But when I spoke to scholars and historians of North Korea, they uniformly rejected the idea that Kim is a lunatic. His ruthlessness and fierce rhetoric should not be confused with irrationality, they explained. Instead, he should be understood as extremely calculating and disciplined when it comes to maintaining his grip on power — just as his predecessors (his father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather and the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung) were. [...]
The term “rational” here means that a country’s government is capable of making logical calculations about its goals and interests and determining how to achieve them based on the resources — economic, military, diplomatic, etc. — at its disposal. [...]
In an interview in May, Person said that Pyongyang “carefully studies” US responses to all its actions and has learned that it can often get the US to yield when it carries out some of its edgier provocations. [...]
The US’s decision to not retaliate after both of these high-profile provocations underscores something crucial to understanding why war hasn’t broken out on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the first war in 1953: Both North Korea and its opponents are deeply afraid of setting off a broader war that would wreak havoc across the region. The smallness of the peninsula has a way of clarifying the high stakes of any war: Millions of people are vulnerable to being massacred by either side. [...]
Person says the fact that the Trump administration has threatened to tear up the Iran nuclear deal — in which Iran agreed to restrict many of its sensitive nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of sanctions — only makes North Korea more resolute about clinging to its weapons. “It sends the signal to them, you may get an agreement today — but then the next president may not agree with it,” Person said.
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