The Korean Peninsula stands at a perilous crossroads. Recent missile tests and provocations, coupled with historical trends, paint a worrisome picture of the current state of affairs, prompting some analysts to warn of a looming conflict. The Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC recently hosted two events to analyze these escalating tensions that have sparked global concern.

On February 21, the seminar “Slow Boil: What to Expect from North Korea in 2024,” featured Victor Cha, D.S. Song-KF Chair, Professor of Government at Georgetown University, and Senior Vice President for Asia and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cha discussed historical behavioral patterns of North Korean missile tests, military provocations, and weapons demonstrations, and what all these might mean for security on the Korean peninsula.

The following week, on March 7, at the seminar  “Is North Korea Preparing for War?,” we were joined by Robert Carlin, a non-resident scholar at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and Siegfried Hecker, a professor of practice at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M University. Carlin and Hecker, both formerly our colleagues at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, discussed their recent 38 North article, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War?,” which posits that Pyongyang has already made the strategic decision to go to war. 

The speakers at both events delved into the various rationales behind North Korea's actions and provided contrasting viewpoints on the trajectory of the situation. While Carlin and Hecker painted a grim picture of North Korea's intentions to engage in warfare and advocated for robust security measures, Cha argued that, while 2024 will be a challenging year, established approaches such as diplomacy and deterrence will remain effective in managing relations with Pyongyang. 

Rhetorical Preparations for Conflict

Carlin and Hecker provided a grave assessment, suggesting that “Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war,” akin to his grandfather's stance in 1950. Hecker provided historical context, indicating that despite attempts at normalization with the United States, each North Korean leader has simultaneously explored the development of its nuclear weapons arsenal and accumulation of its conventional armaments. Hecker argued, "The Korean War was never settled, it was an armistice, and so, more or less, North Korea has been preparing for war, but this is different and we are really concerned.”

Carlin noted a shift that occurred at the Workers’ Party plenum at the end of 2022, in which “Pyongyang announced new measures that demonstrated that the old policy with the U.S. was over and that they were going to move much more towards the Russians.” The plenum also marked a rhetorical shift where Kim Jong Un introduced the phrase “war preparations.” “Some people say, ‘Oh that's normal North Korean rhetoric’ — it's not normal. They had not been talking at that level to their own people about war preparations […] they talked a lot about deterrence which meant building up, but not war preparations,” said Carlin.

According to Carlin, Pyongyang has “primed the pan for a clash in the Yellow Sea […] everything we have seen in the last year suggests very strongly that this is a decision the regime has made, and that it will patiently move in this direction.”

The speakers both argued that Kim's shift stems from a perceived failure of past diplomatic endeavors and a traumatic setback at the 2019 Hanoi summit, when, as Hecker indicated, the North Koreans decided to abandon the 30-year policy of seeking normalization with the United States. “This is a more dangerous time than any time since the start of the Korean War,” Hecker warned.
 

The Inevitable Tensions of Deterrence

In contrast, Cha’s assessment of the situation is more cautiously optimistic, anticipating a surge in North Korean provocations in 2024 but attributing it to historical patterns rather than a definitive strategic shift. According to Cha, we should  expect North Korean belligerence to increase in 2024, while dialogue looks unlikely.” He highlighted North Korea's tendency to ramp up provocations during U.S. election years, produced data on the increasing number of provocations since the 1990s, and emphasized Kim's repeated rejections of dialogue with the Biden administration.

Cha also provided four reasons why he does not expect a war with North Korea in 2024: “First, Pyongyang is not confident enough in its capability to deter U.S. and South Korean retaliation […] Second, the uptempo in U.S.-ROK and U.S.-ROK-Japan exercising […] Third, if North Korea were ready to go to war, they would not be selling all their ammunition to Russia […] and fourth, if North Korea were really ready to go to war, they would not be decoupling from South Korea.”

Cha suggested that, while war is unlikely, “coercion, particularly against South Korea, and North Korea-Russia relations are only going to grow.” He described North Korea’s transfer of armaments from Najin to Dunai in Russia to three munition storage facilities near the Ukrainian front. Cha sees a possible change in the U.S. North Korea policy approach from focusing on denuclearization to curtailing and disincentivizing this behavior.

An Uncertain Year Ahead

Whether or not the escalating tensions since the 2019 Hanoi Summit mean that Pyongyang is headed to war, its increased belligerence is a clear signal that Kim’s government has shifted its efforts. North Korea is now pursuing its security and economic agendas without any indication of attempting to normalize relations with the United States or South Korea. Furthermore, it continues to strengthen its partnership with the China-Russia bloc. The assessment of continued tensions on the Korean Peninsula is undisputed.

