Brian4Liberty
03-17-2017, 04:30 PM
How To End the Korean War (http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/03/16/how-to-end-the-korean-war/)
You mean you didn’t know it never ended?
by Justin Raimondo, March 17, 2017
What in the name of all that’s holy is going on in North Korea?
This question is always hard to answer because they don’t call it the Hermit Kingdom for nothing. Very little comes out of the notoriously reclusive – and repressive – Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, and not that much gets in. But occasionally there is a burst of activity that, like the eruption of a volcano, is hard to miss – the recent launching of four ballistic missiles being one of them.
The missiles landed in the Sea of Japan, about 190 miles off the Japanese coast, sending shockwaves throughout the region. Both Tokyo and Seoul protested, while the North Koreans characterized the action as a logical reaction to the perceived threat of imminent military action by the US and South Korea. Pyongyang’s fear is not unfounded.
The exercises, conducted jointly by US and South Korea and dubbed “Foal Eagle,” are a dress rehearsal for all-out war with the North. In addition to the USS Carl Vinson and a strike force of two guided missile destroyers and a cruiser, the US sent in a squadron of stealth fighter jets as well as B-52s and B-1Bs – these latter capable of carrying nuclear payloads. “Foal Eagle” is an annual exercise, but every year the amount of US firepower gets bigger – and in the context of rapidly rising tensions between Pyongyang and the rest of the world, this does nothing to ease the former’s well-known paranoia.
But it isn’t just paranoia that is motivating North Korean behavior: for the first time, there is open talk in US ruling circles of launching a preemptive strike against the regime of Kim Jong Un. As Time magazine puts it:
“Taking out North Korea’s two major nuclear sites with air strikes would be dangerous but probably not too difficult, U.S. officials say. The possibility of North Korean retaliation against Seoul, South Korea’s capital of 10 million and only 35 miles from North Korea, would be a complicating factor, they concede.”
Yes, the continued existence of 10 million South Koreas, not to mention the 30,000 or so American soldiers stationed on the peninsula, is indeed “a complicating factor.” That’s one way of putting it.
The reality is that Pyongyang has a crude but workable nuclear arsenal. This means that, in a sane world, military action is off the proverbial table. The problem is that we don’t live in such a world. And as crazy as Kim Jong Un may be, the talk of a preemptive strike proves the insanity is not limited to Pyongyang,
Right now, US policymakers must ask themselves two questions: how did we get here, and how do we get out?
We got here because the administration of George W. Bush quashed the beginnings of a political solution to the Korean conundrum.
Remember that the Korean War never officially ended: the fighting stopped when a truce was declared. A peace treaty was never signed: officially, we and our South Korean allies are still at war with Pyongyang. The demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas has been described as the most dangerous place in the world, and there have been a number of shooting incidents over the years, rising and falling as tensions between the two Koreas waxed and waned.
Yet there was a moment when the tensions were at a low point, and the possibility of a political solution was raised: this was the result of the so-called “Sunshine Policy” initiated by South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. The goal: reunification of the Koreas, a project both the North and the South have officially endorsed for many years. The Koreans are a fiercely nationalistic people, and the halving of the nation has been a painful affair. Then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (Kim Jong Un’s father) agreed to meet the South Korean President at a three-day summit, at the end of which they signed a nonaggression pact and agreed to pursue the path of reunification.
This made sense from the North Korean perspective: the Communist state was strangling on its own repression, famine was sweeping the land, the economy was tanking, and people were literally eating the bark off the trees. The infusion of South Korean investment that followed the summit gave them a lifeline, and tens of thousands of South Koreans visited the North: factories were set up in the North that employed thousands of North Korean workers. Slowly but surely the Hermit Kingdom was letting down its defenses and opening up to the world.
And then came George W. Bush, who received the South Korean President in Washington in March of 2001 and promptly threw shade on the Sunshine policy. As the late Mary McGrory put it:
“Bush, as he was eager to demonstrate, was not a fan. Kim’s sin? He was instituting a sunshine policy with the North, ending a half-century of estrangement. Bush, who looked upon North Korea as the most potent argument for his obsession to build a national missile defense, saw Kim, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, as nothing but trouble. He sent him home humiliated and empty-handed.”
The North Koreans pulled back, and announced a military buildup. Bush upped the ante with his “axis of evil speech,” naming Pyongyang as one of the spokes on the wheel of wickedness. The North Koreans responded that this sounded to them like an outright “declaration of war,” a not unreasonable interpretation of Bush’s remarks.
...
