stranger to the creation of a surveillance state. The government has shown it doesn't care about your right to privacy and is more than willing to violate it owns laws. It engaged in domestic genocidal activities all the way into the 20th century. Even the much-loved Lincoln ordered the largest mass lynching of Native Americans in history. And speaking of Lincoln, the causes of secession may have been slavery, but the war itself was ignited by the government's willingness to send soldiers to kill other Americans. Regardless of the historical debates, the Civil War resulted in over 600,000 deaths and the US was the only country in history to end slavery in the context of a war.
Later, you have Texas Rangers murdering innocent Mexican Americans by the hundreds during La Matanza.
In the aftermath of 9/11, it even became dangerous to openly support the Constitution or to belong to 3rd parties. Various training manuals and reports from military, police, and other law enforcement agencies have listed potential "extremists" as those who promote judicial reforms, supporters of Ron Paul, holding pro-2nd Amendment views, and even disparage against homeschooling.
The government maintains kill lists and "no fly" list (which are notoriously inaccurate), all compiled in secret and without giving citizens the benefit of due process. Incidentally, gun control advocates have wanted to use the no-fly list as part of a plan to prevent people from owning guns.

And all of this adds to the current background where millions of Americans believe the Trump administration is setting up concentration camps. Where people see the vast abuses of government and law enforcement, but still insist that the only people who should have guns are those very people keeping kids in cages. The cognitive dissonance is stunning.

Calls for "common sense" gun control or banning "assault weapon" sound benign, but the history of gun control in this country has a long a dangerous history. Just like many other things, governments used Jim Crow laws to deny blacks the ability to own guns (or even certain knives in the case of Florida). What seems like common sense is only valid if it doesn't infringe on the rights of other people. 
Something like a universal background check comes with very real questions. A true universal background check law would mean that a dad couldn't give his daughter an heirloom rifle for her 18th birthday or that two friends couldn't exchange guns without first seeking the permission of the government. Then you add in something like Red Flag laws. These laws deny due process, violate privacy, and would begin to infringe on the rights of everyone who has ever been to a therapist, anyone who is a veteran, and anyone who smokes weed.

What about common sense bans of "assault weapons"? First you have to define what an assault weapon is. Many guns used legitimately in hunting have the same general characteristics of guns people have called "assault" or "military style." There is no unified, clear-cut definition of what those phrases mean. Often, they simply mean a gun that looks scary. Additionally, the only way such a ban would work is if you take the guns off the streets. In other words, go house to house and confiscate them. Otherwise you'd still have millions of "bad" guns in circulation, able to be stolen or end up on the black market where only criminals will have access to them.
Gun confiscation is the only way to make bans work. But even in a country like New Zealand, where gun laws have traditionally been strict, after the Christchurch shootings the gun buyback rate was only around 1%. Put another way, 99% of the owners of the now illegal guns have refused to voluntarily surrender them. Should New Zealand police start busting down the doors of these otherwise innocent and peaceful citizens?

When all is said and done, these "common sense" reforms end up looking extremely complicated and would require vast amounts of new government power to enforce, all while not addressing the root causes or affecting many other shootings. A 2014 study looked at 142 mass shootings and found that semi-automatic rifles were used in only 25% of the cases, meaning that 75% were committed with things like pistols, revolvers, and regular rifles. Context is also very important when discussing gun violence overall. The US doesn't have the highest rate of gun violence in the world and the bulk of gun deaths in America come from suicides. Of course that's not a good thing, but these proposed changes to gun laws wouldn't have much of an affect at all. Not to mention that plenty of shooters got their guns either illegally or because law enforcement systems failed and allowed people who already shouldn't be able to purchase a firearm to acquire one. 

I also feel it's important to note that crime rates have fallen sharply since the 1990s.

