North
Korea continues its march towards a nuclear-tipped ICBM capable of hitting
anywhere in the U.S. Military experts agree they will eventually have this
ultimate weapon, although maybe not until the end of Trump’s 4-year term.
What
can be done to stop it? All the proposals have terrible drawbacks. A
pre-emptive strike to knock out North Korea’s missile launchers, storehouses
and military facilities would certainly fall short of 100%, leaving North Korea
able to retaliate by killing tens of millions of people in South Korea and
Japan and conceivably a few American targets. And if we didn’t also obliterate
their ground forces, artillery, and submarines, their conventional weapons
could devastate Seoul and elsewhere. A covert plan to assassinate the dictator
Kim Jong Un would be extremely difficult to arrange, given his paranoia and
lack of insider information about his precise whereabouts; and there is no
guarantee his successor would be any different.
The
remaining alternative-- tightening economic sanctions-- does not look
promising. It has been attempted against North Korea unsuccessfully for
decades. And in general, economic sanctions have a very poor track record in
dissuading rogue regimes anywhere.
Nevertheless,
there are some grounds for optimism. We are back in a Cold War situation with
North Korea. But our 45-year Cold War with the Soviet Union and China has some
favorable lessons. Nuclear war did not happen, above all because of mutual
deterrence by nuclear weapons. And both the Soviet bloc and Communist China
succumbed, unexpectedly, to what might be called the blue jeans offensive: the
lure of Western consumerism.
There
are also good sociological grounds for reversing North Korea’s hostility. Here
we need to remind ourselves of the social psychology of collective hostility,
as well as of de-escalation. Isolating an enemy is just the wrong way to change
their behavior. Our historical experience with Russia and China shows how to do
it right.
The Cold War Nuclear Standoff
The
U.S. exploded its first atom bomb in 1945; the Soviets four years later in
1949. The pace picked up: the first U.S. hydrogen bomb was 1952; the first
Soviet H-bomb 1953. By 1957 the Soviets jumped ahead with their Sputnik rocket.
This was not just the prestige of the space race, but an ICBM-- an
intercontinental ballistics missile capable of hitting targets across the
globe. The US soon had their own ICBMs (not to mention long-distance bomber
fleets with aerial refueling, and submarine-launched missiles). By the late 50s
magazine articles were explaining
how to build backyard bomb shelters. When I was a kid, being woken up by a
lightning storm made me think nuclear war had started. In 1964 Dr. Strangelove showed us on screen how
the end of the world could happen.
By the
1970s, Soviet and US nuclear arsenals were so large that they could annihilate
all animal life on the planet, through poisonous radiation drifting around the
globe and the likelihood of a nuclear winter when the sun didn’t shine for
years.
But it
didn’t happen. Nuclear weapons were never used in war (except against Japan,
when only one nation had them), even with proliferation to the UK, France,
China, Pakistan, India, and probably Israel. Why not? In retrospect, we can see
that mutually assured destruction (MAD) made everyone realize that escalation
on that scale was too risky. Even conventional war between the great powers
(i.e. nuclear-armed powers) ceased as well. Despite threats, the last direct
great power war was the Korean War during 1950-3, when Chinese and US troops
fought. Since then, wars have been proxy wars with conventional weapons
supplied from outside. At the time, we thought MAD was madness-- an unconscious
joke in the acronym. But in fact it worked. Governments were not crazy enough
to start a war that is certain to annihilate their country.
This
is the first piece of good news from the Cold War: a nuclear arms race is
survivable. And it leads to a second piece of good news: devastating threats on
both sides eventually foster negotiation.
The Slow Process of
De-escalation
As
awareness grows about the consequences of nuclear war for both sides, another
process sets in. The steps at first are small, putting in place safeguards
against accidental escalation. Some steps came from the scare of looking over
the brink. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis started with intelligence that the
Soviets were shipping medium-range missiles to Cuba. Their motive was adding
another arm to Russia-based ICBMs, and bolstering a new ally, while the Soviets
basked in a wave of global decolonization and left-wing revolutions. But after
John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, and their secret emergency committee found a
way to combine their own nuclear threat with some small concessions, Khrushchev
backed down and withdrew the missiles. Next year, they established a telephone
“hot line” between Washington and Moscow to be used in case of nuclear threats.
