The Future of Canada-DPR Korea Relations

Weingartner Consulting is proud to present the publication of Failure of Engagement or Failure to Engage, the future of Canada-DPR Korea relations. To read publication, click here.

The publication is the culmination of a year of hard work, beginning with the joining of world class experts on North Korea in the latest Virtual ThinkNet (VTN) Scenarios project. Using email and an internet-based virtual platform, more than 50 Canadian and international DPRK watchers, scholars, civil servants and NGO representatives have contributed to a process that is culminating in the creation of narratives that project four possible futures in Canada-DPRK relations within the next decade.

Focal Question: A Role for Canada?

Grappling with the focal question, “Will Canada play a significant role in encouraging the DPRK towards regional peace and stability by 2020?” participants listed 78 major and minor “forces” that drive Canada’s role in the region. The most critical and uncertain of these drivers were then positioned on a matrix that produced parameters for four distinct futures. The four scenarios were the springboard of a face-to-face consultation in Toronto on November 11th, 2009. At the day-long meeting, participants formulated strategic options for Canadian policy at both governmental and civil society levels.

The VTN ‘Brain Trust’ of North Korea experts spent the Summer defining Canada’s place in a very complex region. Although Canada is one of a small number of Western countries that has diplomatic relations with the DPRK, it has so far played a very limited role, loosely defined as a ‘not-business-as-usual’ policy. Opinions are divided as to whether Canada should, or even could, play a more active role. While the Canadian government has decided to take a back seat to the leadership of the USA in the region, some Canadian NGOs have urged a more active role, providing humanitarian assistance, English language education for North Koreans, and maintaining people-to-people contacts.

Strength in Diversity

Those involved in the Virtual ThinkNet’s ‘Brain Trust’ straddle a variety of professions and political allegiances. Some members are in the public service, and therefore participated anonymously.

What differentiates the Virtual ThinkNet from the many think-TANKs out there is that think tanks usually operate from an ideologically fixed position. Because of the inclusiveness of the VTN’s Brain Trust on North Korea, our scenarios possess an authenticity that is unique.

Sponsored by the Toronto-based Canada-DPR Korea Association, the project was managed by Weingartner Consulting, publishers of the CanKor. Weingartner Consulting’s Virtual ThinkNet hosts scenarios-building processes that mimic methodologies generally used in weeklong face-to-face workshops. With the help of Canadian tech-marketing company the SomaeGroup, the VTN used the depth and breadth of innovative social networking technologies to achieve a fertile collaboration that is accessible to busy professionals.

Will totalitarianism make a comeback?

Another brilliant post by io9’s Charlie Jane Anders in which she asks former National Security Advisor in the Carter Administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski, whether totalitarianism is likely to make a comeback and the possible influence of social networking technologies to that effect.

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Totalitarianism towered over the 20th century — a leader-focused, oppressive form of rule in which the individual was crushed. Now it seems to have receded as an ideal. But will it be back? We asked the expert, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Brzezinski is best known for having been the National Security Advisor in the Carter Administration, and for helping to dismantle the Ford Administration’s policy of detente towards the Soviet Union. But in the 1950s, he was one of the main scholars developing the theory of totalitarianism, and helping to spread the idea that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union represented examples of this type of system. He’s currently Robert E. Osgood Professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

So when we were wondering if totalitarianism was discredited for good, or if it might still stage a resurgence, we could think of no better person to ask than Brzezinski. Here’s what he said, via email.

You helped pioneer the idea of totalitarianism as a system of government. Do you think totalitarianism has been discredited as a form of government in the past couple of decades?

Totalitarianism has been discredited during the past several decades, but that does not mean that it cannot reoccur. However, the discerning aspect of totalitarianism is not simply that it is “totally” in control of society, but that it tries to change society according to a dogmatic blueprint, the latter usually being described as “ideology.” For the time being, there is no total ideology of change being advocated by any serious political grouping.

Does the rise of surveillance technology like ubiquitous video cameras and wiretapping make the rise of a new form of totalitarianism more likely? Could we see a new form of electronic totalitarianism for the 21st century?

If a new doctrine of total change arises, abetted and advocated by fanatics, then we might have another case of totalitarianism, one that will then benefit from the highly technological advanced forms of social control available to dictatorships.

On the other hand, do you think that the ability of people to share information anonymously online would make it impossible to suppress dissent as thoroughly as former totalitarian regimes such as the USSR once did?

It is more difficult to isolate societies from outside influences because of modern means of communication – but a truly fanatical regime, armed with the most advanced technology, could probably maintain such isolation for awhile. Nonetheless, the key issue is whether a new doctrine of total social change is likely to appear in the foreseeable future, and for that there is no categorical answer.