On January 10, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un abandoned decades of seeking peaceful Korean unification. He “called South Korea the country’s ‘principal enemy’ and said he has ‘no intention of avoiding war.’” He further said, “he would have no hesitation in ‘annihilating’ South Korea,” which sounds like Kim is preparing for a major nuclear weapon attack on the South.

Subsequently, two renowned experts on North Korea wrote an article arguing that “Kim Jong-un has made a strategic decision to go to war.” In the subsequent debate, others maintained this is not the case.

So, has Kim really decided to go to war?

To answer this question properly, we must first distinguish between kinds of war. In fact, Kim already has gone to war: The Kim Family has been preparing for and fighting a cold war against South Korea and the United States for seventy years. This can be seen in the North’s propaganda operations against the South, its identifying the United States and South Korea as hostile enemies that seek to invade the North, its many provocations, including its missile and nuclear weapon tests, and its inflammatory threats.

Of course, Kim uses these actions to help his failing regime survive. He diverts the attention of his people from his regime’s many failings and seeks the appearance of an empowered and successful leader. These actions also allow him to apply pressure on the South Korea-U.S. alliance with the hope of undermining it.

And Kim is clearly preparing for a hot war: “Every country’s military prepares for war.” But in particular, no dictatorship can have a military of over 1 million personnel and not have them actively preparing for war. They must be kept busy, or they would be very dangerous to the regime. Indeed, Kim not only threatened to annihilate the South but also had plans to go further by “occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK and annex[ing] it as a part of the territory of our Republic.”

This kind of hot war is what many experts currently fear. But it is not something Kim likely wants to happen. After all, he knows that if he uses nuclear........

© The National Interest