“As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don’t know we don’t know” - Donald Rumsfeld, United States Secretary of Defense.
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| What comes after Kim Jong-un? That is the question. |
by Kudakwashe Kanhutu
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of
Defence under George W. Bush during the 2003 Iraq invasion, said something that
greatly amused pundits, he said: “As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” While pundits and
comedians were amused insofar as this could be a punchline when they tell their
next joke at a party, the person who studies international dynamics, to make
predictions on the next security threats, must take a different instruction
from the “unknown unknowns” quote.
Donald Rumsfeld was trying to
make the case that they should invade Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to obviate the
danger of the “unknown unknowns” threat from Saddam Hussein. In hindsight, it
was a disingenuous and cynical claim, because as it turns out, the invasion
caused more instability and suffering than any unknown Saddam Hussein
capability. This is not lost on analysts who notice that, the result of the
invasion, was suffering for the Iraqis, and the creation of a hitherto unheard
of armed group that now threatens Europe at will – the Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria (ISIS).
With the knowledge we now have of
how things turned out in Iraq and Libya, after United States regime change
actions there, we can make the case – with mathematical certainty – that if the
United States attacks North Korea as threatened, the outcome is knowable. The
United States thinks it can make a decapitating strike on the North Korean
Supreme Leader. This will then lead to the population being freed from a
dictatorship and thus there will be no retaliatory strikes from North Korean
Rocket Forces. The problem with that line of reasoning is that experience
belies it. It is no longer a case of unknown unknowns what will happen after
regime change action, but known knowns: civil war and rise of armed non-state
actors in those ungoverned spaces.
What will happen if the United
States attacks North Korea, is that North Korea’s Rocket Forces will retaliate
with missiles against South Korea and Japan – a situation which will put over
20 million people directly in harm’s way. But even if this danger was not
there, and Kim Jong-Un could be removed by force, wherever a power vacuum has
occurred, non-state armed groups have invariably filled the vacuum. We have
never heard of a single terrorist attack in North Korea, but this will not be
the case once the monopoly on the legitimate use of force is taken away. And
with Islamic State being the umbrella of choice for those aggrieved by the
West, it is not inconceivable that terrorist attacks against Western interests
will start happening on the Korean Peninsula, if use of force is pursued as an
option against North Korea.