Of the recent shootings in El Paso and Dayton, one was a Trump supporter while the other was a socialist. Clearly violence isn't the sole domain of any one political ideology. What every mass shooter has in common (or anyone who murders others for that matter) is the ideology of hate. They view Hispanics as invaders, they view Democrats as anti-American, they view gays as abominations, they view all conservatives as warmongers, they view a cheating spouse or rude boss as subhuman. They see other human beings as less valuable and less worthy of life. This points to a cultural problem we must look directly in the face. 

Japan has far higher consumption rates of video games than we do, but little violent crime (or any other type). The former countries of the USSR have much lower rates of religious adherence, but also have managed to not have the issues the United States does. Blaming violent games or a lack of God is just a way to try to oversimplify reality and skirt the very real problems driving violence.  
Just as systemic racism or police violence are uncomfortable things to confront (or to even acknowledge), we must look at what's fueling hate and "otherism," and why so many seem to be unable to find belonging within society as a whole, as well as their inability to find healthy ways to discuss and resolve their frustrations (real or imagined).

The reply to that by gun-control advocates is "why not at least stop them from being able to use those weapons?" Again, "those weapons" require definitions and preventing their use means a major growth of the very same government that abused its power countless times. Thus, while giving a government with an undisputed history of racism, discrimination, abuse, and murder even more power, we get to ignore the real problems indefinitely - just as with laying the blame at the feet of games. 

So, yes, I very much want mass shootings to end, but I am absolutely not willing take the word of our government that it won't do bad things. I am absolutely not willing to give up my right to defend myself. And more importantly, I recognize that just as I have no right to demand that you give up your rights to speech, a fair trial, or to not be a slave, I also have no right to demand you limit or give up your right to own a gun. And if I don't have that right, you certainly don't have the right to demand others do.


--Jacob Bogle, 8/9/2019
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Maps of the Ancient History of Israel

Ever since the partition of Palestine after WWII  and the creation of the modern Israeli state (1948), there has been controversy. In this particular post I don't want to debate the problems, but I do want to show that the land of Israel has been the historic home of the Jews and that it was the forcible removal and ethnic suppression of Jews that led to "Palestine" being predominantly Arab Muslim in modern times; that is, until 1948.

First I'd like to briefly discuss language. Hebrew and Arabic both belong to the Semitic language family. The Semitic languages originated around 3750 BC. This shared linguistic heritage proves that the peoples of Israel, Palestine, indeed all of Arabia, all have a common ancestry. While the many groups of people may have had differing political and cultural developments, the human beings themselves are all part of the same family. Not to mention that genetically speaking, the Semitic peoples predominantly belong to Haplogroup J-P209 which originated 13,000-31,000 years ago.

Of course despite these similarities, conflicts arise over religious, cultural, and political differences.

The land of Israel had been mainly Jewish until the 3rd century AD and had a substantial Jewish population until the 7th century. The political divisions of the core Israeli area, even during times of foreign occupation, also remained fairly consistent throughout history.

Map of Canaan. Borders are the red and blue lines.

Known Canaanite culture dates back to at least 3500 BC (though the area has been inhabited by modern humans for basically all of human history). As time went on, the area became dominated by small city-states with nomadic tribes interspersed. By 2240 BC, the Semitic Akkadian Empire had reached the area of Canaan. Interestingly, the first king of Babylon was the Amorite (which included part of Canaan) king, Sumu-abum. He founded an independent city-state and reigned from 1898-1877 BC.

Starting around 1700 BC, the historical lands of Canaan were politically controlled by Egypt, however much of Canaan's population were native tribes and peoples who had already shared a common a history for centuries. Many of the people who lived there could claim decent from Phoenicia. The Phoenicians had extensive trade routes going so far as Morocco in the west to Greece and lower Italy in the north.

Map of Phoenicia

The first battle in history to have a reliable written record was the Battle of Megiddo (located in modern day Israel) around 1457 BC. It pitted Canaanites against Egypt and Pharaoh Thutmose III.

14th century Middle East, shows Canaan under Egyptian rule.

