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What North Korea Can Tell Us About America’s Future

Trump and Kim have something in common: their desire for total control.

US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shake hands during a meeting at the demilitarized zone in Panmunjom, South Korea, June 30, 2019.

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.

Ever since North Korea suffered through the death of its first leader in 1994, a loss magnified by an economic collapse and a devastating famine, outside observers have likened the country to an airplane experiencing a serious malfunction. The major question they posed: In the end, would North Korea experience a soft landing or a catastrophic crash?

Perhaps a reformer would come along—say, a North Korean version of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev—who could right the airship of state and guide it toward the runway of reunification with South Korea.

More direly, the North Korean regime could collapse all of a sudden, like the Communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1989. Those were relatively peaceful affairs, but North Korea’s worst-case scenarios might involve violent power struggles, the return of famine, and a free-for-all scramble for the country’s loose nukes. US analysts have gamed out the consequences of just such a hard landing—and so has the Pentagon with its OPLAN 5029—and they all add up to a tragedy not only for North Koreans and the region, but also potentially for the United States and the rest of the world.

The North Korean government has, however, defied such scenarios by somehow surviving, while rejecting reunification with the south and turning up its nose at conventional versions of reform. Despite additional challenges—a sustained Covid quarantine, several distinctly hostile governments in South Korea, and a flatlining economy—the regime has so far avoided collapse and, if anything, tightened its control over its population. For the time being at least, the North Korean plane evidently has no intention of landing, much less crashing.

Today, in an improbable plot twist, however, Donald Trump’s United States is starting to seem ever more like an aircraft in distress.

After all, the present pilot of Air America, exhibiting signs of psychosis or perhaps dementia, has begun to dismantle the cockpit under the delusion that it’s his to transform into a ballroom. The crew—and indeed much of the supporting infrastructure on the ground below—has been decimated by budget cuts. The airline itself is fast taking on debt. Many of the passengers are praying for a soft landing and hoping that, if the plane does touch down for a risky layover, they will get a new pilot.

But another fear lurks in the background. Given the state of the airplane—a malfunctioning altimeter, compromised landing gear—it might not matter who the pilot is anymore. Air America may well be heading for a crash landing regardless of who’s in charge.

Those of us on board, gripping our armrests in terror, are asking ourselves one question above all else: Is it too late to avert catastrophe?

Trump’s Totalitarian Tendencies

North Korea has come closer than any country in the modern era to building a totalitarian state. Beginning with the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, its leadership has eliminated all oppositional politics, suppressed virtually all signs of civil society, and tolerated no freedom of the press, speech, or assembly. Nor is there any freedom of religion, unless you count the personality cult attached to the Kim family leadership, which is now in its third generation.

But all totalitarianism is aspirational. The Soviet Union had its dissidents and underground samizdat literature. The Confessing Church movement attempted faith-based resistance to the Nazis. Likewise, the North Korean government’s control over the population is not total, as can be measured by rising levels of private enterprise and covert enthusiasm for South Korean culture.

So, too, are Donald Trump’s totalitarian tendencies aspirational. He would like to achieve total control, but he’s hemmed in by institutional limits. Still, he prefers to bypass Congress with rule by executive decree. He has attempted to control the media, rein in the power of universities, and tilt the electoral playing field to benefit his party. He has aligned himself internationally not with democrats but with autocrats. He has had a particular fondness for authoritarian leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Javier Milei of Argentina who consolidated their power within democracies. But he has also gotten cozy with the likes of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, who doesn’t bother at all with elections.

The most inexplicable friendship Trump........

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