Stop It With the Damn Carrots and Sticks

I’m scared. There are a lot of things today to be scared about, but none scarier than an escalation of tensions between North Korea and the US (and other countries).
I’m not sure that the world my 7-month-old daughter and her contemporaries will inherit will look anything like the relative peace and prosperity of today.
Why is this situation so scary?
Kim Jong Un has no real incentive to de-escalate and the current US administration doesn’t seem to want to. Kim Jong Un’s power and influence come from the narrative that the US is the enemy and that all of their woes — their economic challenges, their lack of freedoms, their lack of hope — are caused by the US.
The more we badmouth North Korea, the more punitive the sanctions we push onto the people, the more aggressive our military response, the more power Kim Jong Un’s narrative has.
Our current options seem to go from bad to worse. The scale of destruction, devastation and cost involved with a war against North Korea is at least an order of magnitude higher than Iraq or Afghanistan. Any military action could quickly result in 10’s or 100’s of millions of casualties in South Korea and/or other nearby countries.
This escalation could even lead to worldwide nuclear war. On the other hand, simply waiting will likely only serve to make things worse as North Korea continues to accelerate its missile and general military capabilities.
Pushing for further sanctions could possibly slow down their military capacity improvements — but at the cost of furthering the narrative — that the US is acting against THE PEOPLE of North Korea. This would likely make it even more difficult in the future to engage them in any negotiations.
The stakes for Kim Jong Un couldn’t be higher.
Maintaining power equals staying alive equals keeping this powerful narrative alive. I’m not suggesting that he’s a victim or that he didn’t/doesn’t have free will to choose another path. He’s no victim. He’s made his own choices.
However, if for a minute, you look past his terrible actions against his own people and for, you’ll find a leader who shouldn't have been able to survive this long, let alone expand his world influence.
Most of the world is against him. He got power from his father and has fought off attempts (real and/or perceived) to overthrow him. Within those constraints, he’s maintained and expanded serious military capabilities, including a nuclear arsenal and a seemingly inevitable capability to strike anywhere on earth with those nuclear weapons.
In a world full of countries with awful human rights records, brutal dictators and rampant corruption, Kim Jong Un doesn’t stand out as being worse than even some of our (current and historic) allies.
So what can we do? What is another alternative? Is there a different path that reduces the threat to us and our allies? A way to reduce the suffering of the people of North Korea?
Let’s make Kim Jung Un a hero — a legitimate hero to his people and a respected leader on the world stage.
It’s time for us to provide Kim Jong Un an opportunity for a new narrative — a heroic narrative.
It’s time to define and go after a shared goal with North Korea — something big, really big. Something that will change the world for the better. Something that will make us all proud. A way for Kim Jong Un and his country to earn legitimacy and respect on the world stage.
Let’s aim at something that matters, like:
- Feeding the world — tackle food insecurity by making agriculture 10x more space, water and energy efficient
- Conquering space — build the next generation space station or build technology to protect us from astroids or put a (wo)man on Mars
- Minimizing the imact of climate change — mitigate the impact of sea level rise or save the world’s coral reefs or sequester CO2
- Building the world basketball league — making basketball an international sport
Let’s find something we can genuinely develop together with other allies that is bigger than our conflict. Let’s make him a hero (and us) by making the world better. Let’s aim for outer space, not just kicking the can down the road a bit.
Why is this better than the carrot and stick?
Because it gives Kim Jong Un what he wants (and should want) — an opportunity to do well and to do good, an opportunity to belong, to be understood, to contribute and to be recognized.
He can be a hero to his people, bring opportunity to his country and most importantly earn him a legitimate seat on the world stage. And, we can build a different type of relationship that based on good faith, shared prosperity and mutual interests.
This won’t be easy. It will be easy to become cynical or disengenous. The politicians will hate it — it won’t fit either of the military or sanctions narrative. Our allies will be skeptical.
We’ll need to bring along his lieutenants. We’ll have to set down ground rules. We’ll need partners — a truly world stage. It won’t be easy, but it’s probably easier than putting a man on the moon in the 1960’s or building a supercomputer that fits in your hand.
The challenges to making a heroic North Korea are tough, but not intractable.
The good news is that this type of approach has been successfully used before in many other contexts. For example, the violence reduction work of Rev Jeffrey Brown (with whom I’m fortunate to work) was unconventional. Instead of using variations of the tried and failed carrot and stick models of dealing with gang violence, he and other clergy took the new approach of engaging ALL of the stakeholders, including the gang members themselves and going after ambitious, common goals.
Kim Jung Un is like a bully in high school. He comes from a broken, secretive family. His (mostly justified) paranioa feeds seemingly destructive cycles of behavior. Many people really are out to get him. And, his only survival method today, at least through his eyes, is what he’s been doing. He craves adulation and respect.
Being a bully is often a defense mechanism — a way to find a role and identity when you don’t fit in. If given the right opportunity, many bullies can find new, more productive roles in their social systems. Shared purpose, goals bigger than themselves, control of their destiny and feelings of belonging can all lead to remarkable transformations of behavior.
If we pull this off — bring a strategically important country into the global community — we could save millions of lives and trillions of dollars. And maybe prevent World War 3 — leaving my daughter (and your kids) a stable, prosperous world.
This is just the first step. Bring them to the real table, the adult — not the kids table that we look down on and dictate orders to.
Then, we can start the hard work of the real issues — long-term economic and political engagement with the world.