From the 1300s BC through the 11th century BC, the lands came under the control of the Middle Assyrian Empire. It was during this time that Judaism began to develop as a distinct faith and culture. The first written record of the word "Israel" comes from the Merneptah Stele, which was created in 1208 BC.

The physical archaeological evidence of a united Kingdom of Israel (1050-930 BC) is limited, however few doubt the existence of the leaders of Saul, David, and Solomon. Saul was a Hebrew leader who lived ca, 1082-1010 BC. After the breakdown of the kingdom in 930 BC, two successor states were created, the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah.

Despite conflicts with neighboring states, they prospered until the northern kingdom was conquered by Assyria in 740 BC. The Kingdom of Judah survived until it too was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BC. This gives a period of at least 464 years of dominate Jewish control of the southern half of modern-day Israel (including Jerusalem), and at least 622 years of distinct Jewish identity (from the Merneptah Stele to the Babylonian Exile).

It is important to note that the Babylonian Exile was only a partial exile. The Jewish elite were driven out of Israel, but many others remained. At the fall of Babylon to Persia in 539 BC, the Jews that had been exiled began to return, though this process did take many years. The exile period is a very important one in Jewish history because it was during the exile that the canonical books of the Torah were laid out in precise writing.   

The Second Temple Period (which replaced the First Temple Period after its destruction during the Babylonian Exile) began in 516 BC and continued until 70 AD. The land of Israel (or Judea) was incorporated in several other empires, however the Jews always retained a level of local control (usually as a vassal kingdom) and territorial changes were minimal. The name "Judea" was also retained throughout Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods.

The Judah "Yehud" autonomous province (in pink) under Persia. 539-332 BC.

When Persia was defeated by Alexander the Great, Judea was incorporated into his empire and it remained part of the successor Ptolemaic Egyptian kingdom (ruled by Alexander's general Ptolemy I and his family) until Judea was captured by the Seleucid Empire in 198 BC. Remember, during these periods the Temple still stood and Jewish culture continued to survive. 

Then in 140 BC, the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty ruled the kingdom. 

Hasmonean kingdom, 140-37 BC.

Between 73-63 BC, Judea became a client state of Rome. The Hasmonean dynasty lost control to Herod the Great (with the help of Mark Antony's army) at the Siege of Jerusalem in 37 BC. It remained a client kingdom until 6 AD.

Herodian kingdom. 

This ended a further 146 years of direct Jewish control, and 522 years of nominal Jewish control. 

Afterward, Judea became a Roman province. 

Roman Province of Judea.

Even under direct Roman rule, the territorial region remained fairly consistent with historical kingdoms and it was still inhabited by a majority of Jews. From 1208 BC until 135 AD the area retained its Jewish identity. That's 1,343 years. In 132 AD the area was embroiled in conflict as the Jewish people struggled to regain independence. The Bar Kokhba Revolt  lasted four years and was mercilessly crushed by Rome: 580,000 Jews were killed during the revolt. This began the forced destruction of the Jewish way of life that would last 1,800 years. 

Judea was renamed "Syria Palaestina". Jews still made up the majority of the population, but from 200 AD and beyond they increasingly became the minority. With the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, and the massive loss of life through a series of revolts (culminating in Bar Kokhba), the Jews were largely dispersed. The province became Christian over time and existed until 390 AD when it was changed to Palaestina Prima under the Byzantine Empire.  

Byzantine Palestine 5th century.

Jewish identity survived in some pockets, especially in Samaria. A series of revolts during the 5th and 6th centuries led to the near total destruction of the Jewish population with over 200,000 killed. Then, in 614 AD the Sasanian Empire took control. After the Sasanians were overtaken by Muslim conquests, the area was renamed Jund Filastin.  

As I hope is now clear, Israel (the children of Jacob) lasted for over 1,300 years until a series of dreadful conflicts saw their numbers reduced to a mere fraction. The population of Judea/Palestine/Israel had never been very large, only a few million at most. After the destruction of their last strongholds, Israel became diaspora.

