July 20, 2021

Why North Korea's Kim Jong Un Regime Stability Is Being Questioned

Heritage Senior Research Fellow Bruce Klingner writes that speculation over internal conditions in North Korea and the stability of its regime is even more rampant than usual. 

Reports of food shortages, a COVID outbreak and political volatility have fanned much of the speculation. Kim Jong Un’s recent extended absence from public view simply fueled the fire, triggering renewed rumors of health problems. 

Still, it never pays to sell the regime short. It has outlived countless previous reports of its imminent demise.

Kim has now reappeared much thinner than before, but this has only fueled more speculation. His return to the scene coincided with senior leadership meetings in which he warned of dire food shortages, a dangerous influx of foreign influence and a "grave" breach of the country’s defenses against the COVID virus. Some experts interpreted the trifecta of failings as potentially leading to regime instability or collapse.

Kim acknowledged that the country’s food situation is getting "tense," going so far as to warn of another "arduous march," a reference to the 1990s famine that killed an estimated one million people. Crop shortages, skyrocketing food prices and closure of markets have led to increasingly dire conditions. 

The regime closed its borders last year to prevent a virus outbreak. Subsequently, trade with China, the regime’s principal trading partner, plummeted by 90%. Representatives of international nongovernmental organizations, which could facilitate food aid, have all departed the country. Pyongyang has repeatedly refused international offers of COVID support and food or rejected monitoring of aid distribution.

While the combination of these factors seems to portend regime instability or even collapse, three generations of the Kim family have proven remarkably adept at outlasting and outmaneuvering threats to their hold on power. 

Some experts blame international sanctions for food shortages. However, there are no U.N. or U.S. sanctions on food, medicine or humanitarian assistance. All U.N. resolutions and U.S. laws have language highlighting that any punitive measures do not cover those items. That said, Washington should work with the U.N. sanctions committee to expeditiously process requests for sanctions exemptions to ensure humanitarian assistance is not inadvertently blocked.

The populace, impoverished and malnourished, is at high risk to a devastating outbreak of COVID. The country’s decrepit medical system, even in normal circumstances, is undersupplied. U.S. policy has long been to keep humanitarian assistance separate from denuclearization negotiations. 

Despite previous North Korean rejections of aid, Washington should again offer to provide medical and humanitarian assistance, while maintaining sanctions until the regime ceases the nuclear and missile activity that triggered the sanctions response.

Would Kim accept the offer? Probably not. While the North Korean people suffer, he still enjoys a life of luxury. Still, it is an offer worth making.

Marking a Milestone with Manila: 75 Years of U.S.-Philippines Relations

Heritage Research Manager and Editor of the Index of Economic Freedom Anthony Kim writes that the United States and the Philippines will celebrate two important milestones in their bilateral relationship this year.

Last weekend marked the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, signed on July 4, 1946, as well as the 70th anniversary of our mutual defense treaty with the Philippines. That makes the island nation America’s longest-standing treaty ally in Asia by far. In addition to that unique history, the United States’ and the Philippines’ interests are deeply interconnected—politically, militarily, and economically.

However, U.S.-Philippines relations have grown somewhat colder since the 2016 election of President Rodrigo Duterte in Manila. In a speech that year in Beijing, Duterte announced his intention to “separate” from the United States’ political and economic sphere and build a new bloc with the Philippines, Russia, and China at its center. The U.S.-Philippines alliance has been through a period of turbulence as Duterte has tried to position himself closer to the middle ground between the United States and China, and has rejected some of the key cornerstones of the strong U.S.-Philippines relationship.

At the same time, economic freedom in the Philippines has been stagnating in recent years. It sits as the 73rd-most free economy in the world out of 178 ranked, and is not even among the 10 freest in the Asia-Pacific region as measured by The Heritage Foundation’s 2021 Index of Economic Freedom.

Still, support for a stronger relationship with the United States remains firm among Filipinos and within the country’s legislative chambers. Heightened tensions in the Spratly Islands dispute in the South China Sea has led to enhanced military cooperation between the two countries that was previously taken off of the table. It’s likely only a matter of time before more Philippine leaders reconsider their country’s pivot to China and set their sights again on the United States.

In 1989, The Heritage Foundation proposed a pathway for strengthened relations and economic growth in the Philippines with support from the United States through free market reform and a comprehensive free trade agreement. Later that year, both the United States and the Philippines entered into a bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement that helped facilitate greater collaboration and economic growth in both countries. Today, the same free market-oriented types of cooperation can help revive the Philippines’ declining economic growth and stagnating economic freedom, and pave a path for a reinvigorated U.S.-Philippines relationship.

July 27, 2021 @ 12:00 pm EDT - VIRTUAL: Scaling Up the U.S. Response to the Coup in Burma

It has been nearly six months since the military coup in Burma, also known as Myanmar. Conditions inside the country continue to worsen with over 5,000 people currently detained and nearly 1,000 killed. Civil liberties and freedoms are evaporating as the military consolidates power. While the initial U.S. response to the coup was swift, there is much left to be done. There is strong bipartisan agreement on the need to ramp up U.S. sanctions, issue an atrocity determination, and ensure adequate humanitarian assistance. Join us for a discussion with Women's Peace Network Founder and Director Wai Wai Nu, Burma activist Mike Mitchell, Human Rights Watch Asia Advocacy Director John Sifton, and EarthRights International General Counsel Marco Simons on concrete actions to support the will of the Burmese people and to hold the military accountable.

July 14, 2021 @ 1:00 pm EDT - VIRTUAL: Pushing Boundaries: China's Aggressive New Tactics in South Asia

In 2020, the deadliest crisis at the China-India border in four decades claimed dozens of lives and sharpened the rivalry between the world’s two most populous nations. Later that year, reports revealed that China had constructed a new village inside the nation of Bhutan, with more villages said to be planned on Bhutanese soil. This comes only three years after Chinese road construction near the disputed China-India-Bhutan border sparked yet another unprecedented crisis between Indian and Chinese soldiers. What explains these aggressive new tactics and China’s sudden appetite for risk along its southwestern border? Join us for a discussion with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Associate Fellow Darshana Baruah and Johns Hopkins SAIS Senior Research Professor and Academic Director Daniel Markey, Ph.D. on these incidents and their implications for U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific.