{"id":93390,"date":"2017-06-05T12:27:33","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T11:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=93390"},"modified":"2017-06-05T12:27:33","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T11:27:33","slug":"avoiding-apocalypse-on-the-korean-peninsula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/06\/avoiding-apocalypse-on-the-korean-peninsula\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding Apocalypse on the Korean Peninsula"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Diplomacy Is Not Na\u00efve Appeasement in the Korean Crisis<\/em><\/p>\n

4 Jun 2017 – <\/em>Defense Secretary James Mattis remarked<\/a> recently that a war with North Korea would be \u201ctragic on an unbelievable scale.\u201d No kidding. \u201cTragic\u201d doesn\u2019t even begin to describe the horrors<\/a> that would flow from such a conflict.<\/p>\n

The Korean peninsula, all 85,270 square miles of it, is about the size of Idaho. It contains more soldiers (2.8 million, not counting reserves) and armaments<\/a> (nearly 6,000 tanks, 31,000 artillery pieces, and 1,134 combat aircraft) than any other place on the planet. The armies of North and South Korea face each other across the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, and Seoul, South Korea\u2019s capital, is a mere 35 miles away as the artillery shell flies. More than 25 million people inhabit that city\u2019s greater metropolitan area, home to about half of South Korea\u2019s population. Unsurprisingly, untold numbers of North Korean missiles and artillery pieces are trained on that city. Once the guns started firing, thousands of its denizens would undoubtedly die within hours. Of course, North Koreans, too, would be caught in an almost instant maelstrom of death.<\/p>\n

And the war wouldn\u2019t be a bilateral affair. \u00a0South Korea hosts 28,500 American troops. In addition, there are some 200,000<\/a> American civilians in the country, most of them in Seoul. \u00a0Many in both categories could be killed by North Korean attacks and the United States would, in turn, hit multiple targets in that country. \u00a0Pyongyang might retaliate by firing missiles at Japan, where 39,000 American troops are stationed, concentrating on the network of American bases and command centers there, especially the U.S. Services Headquarters at Yokota Air Base near Tokyo.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s without even considering the possible use of nuclear weapons.\u00a0 If anything, Mattis\u2019s description is an understatement.\u00a0 And don\u2019t assume that the danger of a Korean conflagration has passed now that President Trump has become trapped in the latest set of political scandals to plague his administration. \u00a0Quite the opposite: a clash between North Korea and the United States might have become more probable precisely because the president is politically besieged.<\/p>\n

Trump wouldn\u2019t be the first leader, confronted with trouble at home, to trigger a crisis abroad and then appeal for unity and paint critics as unpatriotic.\u00a0 Keep in mind, after all, that this is the man who has already warned of \u201ca major, major war<\/a>\u201d with North Korea.<\/p>\n

Trump vs. Kim<\/strong><\/p>\n

So far the coercive tactics Trump has used to compel North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program and cease testing ballistic missiles have included sanctions and asset freezes<\/a>, military threats<\/a>, and shows of force — both serious, as in the recent Key Resolve<\/a> and Operation Max Thunder<\/a> joint military exercises with South Korea, and farcical, as with a supposedly northward-bound naval \u201carmada<\/a>\u201d that actually sailed in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

Such moves all involve the same presidential bet: that economic and military pressure can bend Pyongyang to his will.\u00a0 Other American presidents have, of course, taken the same approach and failed for decades now, which seems to matter little to Trump, even though he presents himself as a break-the-mold maverick ready to negotiate unprecedented deals with foreign leaders.<\/p>\n

By now, this much ought to be clear, even to Trump: North Korea hasn\u2019t been cowed into compliance by Washington\u2019s warnings and military muscle flexing. \u00a0In 2003, after multilateral diplomatic efforts to denuclearize North Korea ran aground, Pyongyang ditched the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and two years later declared that it possessed nuclear weapons.\u00a0 In October 2006, it detonated its first nuclear device, a one-kiloton bomb. \u00a0Four other tests in May 2009, February 2013, January 2016, and September 2016, ranging in explosive yield from four to 10 kilotons, followed.\u00a0 Three of them occurred after the current North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, came to power in April 2012.<\/p>\n