---Jacob Bogle, 2/5/15

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North Korea, the Nuclear Question

Kim Il-sung, North Korea's founder, had seen the devastation wrought by the bombs dropped on Japan in WWII and witnessed the obliteration of the Korean Peninsula by Allied forces in the Korean War. Almost from the start Kim Il-sung desired to develop his own nuclear weapons program. But, his desires were placed on hold as more pressing issues were on the table at the end of the Korean War, namely, rebuilding the country and completing his restructuring of the entire economy, military and culture.

With the Soviets as allies, North Korea felt relatively safe from American "imperial aggression" and so they went about more basic national concerns. However, they engaged in lower level nuclear activities with the USSR. In 1956 their scientists were given basic knowledge on how to begin a nuclear program and in 1959 the DPRK and USSR signed a "nuclear cooperation" agreement.

The collapse of the USSR marked the beginning of many changes in North Korea. It precipitated the famine, helped to wreck their economy, and a few years later they restarted their nuclear program after losing their primary defensive shield - the Cold War threat of all out nuclear war with the ruin of the US. Their nuclear program had been on hold since 1994 but in 1998 they tested a ballistic missile and restarted processing nuclear fuel.

Today, North Korea lacks any ability to sustain a long-term, full-scale war. Most of their tanks and other weapon systems are around 25-30 years old and many sit idle or broken because North Korea lacks sufficient fuel, replacement parts and even bullets. But we should not let that lull us into a false sense of security. The North Korean soldier is one who is strongly motivated, loyal to the point of religious zealotry, and is constantly reminded that all of their problems are directly caused by the US.

For us, the Korean War ended in 1953. For the North Koreans, it's still happening. The country's leadership knows full well that without Soviet and Chinese support during the War the North Koreans would have been wiped off the face of the earth...and they very nearly were. And so today, they see South Korea flourishing, they see thousands of US troops stationed in the South and they realize they probably can't count on Russia or China in the event of a new war. At the same time they also remember that prior to the early 1980's they had a stronger economy and better infrastructure than their southern cousins. So what is a tiny country with a schizophrenic superiority/inferiority complex to do?

Their insistence on developing a serious nuclear defense program is one we find difficult to understand. After all, the money they've spent pursuing this goal could have fed the entire population for several years. We have to realize that what the national leadership does is for its own survival alone and not necessarily the well-being of ordinary citizens.

For decades, North Korea has promoted itself to its people as a strong nuclear power and fully capable of sending satellites into space; at the forefront of any and all technologies. The reality is that they're bumbling about with little to go on except what they learned via the Soviets and their interactions with Iran, Syria and Iraq. Their brightest scientists are decades behind the modern world. And so, in an effort to ensure their legitimacy in the eyes of the people, and to reap the benefits of aid monies and arms deals, they have become hellbent on developing nuclear weapons and all the ancillary technologies that goes along with it.

The military is the lifeblood of North Korea. The official policy of North Korea is "Songun" (military-first) which means, in essence, the entire purpose of the nation, its economy, agriculture, technology, everything is to serve and enhance the military. And while the Kim family seems like they have had an iron-fisted grip on the county's affairs the reality is that they (more precisely, he; Kim Jong-un) must maintain an uneasy alliance between himself and the military leadership. It would go a long way toward cementing his rule if the military was well taken care of, which would include a nuclear arsenal.

This leaves us with a few questions:
What about sanctions?
What is the real threat?
Where does all this leave us today?

The first question deals with sanctions. The US and UN has levied multiple rounds of sanctions against North Korea since 2004. The problem with this is sanctions more often than not hurt the people of a country more than the leadership. Sanctions have attempted to squeeze the ruling elite into submission, in reality they have played right into their hands. The sanctions have drastically limited the amount of fuel oil and other necessities flowing into the country thus exacerbating their economic problems and hampering the ability of everyday Koreans to thrive. Exceptions have been made in the realm of food aid but this too has had a negative effect. By their very nature any aid that goes to North Korea must first go through government bureaucracies and the military is usually the one who ends up with the aid. Then soldiers take truck loads of food and sell it on the black market fueling the corrupt and the terminal kleptocratic state of the country.