Ultimately, both perspectives shared by the speakers highlight the need for vigilance, strategic coordination, and innovative policy solutions to address the escalating tensions in the region.
 

In 2021, a military coup in Myanmar brought an end to the prospects for democratic reform that the country had sought to establish following the 2011 general election. Any constructive dialogue between ruling junta and ethnic minorities dissipated, and the country fell back into civil war. Meanwhile, in ostensibly democratic Indonesia and the Philippines, rebellions by the Moros and Acehnese were resolved. These developments bring several questions to the fore: Does democracy necessarily foster peaceful outcomes? What is the interactive process between the state and its opponents? And how might democratic institutions be used to manipulate and undermine insurgent ethnic minority groups?

These are some of the questions Dr. Jacques Bertrand has sought to answer in his research. Bertrand, a professor at the University of Toronto's Department of Political Science, is the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia at APARC for the 2022 fall quarter. The fellowship, which is hosted jointly by APARC’s Southeast Asia Program (SeAP) and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore, raises the visibility, extent, and quality of scholarship on contemporary Southeast Asia. The fellowship is now accepting applications for the 2023-24 cycle.

For Bertrand, the fellowship afforded the opportunity to advance his research into civil wars and war-to-peace transitions. He recently presented his work in a SeAP seminar entitled “Can Democracy Handle Ethnic War? Evidence from Southeast Asia.”

In his talk, Bertrand discusses how democracy helps to create credibility,  set terrain for negotiated agreements, and establish a framework for settling grievances. There is, however, an unresolved debate about the overall merits of democracy in  addressing secessionist or nationalist conflicts. According to Bertrand, the question of whether democracy can handle ethnic war needs more attention, as do less visible dimensions of peace agreements, negotiating forums, and post-legislative regulations.

We caught up with Dr. Bertrand to discuss his research and experience at Stanford this quarter. The conversation has been slightly edited for length and clarity.

How has your time at APARC as the Lee Kong Chian Stanford-NUS Fellow aided your research?

My time at APARC allowed a relatively short but rewarding experience to discover a new community of scholars working on Asia, finalize some writing commitments, and move ahead on a new project on War-to-peace transitions. After several years of heavy administrative load, it was nice to have the time and space to step away from my regular duties and teaching at the University of Toronto. The events and informal gatherings at APARC allowed me to exchange perspectives with a new set of scholars and engage a community deeply embedded in the academic and policy issues in Asia today. My webinar presentation also allowed me to draw from two of my recently published books, Winning by Process on Myanmar and Democracy and Nationalism in Southeast Asia,' to tease out some broader themes relating to democracy and ethnically based conflicts in the region.

I had the time and space to finalize a writing commitment on Nationalism in Southeast Asia as part of an Elements Series with Cambridge University Press. But I was also able to devote much of my time to further develop and work on my exciting new, large project on war-to-peace transitions, with a strong focus on Southeast Asia. After publishing two books on ethnic and secessionist movements in the region, this new project is concerned more with understanding the strategic decisions that non-state armed groups make to adhere to peace or return to war. The project has many components, including a large-N data analysis of our themes across regions over the last three decades, which is primarily led by my colleague Noel Anderson. I have been focused on the qualitative component of the project, primarily analyzing these strategic dimensions in Myanmar, the Philippines, and Indonesia. 

Another writing project I have been working on is a conceptual paper that draws understudied dimensions of why some groups choose to return to war while others preserve ceasefire and peace agreements. We examine closely armed group structures, their relationships to communities, and their paths in relative peace settings. I have been analyzing interviews that I conducted with team members on the Thai-Myanmar border in June, and planning our next phase of research to understand the evolution of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), especially since the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law in 2018.

What other aspects of your time at APARC have you benefited from? 

I enjoyed the engagement with the scholar community at APARC. SeAP Director Don Emmerson has been a great host of the LKC fellowship, and I certainly appreciated his comments and those of Oksenberg-Rholen Fellow Scot Marciel on democracy and ethnic conflicts in the region. I had the opportunity to discuss closely the work of APARC postdoctoral fellows and several other visitors, and to engage some of the fascinating members of this year’s cohort of the Global Affiliates Program . 