Further
steps happened in following decades. In 1979, Carter and Brezhnev agreed on a
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) which set modest ceilings on particular
kinds of nuclear stockpiles. Things went back and forth. Reagan ran for
president in 1980 on the issue of the “window of vulnerability”-- that the
Soviets had so many extra missiles they could destroy our missile launchers in
a sudden first strike, then have enough left to threaten a second strike
against our cities unless we surrendered. This was probably not in the cards,
since our nuclear tripod (missiles, bombers, submarines) could not be knocked
out in that way-- paralleling our problem today with Kim Jong Un’s North Korea.
At any rate, Reagan got elected (probably more because of the humiliation of
the Iranian hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran), and proceeded
on a renewed arms buildup. Nevertheless, when Gorbachev came to
power in 1985, Reagan established a personal relationship with him, and opened
further SALT negotiations. Part of the widespread enthusiasm for Gorbachev
during those years-- not only in the USSR and its satellites, but Western
Europe as well-- was the feeling that the threat of nuclear war was finally
over. In this atmosphere came the popular movements that broke up the Soviet
bloc, and eventually massive reduction of armaments in the 1990s on both sides.
The Blue Jeans Offensive
The
slow process of pulling back from the nuclear arms race was accelerated by an
unexpected development. Up through the 1980s, citizens of the communist regimes
were restricted from traveling to the West, but gradually European and American
tourists began to trickle inside the Iron Curtain. There they found it was
worthwhile to carry an extra pair of blue jeans, because they could barter it
for the cost of their trip. Consumer goods were scarcely available, and
communist citizens were eager for anything that looked fashionable and hip. The
cult of American jazz had existed in Russia-- usually the records were years
out of date, but the Soviets at least approved of Negro musicians as an
oppressed group. More up-to-date styles from the 60s and 70s gradually filtered
into awareness of communist youth.* The state-run economies had made great
strides in recovering from WWII, but concentrated almost entirely in heavy
industry and military buildup. As long as the communist regimes controlled
culture and propaganda, they promoted an image of the evil capitalists of the
West keeping their workers in poverty. Once contacts started to open up,
another reality seeped in.
* I
remember traveling to Budapest with my daughter in 1986, where a man at the
train station, eager for western currency, offered us a bargain rate on a
hotel, which turned out to be his apartment in a collective living complex. In
the dining hall were a tour group of Russians, dancing to a rock n’roll band
from the 50s. They were allowed to go as far as Hungary, on the border of the
West, but no further.
Gorbachev’s
turn towards reforming the communist system started in the 1970s, when as a
reward for political loyalty he was allowed to travel with his wife on a visit
to Italy. They had their own car, saw how many other people had cars, TVs, and
nice clothes, and returned with a vision of what the real Soviet future should
be like.
China,
too, after the first steps towards opening to the world were made in the 1970s,
discovered Western consumer goods in the 1980s and 90s, and became their
mainstay of production for the world market.
America’s
greatest asset internationally is its consumer way of life. Not just that we
have more stuff; we have more cool stuff. The communists’ most vulnerable point
is that they are not cool. We beat them when we’re not fighting them because
they want to be us.
Isolation Breeds Group
Solidarity
The
policy of isolating an enemy until they change their behavior does not work. It
has not worked in the past. Basic social psychology of solidarity and
conformity shows why.
The
ingredients that produce high levels of group solidarity are a combination of:
--
isolation of the group from outsiders
--
mutual focus of attention, all paying attention to the same thing
-- a
shared emotion
When
the three ingredients get stronger, they feed back on each other. Paying
attention to other persons and seeing them express the same emotion makes one’s
own emotion stronger; stronger emotion makes one pay more attention to what’s
causing it; both processes increase isolation from people not in the loop.
