They say that most of the world’s real dangers arise not because
of what people don’t know but because of what they do «know» that just ain’t
so.
As a case in
point, consider three things about Korea that the bipartisan Washington
establishment seems quite sure of but are far removed from reality:
Delusion
1: All options, including U.S. military force, are «on the
table.»
- Everyone
knows there are no military «options» the U.S. could use against North Korea
that don’t result in disaster. The prospect that a «surgical strike» could
«take out» (a muscular-sounding term much loved by laptop bombardiers) Pyongyang’s nuclear and
missile capabilities is a fiction. Already impractical when considered against
a country like Iran, no one believes a limited attack could eliminate North
Korea’s ability to strike back, hard. At risk would be not only almost 30,000
U.S. troops in Korea but 25 million people in the Seoul metropolitan area, not
to mention many more lives at risk in the rest of South Korea and
perhaps Japan.
- Hence,
any contemplated U.S. preemptive strike would have to be
massive from the start, imposing a ghastly cost on North Koreans (do their
lives count?) but still running the risk that anything less than total success
would mean a devastating retaliation. That’s not even taking into account
possible actions of other countries, notably China’s response to an American
attack on their detestable buffer state.
Delusion
2: North Korea must be denuclearized.
- Whether
anyone likes it or not, North Korea is a nuclear weapons state outside the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and will remain so. Kim Jong-un learned the
lessons of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Because Kim has weapons of mass
destruction, especially nukes, he gets to stay alive and in power. If he gives
them up, he can look forward to dancing the
Tyburn jig or getting sodomized with a bayonet, then shot. That’s not a difficult
choice.
Delusion
3: If the U.S. presses China hard enough, Beijing will solve the
problem for us.
- There is no
combination of U.S. sanctions, threats, or pressures that will make Beijing
take steps that are fundamentally contrary to China’s vital national security
interests. (Here, the «vital national security» of China means just that, not
the way U.S. policymakers routinely abuse the term to mean anything they don’t
like even if it has nothing to do with American security, much less with
America’s survival.) Aside from speculation (which is all it is) that China
could seek to engineer an internal coup to overthrow Kim in favor of a puppet
administration, maintaining the current odious regime is Beijing’s only option
if they don’t want to face the prospect of having on their border a reunited
Korean peninsula under a government allied with Washington.
- After Moscow’s
experience with the expansion of NATO following the 1990 reunification of
Germany, why would Beijing take credibly any assurances from Washington (of
which there is no indication anyway) not to expand into a vacuum created by a
collapse of North Korea? Quite to the contrary, it has been suggested that if
China refuses to deal with the North Korea problem on Washington’s behalf, then
the U.S. would do it on its terms, presenting Beijing (in the description of
former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton) with «regime collapse, huge
refugee flows and U.S. flags flying along the Yalu River.» Adds Bolton, «China
can do it the easier way or the harder way: It’s their choice. Time is growing
short.» If under such a scenario U.S. forces end up on China’s border, suggests
Bolton, they wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. Don’t be so sure. In 1950, the
last time American forces were on the Yalu River, they weren’t there very long
when hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers crossed into Korea. Keep in mind
that happened when China didn’t have nuclear weapons but the U.S. did.
The seemingly
weekly rise and fall of the decibel level of bellicose rhetoric coming out of
Washington and Pyongyang obscures the realities behind these three delusions.
Little change can be expected from Pyongyang, whose policy at least has the
virtue of simplicity: «if you do anything bad to us, we’ll do something really,
really bad to you.»
So then, what
are the prospects Washington could jump off the hamster wheel and come up with
something besides threats and sanctions? The omens are not auspicious. Just
before he left the White House, Steve Bannon violated the taboo surrounding Delusion 1: «Until
somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people
in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't
know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got
us.» Then he was gone.
But let’s be
optimistic. There have been reports of direct «back channel» contacts between
North Korea and the U.S. at the United Nations in New York. Even Bolton
suggests that some kind of accommodation could be made to China in the form of
a pullback of U.S. forces down to the south, near Pusan, so as to be still
«available for rapid deployment across Asia.» (Certainly, that’s one idea.
Here’s a better one: how about getting us out of Korea entirely
and not having Americans available for deployment across Asia?)
The
definitive clarification should have been the Beijing-based Global Times editorial
of August 10, 2017 («Reckless game over the Korean Peninsula runs risk of real war»),
universally seen as reflecting the position of the Chinese government:
«China should also make clear that if
North Korea launches missiles that threaten U.S. soil first and the U.S.
retaliates, China will stay neutral. If the U.S. and South Korea carry out
strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political
pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so».
That means
that if Kim attacks the U.S., he’s on his own. If we attack Kim, we’re at war
with China. In the latter case, while Russia would not likely directly join the
fray we can be sure Moscow would provide China total support short of
belligerency. Put mildly, this would not be in the American interest.
There is one,
and only one overriding priority that should now guide U.S. policy on Korea.
It’s not regime change in North Korea – despite that regime’s loathsomeness –
or even the wellbeing of South Korea or Japan. It’s avoiding Kim’s developing a
missile system capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the United States. How
close North Korea might be to such a capability is the subject of wildly
conflicting estimations. (Regarding the American lives hung out on the DMZ,
there’s a simple solution to ensuring their safety – get them the hell out of
there.)
But what
about South Korea and Japan? Our «alliances» with them are a fiction. The U.S.
guarantees their security but other than cooperating on the defense of their
own territory they do nothing to safeguard ours, nor can they. The U.S. derives
no benefit in continuing to make ourselves a target on account of a place
that’s more than five thousand miles from the American mainland.
It’s time
that «America First!» meant something. As a start, Washington could take
seriously Beijing’s proposal for a double-freeze. On the one hand,
Pyongyang would suspend its nuclear and missile programs, in particular halting
tests of weapons with potential intercontinental range. Washington and Seoul
would suspend joint military exercises, including practicing so-called «decapitation strikes« aimed at North Korea’s leadership.
If protecting
our own territory and people is American officials’ top priority, and not, as they implausibly claim, «regime change» in North Korea,
it’s hard to see why a double-freeze would not be a sensible first step. It
would be largely up to China to see that the North Koreans complied with their
part of the deal. If they did, perhaps it could lead towards a long-overdue
settlement of this Cold War-era standoff and, in time, a reunited, neutral Korea. If
not, all bets are off – but we’d be hardly worse off than we are now.
