By setting off a 100-kiloton bomb, after firing a missile over
Japan, Kim Jong Un has gotten the world's attention.
What
else does he want?
Almost
surely not war with America. For no matter what damage Kim could visit on U.S.
troops and bases in South Korea, Okinawa and Guam, his country would be
destroyed and the regime his grandfather built annihilated.
"The
supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting," wrote Sun
Tzu. Kim likely has something like this in mind.
His
nuclear and missile tests have already called the bluff of George W. Bush who,
in his "axis of evil" speech, declared that the world's worst regimes
would not be allowed to acquire the world's worst weapons.
Arguably
the world's worst regime now has the world's worst weapon, an H-bomb, with
ICBMs to follow.
What
else does Kim want? He wants the U.S. to halt joint military maneuvers with the
South, recognize his regime, tear up the security pact with Seoul, and get our
forces off the peninsula.
No
way, says President Trump. Emerging from church, Trump added, "South
Korea's ... talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only
understand one thing!"
On
Monday, South Korea was accelerating the activation of the high-altitude
missile defense implanted by the United States. Russia and China were talking
of moving missile forces into the area. And Mattis had warned Kim he was toying
with the fate of his country:
"Any
threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam or our allies,
will be met with a massive military response."
As
the United States can only lose from a new Korean war in which thousands of
Americans and millions of Koreans could perish, the first imperative is to
dispense with the war talk, and to prevent the war Mattis rightly says would be
"catastrophic."
China
has declared that it will enter a new Korean conflict on the side of the North,
but only if the North does not attack first.
For
this and other reasons, the U.S. should let the North strike the first blow,
unless we have hard evidence Kim is preparing a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
But
if and when we manage to tamp down this crisis, we should ask ourselves why we
are in this crisis. Why are we a party to this frozen conflict from 1953 that
is 8,000 miles away?
The
first Korean War ended months into Ike's first term. Our security treaty with
Seoul was signed in October 1953.
That
year, Stalin's successors had taken over a USSR that was busy testing missiles
and hydrogen bombs. China was ruled by Chairman Mao, who had sent a million
"volunteers' to fight in Korea. Japan, still recovering from World War II,
was disarmed and entirely dependent upon the United States for its defense.
What
has changed in six and a half decades?
That
USSR no longer exists. It split, three decades ago, into 15 nations. Japan has
risen to boast an economy 100 times as large as North Korea's. South Korea is
among the most advanced nations in Asia with a population twice that of the
North and an economy 40 times as large.
Since
the KORUS free trade deal took effect under President Obama, Seoul has been
running surging trade surpluses in goods at our expense every year.
The
world has changed dramatically since the 1950s. But U.S. policy failed to
change commensurately.
The
basic question that needs addressing:
Why
do we still keep 28,000 troops in South Korea as a trip wire to bring us into a
second Korean war from its first hours, a war that could bring nuclear strikes
on our troops, bases, and, soon, our nation?
We
cannot walk away from our Korean allies in this crisis. But we should look upon
the North's drive to marry nuclear warheads to ICBMs as a wake-up call to
review a policy rooted in Cold War realities that ceased to exist when Ronald
Reagan went home.
Consider.
North Korea devotes 25 percent of GDP to defense. South Korea spends 2.6
percent, Japan 1 percent. Yet these mighty Asian allies, who run annual trade
surpluses at our expense, require us to defend them from a maniacal little
country right next door.
After
this crisis, South Korea and Japan should begin to make the kind of defense
effort the U.S. does, and create their own nuclear deterrents. This might get
Beijing's attention, as our pleas for its assistance with North Korea
apparently have not.
Already
involved in land disputes with a nuclear-armed Russia and India, China's
dominance of Asia — should Japan and South Korea acquire nuclear weapons —
begins to diminish.
"As
our case is new," said Abraham Lincoln, "we must think anew and act anew."
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's
White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided
America Forever."