Besieged on every side by enemies both real and imagined, Kim Jong Un has one card left to play: the threat from the West. As long as he can present himself as the bulwark protecting the people from the “Yankee imperialists” and their “running dog lackeys” in the South, he retains his hold on legitimacy. The “Foal Eagle” exercises and rumblings of war emanating from Washington bolster his faltering regime.
Just as George W. Bush’s spiking of the Sunshine policy was motivated by the need to appease the neoconservative wing of the Republican party and thus retain legitimacy on the home front, so Kim Jong Un’s belligerence is dictated by the need to legitimize his dynastic succession to the throne of Pyongyang. North Korea’s foreign policy, like that of any other state’s, whether despotic or democratic, is determined by the political needs of the rulers at the time.
Once we begin to understand the implications of this universal principle, and apply it to the Korean conundrum, the outlines of a solution are visible.
To begin with, it’s time to face facts: there is no military solution to the problem posed by North Korea. Pyongyang is holding the entire peninsula hostage. War is unthinkable – although, unfortunately, far from impossible.
...
The initiative is going to have to come from Seoul, which has the most to lose if war breaks out. And when this initiative does come, Washington must welcome it, and do everything to foster it. When Trump was campaigning for President, he questioned the US presence in the South and wondered aloud why we had to risk war and bankruptcy providing for Seoul’s defense. His instincts were right: now perhaps we’ll get to see if his policies match his campaign rhetoric. I’m not optimistic – pressure from the John McCain wing of the GOP is relentless, and Trump may not want to fight on this terrain – but you never know..
The ultimate goal of any negotiation must begin the process of reunifying the Korean nation, a process that can only end with the withdrawal of all US forces. This would pull the rug out from under Kim Jong Un’s nightmarish regime, depriving it of an external threat on which it bases much of its legitimacy. It’s long past time to bring the Korean war to a formal end – because the only alternative is a resumption of hostilities. And in the nuclear age, the meaning of that ought to be clear enough.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is now in South Korea as part of his trip to the region, where he met with Japanese leaders as well. He is declaring that we need “a new approach” to North Korea. As to what this means, exactly, is not at all clear: Tillerson is not currently revealing any details, although his statement that “the people of North Korea have nothing to fear from us or our allies” is encouraging. He is reportedly headed for the DMZ, where hopefully he’ll react in a far different way than George W. Bush did.
...
More: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/03/16/how-to-end-the-korean-war/
You mean you didn’t know it never ended?
by Justin Raimondo, March 17, 2017
What in the name of all that’s holy is going on in North Korea?
This question is always hard to answer because they don’t call it the Hermit Kingdom for nothing. Very little comes out of the notoriously reclusive – and repressive – Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, and not that much gets in. But occasionally there is a burst of activity that, like the eruption of a volcano, is hard to miss – the recent launching of four ballistic missiles being one of them.
The missiles landed in the Sea of Japan, about 190 miles off the Japanese coast, sending shockwaves throughout the region. Both Tokyo and Seoul protested, while the North Koreans characterized the action as a logical reaction to the perceived threat of imminent military action by the US and South Korea. Pyongyang’s fear is not unfounded.
The exercises, conducted jointly by US and South Korea and dubbed “Foal Eagle,” are a dress rehearsal for all-out war with the North. In addition to the USS Carl Vinson and a strike force of two guided missile destroyers and a cruiser, the US sent in a squadron of stealth fighter jets as well as B-52s and B-1Bs – these latter capable of carrying nuclear payloads. “Foal Eagle” is an annual exercise, but every year the amount of US firepower gets bigger – and in the context of rapidly rising tensions between Pyongyang and the rest of the world, this does nothing to ease the former’s well-known paranoia.
But it isn’t just paranoia that is motivating North Korean behavior: for the first time, there is open talk in US ruling circles of launching a preemptive strike against the regime of Kim Jong Un. As Time magazine puts it:
“Taking out North Korea’s two major nuclear sites with air strikes would be dangerous but probably not too difficult, U.S. officials say. The possibility of North Korean retaliation against Seoul, South Korea’s capital of 10 million and only 35 miles from North Korea, would be a complicating factor, they concede.”
Yes, the continued existence of 10 million South Koreas, not to mention the 30,000 or so American soldiers stationed on the peninsula, is indeed “a complicating factor.” That’s one way of putting it.
The reality is that Pyongyang has a crude but workable nuclear arsenal. This means that, in a sane world, military action is off the proverbial table. The problem is that we don’t live in such a world. And as crazy as Kim Jong Un may be, the talk of a preemptive strike proves the insanity is not limited to Pyongyang,
Right now, US policymakers must ask themselves two questions: how did we get here, and how do we get out?