When
people experience a rush of these ingredients, they feel a sense of solidarity
and group identity; heightened identification with the symbols of the group;
stronger attachment to our beliefs,
and decreased tolerance of non-conformity. We’re
in this; you should be in it
too. At high levels of solidarity,
people are ready to fight over perceived insults from outsiders, even when
there is no material damage.
Conflict
with an outside group has an especially strong effect. Conflict makes both sides set up
barriers; it makes us concentrate on the enemy and on our own leaders. The more
violent the conflict, the more we feel fear and anger towards the enemy, while
we pump up pride and support for our team. This has been called the
“rally-round-the-flag effect.”
The
ingredients of solidarity and conformity operate on the level of small groups
of individuals; but also on medium size groups like organizations and social
movements. They also operate on very large groups like states, provided they have mass communications
so that everyone can focus on the same thing. That is why the era of
nationalism began in the era of newspapers in the 1800s, and strengthened when
other broadcast media developed like radio in the 1920s and TV in the 1950s.
The
strength of the ingredients determines the strength of the outcomes. But most
ingredients cannot remain intense for a long time. I measured these processes
in the days and months after the attack of 9/11/2001, and found that the
maximal amount of displaying national symbols (flags, images of firefighters)
was in the first three months, then began to decline. Political discussion and
dissent was more or less forbidden during those months; but around Christmas
time, articles started appearing about “Is it okay to take our flags down
now?” For those few months,
President George W. Bush, whose approval rating before and afterwards was
rather low, shot up to 90%, the highest on record.
In a
complex society like the modern U.S., it takes a tremendous amount of shared
emotion to keep people coming to public gatherings like those commemorating
firefighters and police in the fall of 2001. After a while, their focus of
attention goes back to their local and private concerns, their emotion falls,
and their commitment to the cause of defeating the enemy declines. We saw the
growing division of pro-war and anti-war factions from 2002 onwards.
All
this is understandable through sociological theory of solidarity. The
tremendous shock of the 9/11 attacks, stories about the victims’ families, the
heroism of the firefighters and cops, were broadcast everywhere and monopolized
everyone’s attention for the first few months. But a complex society has many
things to pay attention to, and a media-rich democracy cannot force people to
keep replaying the high-intensity solidarity ritual when they no longer feel
like it. This is different in a dictatorship, which monopolizes the media and
enforces attention on a single message from the regime.
Flip
this over to the point of view of our enemies. Their media tells them that we are a terrible threat; they are the heroes resisting the bad guys. Their media are inescapable: in North
Korea, loud-speakers are on every street corner. No doubt there is an
artificial strain of keeping up the required emotions-- fear of outsiders; love
of our Dear Leader. [See Faces Around A Dictator] But the other
ingredients are too strong: no alternatives to the single focus of attention;
isolation from any contacts to the outside.
Our
policy of trying to change enemy states by isolating them is worse than
ironic. Isolation is exactly the
condition that makes them more confirmed in their beliefs.
Why do we keep on doing it?
If
isolating the enemy is such a counter-productive strategy, why does it appeal
to us so strongly?
For
one thing, conflict processes are symmetrical across both sides. Once a
conflict gets intense, we both feel angry at the other, paint the other as a
fearful demon, adulate our brave fighters and our leaders. We try to isolate
ourselves from having any human contact with them, just as they do towards us.
People
who like to think of themselves as civilized may consider isolation a humane
way to deal with the problem, rather than resorting to violence. The
old-fashioned way of disciplining children was “go stand in the corner until
you behave.” This was updated by modern child psychology into the “time-out.”
But it only works if-- like a parent with small children-- you have total
superiority of power (which is not the case between militarized states).
And it
only works when isolating an individual.
If the bad-actor is a group, punishing them by isolating them together
doesn’t work. This is putting gang members together in prison with members of
the same demographic; it recruits new members and strengthens the gang
organization and its culture. Isolating a group not only won’t change their
behavior; it makes it worse.