The international community has also failed to realize that what constitutes "luxury goods" to the West is not what people in North Korea consider luxury. A simple TV is a luxury good in the North, not necessarily a gold-plated toilet. And the elite have had little problem getting their "luxury" goods since the UN doesn't provide a strict list of what exactly luxury means, rather they let each member country determine what is or isn't.

Sanctions, normally US led, also fits the propaganda. By engaging in sanctions and severely harming their domestic economy the North can easily blame all their woes on the US and can use them as an excuse to use their sovereign imperative for self-defense by citing a "need" for a nuclear deterrence. So while sanctions may make the West feel good about "stopping a rouge regime", the North is busy working their starving people into a frenzy of anti-American sentiment, ready to wage war at the drop of a hat. Not to mention that despite sanctions the North has recently tested two nuclear devices and multiple long-range rockets. Sanctions are clearly not working.

Furthermore, North Korea is not as dependent on outside help as one might expect. Their successful "satellite" launch in 2012 was a prime example. Based on the examination of rocket parts found in the ocean the world was shocked to discover that much of the rocket was domestically made. North Korea also has a fair amount of natural uranium deposits (32,000 TONS of pure uranium to be exact). Uranium enrichment is a rather straightforward process and the technical skills needed to produce a uranium-based nuclear device is much less than needed to produce a plutonium bomb. All of this tells us that while sanctions may make things difficult for the North, they are not preventing them from moving forward with their programs...obviously.

The next questions is a rather simple one, what is the real threat?

North Korea, more a socialist nightmare than utopia. A broken economy and starving people with an obsolete military. What could they possibly do? Well, obviously they can build nuclear weapons and place objects into orbit and we dismiss or poke-fun of North Korea at our own risk.
There is no way the North could launch a nuclear missile (or any missile) at the US mainland and even dream of hitting it. Theoretically, they could however send a bomb over in a shipping container. The North has been able to maintain an arms, drug and information trade with multiple nations the world over so it is conceivable that they could blow up the Port of Los Angeles by sneaking something on board one of the 8 million shipping containers (using another country as a 3rd-party mediator) that flow through the port. After all, ports are a notorious weak spot.

More realistically, I think we should focus on South Korea and the mood within the North. When Kim Jong-un came to power as a young, European educated man, the world hoped for real reforms. Unfortunately, it seems that the young Kim suffers from youth induced arrogance and a desire to prove himself to his people (undoubtedly egged on by seasoned and hawkish military advisers). The North has also been "gearing-up" for war since 1953 and I imagine that the citizenry is growing tired of constant war propaganda without ever releasing the tension.

Historically, North Korea has engaged in small hit & run tactics such as the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan and the bombing of Yeonpyeong Island or limited incursions. In fact, the North has technically violated the terms of the 1953 Armistice 221 times. So there is little question that the North is capable of hits, the question is, are they ready to engage in a full blown war? Politically speaking, the time is ripe for an escalated conflict. We've seen the North take provocative actions but now South Korea has also stepped up its rhetoric. The nearly elected ROK (Republic of Korea) president has made it clear he is willing to be much more aggressive in the face of any threat from North Korea and this willingness on both parts will make it very easy for an otherwise small event to blow up into war.

North Korea maintains a secretive and elite rapid strike force of about 180,000 men. These troops are well trained in asymmetric tactics and have a network of tunnels beneath the DMZ which, in the event of war, means that the South could be taken off guard as 180,000 enemy soldiers surround their forward defensive lines. Additionally, Seoul is within reach of thousands of field guns and rocket launchers which could inflict massive damage. North Korea could use its 500-forward deployed, long-rang guns to rain down 500,000 shells an hour for several hours. All of this would result in up to 1 million South Korean casualties within the first few days of war. Not to mention the rest of the North Korean military which in terms of raw numbers dwarfs the South's. And while the North lacks any real ability to engage in a sustained invasion the goal may not be to "win." Like the Taliban, the goal could be to bleed the US dry. We would be forced (by treaty) to send large amounts of aid and soldiers to back up the 28,500 US soldiers already stationed in the South and to help the South Korean military. The disruption in trade between the US and South, as well as the disruption of South Korea's overall $560 billion in global exports, could cause very real economic problems for the "enemies" of North Korea.

