Iraq: Lessons Learned in the Context of Regime Change in North Korea

Attempting to frame the U.S. stabilization and reconstruction experience in ways that may be useful to anticipating a post-regime North Korea is a difficult proposition. To begin with, North Korea’s profile today is markedly different from that of Iraq prior to the latter’s invasion in March 2003 by U.S. and British forces. Though isolated and impoverished, North Korea does not bear the combined legacy of thirty years of unrelenting war and sanctions, nor does it possess the deep ethno-sectarian schisms that have nearly torn Iraq apart, threatening to ignite a broader regional war along matching fault lines. And while North Korea is under constant pressure from an international community bent on mitigating the danger posed by its nuclear arsenal, the existential threat it faces exists primarily in proportion to its own belligerent behavior. Finally, it is impossible to isolate the Iraq enterprise’s dominant feature: the American invasion and occupation.