We got here because the administration of George W. Bush quashed the beginnings of a political solution to the Korean conundrum.
Remember that the Korean War never officially ended: the fighting stopped when a truce was declared. A peace treaty was never signed: officially, we and our South Korean allies are still at war with Pyongyang. The demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas has been described as the most dangerous place in the world, and there have been a number of shooting incidents over the years, rising and falling as tensions between the two Koreas waxed and waned.
Yet there was a moment when the tensions were at a low point, and the possibility of a political solution was raised: this was the result of the so-called “Sunshine Policy” initiated by South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. The goal: reunification of the Koreas, a project both the North and the South have officially endorsed for many years. The Koreans are a fiercely nationalistic people, and the halving of the nation has been a painful affair. Then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (Kim Jong Un’s father) agreed to meet the South Korean President at a three-day summit, at the end of which they signed a nonaggression pact and agreed to pursue the path of reunification.
This made sense from the North Korean perspective: the Communist state was strangling on its own repression, famine was sweeping the land, the economy was tanking, and people were literally eating the bark off the trees. The infusion of South Korean investment that followed the summit gave them a lifeline, and tens of thousands of South Koreans visited the North: factories were set up in the North that employed thousands of North Korean workers. Slowly but surely the Hermit Kingdom was letting down its defenses and opening up to the world.
And then came George W. Bush, who received the South Korean President in Washington in March of 2001 and promptly threw shade on the Sunshine policy. As the late Mary McGrory put it:
“Bush, as he was eager to demonstrate, was not a fan. Kim’s sin? He was instituting a sunshine policy with the North, ending a half-century of estrangement. Bush, who looked upon North Korea as the most potent argument for his obsession to build a national missile defense, saw Kim, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, as nothing but trouble. He sent him home humiliated and empty-handed.”
The North Koreans pulled back, and announced a military buildup. Bush upped the ante with his “axis of evil speech,” naming Pyongyang as one of the spokes on the wheel of wickedness. The North Koreans responded that this sounded to them like an outright “declaration of war,” a not unreasonable interpretation of Bush’s remarks.
...
Besieged on every side by enemies both real and imagined, Kim Jong Un has one card left to play: the threat from the West. As long as he can present himself as the bulwark protecting the people from the “Yankee imperialists” and their “running dog lackeys” in the South, he retains his hold on legitimacy. The “Foal Eagle” exercises and rumblings of war emanating from Washington bolster his faltering regime.
Just as George W. Bush’s spiking of the Sunshine policy was motivated by the need to appease the neoconservative wing of the Republican party and thus retain legitimacy on the home front, so Kim Jong Un’s belligerence is dictated by the need to legitimize his dynastic succession to the throne of Pyongyang. North Korea’s foreign policy, like that of any other state’s, whether despotic or democratic, is determined by the political needs of the rulers at the time.
Once we begin to understand the implications of this universal principle, and apply it to the Korean conundrum, the outlines of a solution are visible.
To begin with, it’s time to face facts: there is no military solution to the problem posed by North Korea. Pyongyang is holding the entire peninsula hostage. War is unthinkable – although, unfortunately, far from impossible.
...
The initiative is going to have to come from Seoul, which has the most to lose if war breaks out. And when this initiative does come, Washington must welcome it, and do everything to foster it. When Trump was campaigning for President, he questioned the US presence in the South and wondered aloud why we had to risk war and bankruptcy providing for Seoul’s defense. His instincts were right: now perhaps we’ll get to see if his policies match his campaign rhetoric. I’m not optimistic – pressure from the John McCain wing of the GOP is relentless, and Trump may not want to fight on this terrain – but you never know..
The ultimate goal of any negotiation must begin the process of reunifying the Korean nation, a process that can only end with the withdrawal of all US forces. This would pull the rug out from under Kim Jong Un’s nightmarish regime, depriving it of an external threat on which it bases much of its legitimacy. It’s long past time to bring the Korean war to a formal end – because the only alternative is a resumption of hostilities. And in the nuclear age, the meaning of that ought to be clear enough.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is now in South Korea as part of his trip to the region, where he met with Japanese leaders as well. He is declaring that we need “a new approach” to North Korea. As to what this means, exactly, is not at all clear: Tillerson is not currently revealing any details, although his statement that “the people of North Korea have nothing to fear from us or our allies” is encouraging. He is reportedly headed for the DMZ, where hopefully he’ll react in a far different way than George W. Bush did.
...
More: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/03/16/how-to-end-the-korean-war/