How to reduce enemy hostility
The
theoretical model of group solidarity shows a solution. To reduce their hostile
emotions and the beliefs that support them, break up the single focus of
attention. The best way to do this is to reduce isolation, so there are more things
outside themselves to pay attention to.
The
Cold War gives evidence of how a policy of reducing isolation works to
transform international enemies. In summer 1971, Nixon sent Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger on a secret mission to China. Kissinger, a political scientist,
was trying to exploit the Sino-Soviet split. He worked out a deal that the U.S.
would not oppose the PRC taking Nationalist China’s seat (practically speaking,
Taiwan) on the United Nations Security Council. Six months later, Nixon himself
traveled to China and met Mao Zedong, where they agreed to establish some form
of diplomatic relations. This is remarkable enough, considering it was at the
time when China was just emerging from the Red Guards movement that nearly tore
the country apart in 1966-68; and the U.S. was still bogged down in the Vietnam
War. But there is an underlying
logic: both sides were trying to get out of their own quagmires; de-escalating
at least one piece of international hostilities was a victory for both.
Within
a few years, Mao was dead, the Gang of Four eliminated, and in 1977 the
reformer Deng Xiaoping was reinstated. Soon came full diplomatic relations and
Deng’s visit to the U.S. In the 1980s market-oriented reforms were launched,
burgeoning in the 1990s. China soon became the chief supplier of the U.S.
consumer economy. In recent years, 30 years in, America has become the place
where Chinese want to send their kids to college and where they themselves want
to live.
China
and Russia are the positive cases of how ending isolation led to a whole-sale
shift away from communism and hostility to the West. China is the strongest
case, because it has become so highly integrated into the market for western
consumer goods, both as producer and consumer. Russia somewhat less so, since
its export economy remained heavy industries, oil and military equipment. A glaring negative case is Cuba, where
a strict policy of isolation has kept the communist regime stagnant for over 50
years. The presence of a large group of anti-communist refugees in Florida has
kept the old polarization alive: the older generation of refugees has been a
veto group in U.S. politics, preventing any moves that would actually change
Cuba into becoming more like the U.S.
We may soon see the effects of more commercial connections between
ordinary Americans and Cuba.
The solution to the North Korean nuclear threat
The
solution is right before our faces. Pursue the policies of Nixon and Reagan in
opening up and de-escalating conflict with China and Russia. This is not a
quick process. With China, it took 20 years to pay off. With Russia, results were quicker, but
the blue-jeans offensive was already doing its work.
The
last is what we should be pushing above all. We do not want North Korea exporting or importing military
goods. We have little to gain from letting them open up to the world market in
heavy industry. But U.S. policy should be trying to facilitate ways that American consumer products-- for that
matter, Western and Japanese consumer products in general-- can get into North
Korea. Hello Kitty, Japanese toy
fads, American smart phones and action-adventure movies: whatever is hip and
stylish. This is the soft offensive that can break the psychological isolation
of North Koreans and put them on the Russian and Chinese path.
That
means we need to get over the self-righteous emotional jolt of demanding that
they go stand in the corner. It is far from clear we will get over it soon.
Right now its easy political appeal is shared on both sides of the political spectrum. But sometimes professional
diplomats, international entrepreneurs and maverick presidents make a
difference.
So
there are two hopeful messages, one quite confident: Cold Wars threatening
nuclear destruction can and do de-escalate. The second is more chancy, but
possible through processes from below: the blue jeans offensive translated into
today’s consumer fads. Either way, the world can survive North Korea.
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Civil War Two, Part 1
by Randall Collins
Giveaway ends May 24, 2018.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
References
David
R. Gibson. 2012. Talk at the Brink. Deliberation and
Decision-making during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
David
Skarbeck. 2014. The Social Order of the Underworld. How
Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System.
Randall
Collins. 2011. “C-Escalation and D-escalation: A Theory of the Time-Dynamics of
Violence.” American Sociological Review.
Randall
Collins. 2004. “Rituals of
Solidarity and Security in the Wake of Terrorist attack.” Sociological Theory.