While I am very grateful for time at APARC to remove myself from my usual busy environment, and have time to reflect more deeply on this project, there are still some positive by-products of our increasingly online and connected lives that platforms like Zoom intensified during the pandemic. In my case, I was able to continue regular contact with team members to coordinate and advance on these various aspects of the project, including to regularly meet with team members conducting fieldwork. 

What are your plans for the second part of your fellowship in Singapore? Are there any special collections at NUS you look forward to accessing?

During my time at NUS, I will continue to work intensively on the war-to-peace transitions project. The project will be moving rapidly into fieldwork in the Philippines. I will spend much of the time at NUS evaluating and assessing the fieldwork data that we’ve obtained so far in Myanmar, planning and adapting interview instruments for the context of the Philippines, working with secondary literature, and coordinating research assistants’ work that will help to bolster our understanding of the evolution of the MILF during the last two decades. I will be joining one of my doctoral students and team members for two weeks to conduct interviews and calibrate our approach.

An important aspect of our project is policy-oriented. With funding from the United States Institute of Peace, I am also looking at how multilateral interventions can be better targeted to enhance non-state armed groups’ adherence to ceasefires and peace, based on our close analysis of these dimensions in Southeast Asia and more broadly. I will be writing a draft paper with one of my PhD students who is taking the lead on this particular aspect of the project.

NUS has a very large number of colleagues who work on similar issues in Southeast Asia., I look forward to benefiting from their insights, with a view of enriching our mutual understanding of complex conflict issues in the region.

What is on the horizon for you? What's next?

After this rich year, I will be returning to regular teaching at the University of Toronto in Fall 2023.  I will continue to coordinate and develop the collaborative work that I have been pursuing this year, and new work that we are also fostering through my Post-Conflict Reintegration Lab (Postcor Lab).

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A Shifting Civil Conflict

Nyantha described the evolution of the anti-coup movement in Myanmar from its beginnings with protests and civil disobedience campaigns by government workers and civil servants to its current state of armed resistance movement aimed at bringing down the military regime. Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) have played a pivotal role in this shift. These non-state actors have fought the Myanmar military for decades in the borderlands and hold parts of the country under de facto control, sheltering and training tens of thousands of young people.

These resistance groups now present a powerful front of grassroots-level insurgency that is hampering operations by the coup regime. In this collection of self-organized groups, some are working with the National Unity Government (NUG) shadow administration, others with more decentralized networks, but all share the conviction that armed struggle is the only option for dealing with the military regime.

The power dynamic between the military and anti-regime resistance forces is now existential for both sides. “We are looking at what will most likely be a protracted civil conflict in Myanmar,” says Nyantha.

What are the paths toward a better future for Myanmar? One possibility is a shift in the military’s calculus, though it would necessitate a leadership change. Another possibility, according to Nyantha, is that the array of opposition actors can come together and use multilateral platforms to facilitate unprecedented forms of cooperation beyond resistance against the military to establish areas of territorial control and self-governance. “If they can emerge from this process with a new political vision and a roadmap for a more tolerant and inclusive Myanmar, then there is a chance the balance may tip against the military.”

These platforms include the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC), which includes representatives from multiple opposition groups. Depending on how dialogues within the NUCC continue, it could generate a new political dynamic in the country and lay the groundwork for a future federal democratic union, notes Nyantha.

Historical Grievances, Future Visions

But there remains a lot of work to do to build trust among Myanmar’s traditionally fractious ethnic groups, Ambassador Marciel stresses. This mistrust has historical roots in decades of political disunity among Myanmar’s ethnic minorities amidst struggles for autonomy and self-determination, and in their longstanding grievances toward the state that has privileged the majority Burmans (also known as Bamar). Thus, possibly the biggest weakness of the resistance movement is the lack of a unified vision for establishing civilian rule. “I do think that it is hugely important to bring about more unity to the movement that is resisting the military regime,” says Marciel.

The international community should better understand the complexity of the civil conflict in Myanmar and recognize that the spontaneous revolt underway is not only a resistance front against the military but also a movement demanding dramatic social and political change, Marciel emphasizes.

He, therefore, cautions that the traditional tools of conventional diplomatic thinking – ceasefire, peaceful negotiations, and dialogue — do not currently apply to Myanmar. “At this point, there is no realistic scenario of dialogue leading to some compromise deal. As long as the military is in power, Myanmar is not going to enjoy peace or stability.” The people of Myanmar have suffered for far too long at the hands of the military, and the resistance forces are not interested in a compromise deal that would allow the military to maintain substantial political power, Marciel says. At the same time, the military is also not interested in negotiating.

