>>9021235 pb
>Consider How The Play Of His 'Removal' at This Current Juncture & It's Natures Successive, twinned With the Virus This Would Have Potentially Tipped The Balance?
Some friends were planning for it.
April 28, 2020
Soo W. Kim @mllesookim Policy Analyst
Soo Kim is a policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and former CIA analyst.
With rumors swirling that Kim Jong Un has suffered a health crisis, some are already asking who might succeed him as leader of North Korea. Kim's younger sister Kim Yo Jong, his estranged uncle Kim Pyong-il or even a military junta have been mentioned as possibilities.
But who is not the most important question. What will matter more is what the new regime does to establish its legitimacy and how the United States and its allies respond.
Ultimately, the critical question about a post–Kim Jong Un North Korea will be how: how will the United States and its allies react? How will they respond to an expanding nuclear arsenal and advancing missile capabilities, not to mention more skirting of sanctions?
The initial response likely will establish the tone of relations going forward. Tempting as it may be to reset relations on the path toward normalization, there are hazards to even exchanging pleasantries with any successors.
Such activities may lend the appearance of progress in repairing relations with North Korea, but in the long run they can also provide North Korea with justification for continuing its nefarious activities, no matter who leads the next regime.
If Kim's successor stays on the course of nuclear blackmail and extortion, an alternative approach might be a policy that ignores Pyongyang's provocations. This may not be what the North Korean regime expects from the United States and like-minded partners; usually, nuclear threats and harsh rhetoric have elicited a response from Washington.
A nonresponse, even rebuffing, might convey a different message: the United States will no longer tolerate this recycled pattern of provocation, extortion, and dialogue.
https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/04/north-korea-after-kim-jong-un-how-matters-more-than.html