by Jack A. Smith / April 3rd, 2013
What’s happening between the U.S. and North Korea to produce such
headlines in recent days as “Korean Tensions Escalate,” and “North
Korea Threatens U.S.”?
The
New York Times reported:
This week, North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jung-un,
ordered his underlings to prepare for a missile attack on the United
States. He appeared at a command center in front of a wall map with the
bold, unlikely title, ‘Plans to Attack the Mainland U.S.’ Earlier in the
month, his generals boasted of developing a ‘Korean-style’ nuclear
warhead that could be fitted atop a long-range missile.
The U.S. is well aware North Korea’s statements are not backed up by
sufficient military power to implement its rhetorical threats, but
appears to be escalating tensions all the same. South Korean President
Park Geun-hye also realizes the threats are rhetorical but declared: “We
should make a strong and immediate retaliation without any other
political considerations if [the North] stages any provocation against
our people.”
Pyongyang obviously has another objective in mind. I’ll have to go back a bit to explain the situation.
Since the end of the Korean War 60 years ago, the Worker’s Party
government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North
Korea) has repeatedly put forward virtually the same four proposals to
the United States.
They are:
1. A peace treaty to end the Korean War.
2. The reunification of
Korea, which has been “temporarily” divided into North and South since
1945.
3. An end to the U.S. occupation of South Korea and a
discontinuation of annual month-long U.S-South Korean war games.
4.
Bilateral talks between Washington and Pyongyang to end tensions on the
Korean peninsula.
The U.S. and its South Korean protectorate have rejected each
proposal over the years. As a consequence, the peninsula has remained
extremely unstable since the 1950s. It has now reached the point where
Washington has used this year’s war games, which began in early March,
as a vehicle for staging a mock nuclear attack on North Korea by flying
two nuclear-capable B-2 Stealth bombers over the region March 28. Three
days later, the White House ordered F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets to
South Korea, a further escalation of tensions.
Here is what is behind the four proposals.
1. The U.S. refuses to sign a peace treaty to end the Korean War. It
has only agreed to an armistice. An armistice is a temporary cessation
of fighting by mutual consent. The armistice signed July 27, 1953, was
supposed to transform into a peace treaty when “a final peaceful
settlement is achieved.” The lack of a treaty means war could resume at
any moment. North Korea does not want a war with the U.S., history’s
most powerful military state. It wants a peace treaty and diplomatic
recognition from Washington.
2. Two Koreas exist as the product of an agreement between the USSR
(which bordered Korea and helped to liberate the northern part of the
country from Japan in World War II) and the U.S., which occupied the
southern half. Although socialism prevailed in the north and capitalism
in the south, it was not to be a permanent split. The two big powers
were to withdraw after a couple of years, allowing the country to
reunify. Russia did so; the U.S. didn’t. Then came the devastating
three-year war in 1950. Since then, North Korea has made several
different proposals to end the separation that has lasted since 1945.
The most recent proposal, I believe, is “one country two systems.” This
means that while both halves unify, the south remains capitalist and the
north remains socialist. It will be difficult but not impossible.
Washington does not want this. It seeks the whole peninsula, bringing
its military apparatus directly to the border with China, and Russia as
well.
3. Washington has kept between 25,000 and over 40,000 troops in South
Korea since the end of the war. They remain — along with America’s
fleets, nuclear bomber bases and troop installations in close proximity
to the peninsula — a reminder of two things. One is that “We can crush
the north.” The other is “We own South Korea.” Pyongyang sees it that
way — all the more so since President Obama decided to “pivot” to Asia.
While the pivot contains an economic and trade aspect, its primary
purpose is to increase America’s already substantial military power in
the region in order to intensify the threat to China, but next door
North Korea is well within this dangerous periphery.
4. The Korean War was basically a conflict between the DPRK and the
U.S. That is, while a number of UN countries fought in the war, the U.S.
was in charge, dominated the fighting against North Korea and was
responsible for the deaths of millions of Koreans north of the 38th
parallel dividing line. It is entirely logical that Pyongyang seeks
talks directly with Washington to resolve differences and reach a
peaceful settlement leading toward a treaty. The U.S. has consistently
refused.