According to Marciel, the international community should focus on supporting the resistance movement efforts. He also expressed this point in a recent interview with The Irrawaddy. “[T]he best possible scenario is for the military to face so much pressure that they then begin to look for a way out […] I think that maximum pressure on the military, both internally and externally, whether it’s by sanctions or other means, is the best chance of achieving progress, though it won’t be easy.”

A Deadly Syndemic

Even before the coup, Myanmar had one of the world’s weakest health systems and one of the least prepared for addressing epidemics and pandemics, according to the 2019 Global Heath Security Index. The devastating effects of the coup have coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, combining into a perfect storm that has brought the country’s already-fragile health system to collapse.

The coup and the post-coup conflicts interact with the pandemic and Myanmar’s fragmented health system in ways that resemble a syndemic, says Phyu Phyu Thin Zaw, a medical doctor, epidemiologist, and health systems researcher now based at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health. The term syndemic refers to the synergistic nature of health and social problems affecting vulnerable communities and contributing to an excess disease burden. It helps explain the dire crises gripping Myanmar’s health system, explains Dr. Thin Zaw.

Thin Zaw, a former visiting scholar at APARC, spoke at a webinar hosted by the Asia Health Policy Program about the impacts of the devastation caused by the coup and the COVID-19 pandemic on Myanmar’s health system and the current opportunities and challenges for response and recovery. She was joined by Nay-Lin Tun, a medical doctor who manages programs that help vulnerable communities in remote and conflict-affected areas of Myanmar to get access to health services.

Since the coup, hundreds of medical personnel and health care workers have been dismissed and subject to violent attacks. Many have escaped to areas under the control of anti-junta forces, leading to a severe “brain drain” or rather “brain hemorrhage” in the health system, Thin Zaw notes. When the third wave of the coronavirus struck Myanmar in July 2021, it hit like a tsunami. Immunization plans were severely interrupted, no quarantine or contact tracing measures were taken, and with shortages of health workers, medicine, and equipment, the health system was soon overwhelmed, with thousands of infections and rising deaths.

“To fight a pandemic, collective action is needed. Instead, Myanmar has faced a collective trauma,” says Thin Zaw. “The coup destroyed the reciprocal trust both horizontally among people and vertically between people and the government.”

Challenges for Humanitarian Response

Myanmar needs humanitarian assistance in every area, but grueling challenges hamper humanitarian relief delivery. International aid groups grapple with shuttered access, high-cost and high-risk operations, and ethical and political dilemmas: Should they stay or exit? Through which channels should they deliver aid? How can they advocate and work with the military junta? How should their money be spent under the military regime?

Dr. Tun, providing a grassroots medical humanitarian perspective on what is happening in Myanmar, described the multiple problems facing providers and patients on the ground. These include a severe shortage of health workers on the frontline, difficulties getting patients to hospitals, lack of essential medical supplies and equipment, COVID-19 infections, and overall increased mortality and morbidity among IDPs. He presented the results of a mixed-methods survey of health care workers conducted in non-military-controlled areas and conveyed their urgent requests for help. 

A Way Forward

With Myanmar’s health system in collapse, this is a time to focus on strengthening primary health care and leveraging the silver lining of the post-coup softening of ethnic tensions to build a federal health education system for inclusiveness, said Thin Zaw. She pointed to the collaboration between the NUG and EAOs-controlled healthcare groups as an encouraging step towards creating a federal health system.

She urged international actors to be realistic about the limits of their influence over the military junta and to create flexible and politically sensitive aid programs with contingency plans. Yet international organizations must continue all efforts to support the delivery of critical services to the people of Myanmar, especially in areas such as food security, emergency health, and COVID-19 response, she said. “Please don’t forget the people of my country,” she pleaded.

By Hal Benton, Seattle Times staff reporter

Karl Eikenberry is a retired Army officer whose two tours of Afghanistan duty — and later service as ambassador to that nation — left him keenly aware of the limits of U.S. military power.

As a soldier, Eikenberry launched the still-ongoing effort to build an Afghan military force capable of fending off the Taliban. As a diplomat, he was stationed at the Kabul embassy during President Barack Obama’s surge that would eventually push American troop strength in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 service members in an attempt to improve security.

“Americans and the world have rightly been disappointed with the results of our costly military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century. Hugely expensive, protracted … and damaging to our country’s prestige abroad,” Eikenberry said Thursday to a Town Hall audience in Seattle.

Read the full article in The Seattle Times.