Every President since Eisenhower has had their North Korean Toddler Crisis. And up until now, every one of them has managed to be the adult. Up until now. How you manage a toddler throwing a tantrum at the grocery store might determine the lives and fates of millions of people.
Let me explain.
The Toddler
You are a parent who has taken your child to the grocery store. Child sees candy or toy or whatever and wants it. You say no. Toddler then launches into a screaming, crying, lay on the linoleum floor and pound their fists fit. Now what do you do?
You can’t spank them. You’re in a grocery store for fuck’s sake, and we, as a civilization , no longer tolerate that in public. In any case, you have an excellent chance of making it worse. You could try reasoning with the toddler, but an inability to reason calmly under emotional duress is kinda what defines a toddler. You could yell at them, but that makes you both effectively toddlers.
Let me tell you how I used to solve this. I’m not proposing it as The Answer in terms of textbook best-practice parenting, but this worked – at least with my kids.
You buy them the damn candy on the condition that they shut up immediately. Even wound up, the toddler will take that deal. Toddlers are immature, but they are not stupid. Later, once they are in the car seat with their precious candy, you stop the car before you are out of the parking lot, you turn around and face the child, and tell them in an adult voice, “If you ever do that to me again, it will be the last time you go to grocery store with me.”
They will do it again. And you will buy them more candy. But after that, you make a show of going to the grocery store without them a couple of times in a row. Go out of your way to make this happen. It’s worth it. When you magnanimously let them off the hook, you will have several trips to the grocery store without incident.
Here’s why this works: more than candy or toys or praise, the toddler wants to be included.
Now, several times is the longest you can hope for a toddler to maintain their own policy. Eventually, they will revert to their toddler instincts, and you will have another tantrum, and the process will repeat. The key to success here, is that you still have to be the adult, because there is no realistic hope that the toddler will magically mature lying there in the store aisle. You buy the candy to deescalate the situation, and you lay out the consequences later, when everyone is calm, and you can get at their true priorities, as opposed to why they were crying right then.
You do this because you are the adult.
North Korea
North Korea can never grow up; not while they remain an impoverished military dictatorship – which they seem very determined to remain. Martial law, which has become the norm for that country, requires some sort of crisis to justify itself, and continuous martial law then requires continuous crisis. This cannot be sustained if the country were run like adults were in charge. A moment where cooler heads prevail might expand to a moment of clarity, and upend the whole tin pot.
North Korea does not simply want to throw a tantrum in the grocery store – they need to throw a tantrum in the grocery store.
In the past, US Presidents have bought them their damn candy – specifically food aid, which is typically what they really want. They can’t just ask for it like adults, obviously. They must throw a tantrum and then accept the candy as tribute.
The US, in contrast, gets to frame itself as the adult, save thousand of North Koreans from starvation, and possibly avert a war which would kill possibly millions of Koreans on both side of the line.
Then, when everyone has calmed down, you lay down the law at whatever hand-wavy multi-party talks the North Koreans finally sulked into, and they will storm out, but you will have a while now before the next crisis.
The Trump administration has chosen a different approach, because The Donald is smarter than all other presidents combined. He has chosen to get in a screaming match with the toddler in the grocery aisle. Which would be hysterical if a second Korean War (or, technically, the resumption of the existing one – there has only ever been a cease fire) were not guaranteed to kill a million Koreans.
Maybe … just maybe … this is some good/cop/bad cop regime coordinated with the Chinese. We might hope so, but who would really bet on that? Happily, there is a more certain dynamic you can bet upon, and sleep better at night.
When Stalin set off his first nuclear bomb, we had the same discussion, and in the end, we decided to hope that Stalin saw the actual end game the same as us: that he could not win a war with the US, he could only deter it.
That is all North Korea can ever hope to do with their damn bomb: deter a war. They can carry on indefinitely because no one cares enough about their horrible government to uproot it at the cost of half the population oppressed by it. The only thing guaranteed to change that calculus is firing a missile at someone – particularly at the United States.
Hell, China takes them out at that point – they can’t afford a war with the US the way they could in the 1950’s, and this would give them some say in the final outcome.
There is an adult in whatever sad concrete bunker North Korea uses as a situation room that knows all this, and so far, he has won the shouting matches. He also reminds them that eventually the United States will act like the adult and save them all from their toddler selves.
We used to believe in that fable too.
Brazen Wonk 