In the end, North Korea would be turned into a pile of ashes, as was the case during the Korean War but, not without costing the US and its allies a great deal first.

What do we do now?

I doubt North Korea genuinely wants an all out war. The end game of war would be bad for everyone involved. It is more likely that the North is simply wanting some breathing room. If it weren't for their nuclear program it's doubtful the world would even give the North the time of day. But there can be a positive outcome. Although sanctions haven't worked to stop their weapons programs they have succeeded in making life very hard for them and rumors of assassinations and internal power struggles surface from time to time.

I think it's time we re-evaluate our position with North Korea. The North is like a spoiled child and our approach to keep him from doing bad things is by starving him to death. To me, this doesn't sound very wise -or moral. It is obvious that all of their bellicose language has been in an attempt to gain attention and aid. It is equally obvious that the international community lacks the ability to stop the North from doing as they please since they have a fair amount of domestic capability (even if it's at the expense of other sectors). At the height of the Cold War, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, both sides understood that any escalation would result in both sides losing. There is no doubt that while we would technically win the war we would also lose it. Sanctions against the USSR did little to stop their activities and in the end the USSR collapsed from internal forces and a never ending asymmetric war in the Middle East.

Today, the US trades with many of our mortal enemies, Russia, China, Germany, Japan, Vietnam etc. Russia and China maintain militaries that could easily take our military to task if pushed to. Russian and Chinese human rights abuses are well known and their systems of government and economics are not the same as America's. That being said, the lives of modern Russians and Chinese are better now than at any point in history and at the same time the Chinese Communist Party has never been stronger. I am not saying that their horrid human rights record, or the deaths of millions caused directly by their governments should be ignored. I am saying that there are ways of opening up societies, of making lives better, without bombing the hell out of them or holding such threat above their heads. As is evident by Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, you cannot bomb "freedom" into a culture unable or unwilling to accept it. Sometimes change must be gradual.

The US and China have been at odds over rare-earth metals and there is a grave threat to the world economy if China decided to play bully. North Korea, surprisingly enough, has up to $6 trillion (yes, trillion) in rare-earth metals. Would it not make more sense to extend an olive branch to the North Koreans, to not demand the end of their ruling elite, and instead allow them to implement gradual economic reforms while we reap the benefit of another source of needed materials? Economic freedom breeds personal freedom. The only way for North Korea to really benefit from their natural resources is to change their economic model and in doing so the yoke of serfdom which pervades North Korean society will naturally lessen.

As long as we threaten them directly or indirectly they will never relent. Morally, North Korea does have every sovereign right to defend itself and to develop nuclear technologies, and we have no moral (or Constitutional) right to stop them. We do have the moral and legal right to trade with them and if they launched an actual attack against us then fine, we'll erase them from the universe. I would rather have a country of full bellies which still has a Kim leading it than further continue a nation where 1/3 of those under 5 have stunted growth as a result of malnourishment with a Kim leading it.

I think we owe it to the millions of starving North Koreans, to our South Korean friends, and to ourselves to try a new path. Instead of holding on to Cold War fears and maintaining policies which clearly do not work, let us engage.

-- Jacob Bogle, 3/20/13
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Additional Reading:
Timeline of North Korea's nuclear program, Wikipedia
Study on nuclear terrorism against US trade, Abt Associates (PDF)
North Korea's nuclear program, International Institute for Strategic Studies

(Originally posted at:  http://mynorthkorea.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-nuclear-question.html)