With last week’s confirmation that North Korea had tested a nuclear device, The Atlantic Monthly has put online Robert D. Kaplan‘s cover article from the October print edition, When North Korea Falls, a stark analysis of the disaster that could occur when the fragile North Korean society finally collapses. Kaplan sums up the problem that North Korea’s inevitable collapse presents to the US:

Middle- and upper-middle-level U.S. officers based in South Korea and Japan are planning for a meltdown of North Korea that, within days or even hours of its occurrence, could present the worldómeaning, really, the American militaryówith the greatest stabilization operation since the end of World War II. ìIt could be the mother of all humanitarian relief operations,î Army Special Forces Colonel David Maxwell told me. On one day, a semi-starving population of 23 million people would be Kim Jong Ilís responsibility; on the next, it would be the U.S. militaryís, which would have to work out an arrangement with the Chinese Peopleís Liberation Army (among others) about how to manage the crisis.

Read the entire article, which is essential reading for understanding the motivations of North Korea’s current nuclear brinksmanship. Which, by the way, generated the best crack of last week, from David Letterman:

“The North Koreans are starting to gloat a little bit. The test was a big success, and to celebrate, today Kim Jong-il is wearing his hair in the shape of a mushroom cloud.”