These four points are not new. They were put forward in the 1950s. I
visited the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a journalist for
the (U.S.)
Guardian newspaper three times during the 1970s for a
total of eight weeks. Time after time, in discussions with officials, I
was asked about a peace treaty, reunification, withdrawal of U.S. troops
from the south, and face-to-face talks. The situation is the same
today. The U.S. won’t budge.
Why not? Washington wants to get rid of the communist regime before
allowing peace to prevail on the peninsula. No “one state, two systems”
for Uncle Sam, by jingo! He wants one state that pledges allegiance to —
guess who? In the interim, the existence of a “bellicose” North Korea
justifies Washington’s surrounding the north with a veritable ring of
fire power. A “dangerous” DPRK is also useful in keeping Tokyo well
within the U.S. orbit and in providing another excuse for once-pacifist
Japan to boost its already formidable arsenal.
The U.S.-South Korea war games in March were preceded in February
U.S.-Japanese war games named “Iron Fist.” In both cases Washington
implicitly demonstrated it would stand with Seoul or Tokyo and against
Pyongyang or Beijing if push came to shove. The U.S.-Japanese effort was
aimed at capturing an imaginary island — a direct military warning to
China, which claims possession to the Senkaku Islands, as does Japan.
According to a February 15 article from
Foreign Policy in Focus by Christine Hong and Hyun Le:
Framing of North Korea as the region’s foremost security
threat obscures the disingenuous nature of U.S. President Barack Obama’s
policy in the region, specifically the identity between what his
advisers dub ‘strategic patience,’ on the one hand, and his
forward-deployed military posture and alliance with regional hawks on
the other. Examining Obama’s aggressive North Korea policy and its
consequences is crucial to understanding why demonstrations of military
might — of politics by other means, to borrow from Carl von Clausewitz —
are the only avenues of communication North Korea appears to have with
the United States at this juncture.
Brian Becker, leader of the antiwar ANSWER Coalition, noted March 31:
“The Pentagon and the South Korean military today — and throughout the
past year — have been staging massive war games that simulate the
invasion and bombing of North Korea. Few people in the United States
know the real situation. The work of the war propaganda machine is
designed to make sure that the American people do not join together to
demand an end to the dangerous and threatening actions of the Pentagon
on the Korean Peninsula.
The propaganda campaign is in full swing now as the
Pentagon climbs the escalation ladder in the most militarized part of
the planet. North Korea is depicted as the provocateur and aggressor
whenever it asserts that they have the right and capability to defend
their country. Even as the Pentagon simulates the nuclear destruction of
a country that it had already tried to bomb into the Stone Age, the
corporate-owned media characterizes this extremely provocative act as a
sign of resolve and a measure of self-defense.
And from Stratfor, the commercial intelligence group that is often in the know:
Much of North Korea’s behavior can be considered
rhetorical, but it is nonetheless unclear how far Pyongyang is willing
to go if it still cannot force negotiations through belligerence.
The objective of initiating negotiations with the U.S. is here taken for granted.
Pyongyang’s “bellicosity” is almost entirely verbal — several
decibels too loud for many ears, perhaps — but North Korea is a small
country in difficult circumstances that well remembers the extraordinary
brutality Washington visited upon the territory in the 1950s. Millions
of Koreans died. The U.S. carpet bombings were criminal. North Korea is
determined to go down fighting if it happens again, but hopes their
preparedness will avoid war and lead to talks and a treaty.
Their large and well-trained army is for defense. The purpose of the
rockets they are building and their talk about nuclear weapons is
principally to scare away the wolf at the door.
In the short run, the recent inflammatory rhetoric from Kim Jong-un
is in direct response to this year’s month-long U.S.-South Korea war
games, which he interprets as a possible prelude for another war. Kim’s
longer run purpose is to create a sufficiently worrisome crisis that the
U.S. finally agrees to bilateral talks leading to a peace treaty, an
end to Washington’s sanctions, the normalization of trade relations, and
removal of foreign troops from the south.. Some form of reunification
could come later in talks between north and south.
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