A similar pattern holds for ballistic missiles, which North Korea has been testing<\/a> since 1993.\u00a0 The numbers<\/a> have risen steadily under Kim Jong-un, from four tests in 2012 to 25 in 2016.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the North\u2019s leaders reject the proposition that American approval is required for them to build nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles.\u00a0 Like his father, Kim Jong-il, and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, the founder of the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea (or DPRK, North Korea\u2019s official name), Kim Jong-un is an ardent nationalist who regularly responds to threats by upping the ante.\u00a0 Trump\u2019s national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, characterized Kim as \u201cunpredictable<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 In reality, the Korean leader, like his father and grandfather before him, has been remarkably consistent: he has steadfastly refused to stop testing either nuclear weapons or their possible delivery systems, let alone \u201cdenuclearize\u201d the Korean peninsula, as McMaster demanded.<\/p>\n

Indeed, from Pyongyang\u2019s perspective Trump may be the unpredictable one.\u00a0 On one day, amid press reports that the Pentagon was considering a preventive strike using means ranging from Tomahawk cruise missiles to cyber attacks, the president declared<\/a> ominously that North Korea \u201cis a problem, a problem that will be taken care of.\u201d\u00a0 He followed up by warning<\/a> Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he was then hosting at his Mar-a-Lago estate, that if China wouldn\u2019t rein in Kim, the United States would act alone.\u00a0 Not so long after, Trump suddenly praised<\/a> Kim, calling him a \u201cpretty smart cookie,\u201d presumably impressed that the North Korean leader wasn\u2019t even 30 years old when he succeeded his father. \u00a0On yet another day, the president announced<\/a> that he would be \u201chonored\u201d to meet Kim under the right circumstances and would do so \u201cabsolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n

The roller-coaster ride otherwise known as the presidency of Donald Trump has many people perplexed. Trump\u2019s boosters believe that the president\u2019s unpredictability gives him leverage against adversaries.\u00a0 But in the event of a military crisis on the Korean peninsula, Trump\u2019s pendulum-like behavior could lead North Korea\u2019s leaders to conclude that they had best prepare for the worst — and so strike first. \u00a0That prospect makes the Kim-Trump combination not just dangerous but quite possibly deadly.<\/p>\n

Old Claims, New Possibilities<\/strong><\/p>\n

Standing in the way of a fresh policy toward North Korea are a set of assumptions beloved within the Washington Beltway and by the foreign policy establishment beyond it — and rarely challenged in the mainstream media.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most common of them is that diplomacy and conciliation toward North Korea won\u2019t work because its leaders only respond to pressure. \u00a0So pervasive and deeply rooted is this view that it makes fresh thinking about Pyongyang next to impossible.<\/p>\n

Given the failure of both sanctions and saber rattling, however, a new approach would have to involve diplomacy (in case you\u2019ve forgotten that word) and serious negotiations with the North. Here\u2019s one possible way to go that might, in fact, make a difference.<\/p>\n

North Korea would agree, in principle, to dismantle its nuclear weapons installations, rejoin the NPT, and allow comprehensive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify its compliance.\u00a0 Concurrently, the United States would pledge not to attack North Korea or topple its regime and to move toward normalization of political relations.<\/p>\n

Major steps taken by North Korea on the path to denuclearization would be matched by cuts in American military forces in South Korea.\u00a0 Once Pyongyang delivered completely, the United States would remove all its forces and fully lift economic sanctions on the North.<\/p>\n

The United States, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia would undertake to fund and, for some of its future energy needs, build new Light-Water Reactors (LWRs), which reduce the risk of bomb-grade plutonium production.\u00a0 These would be subject to regular inspections and electronic surveillance by the IAEA and all spent fuel would be transported out of North Korea.\u00a0 The dismantling of the North\u2019s nuclear facilities, verified by intermittent inspections and continuous electronic monitoring, would — as in the nuclear deal with Iran — prevent the production of weapons-grade plutonium (PU-239) or uranium (UR-235)<\/p>\n

Once these steps were completed, both Koreas would begin to pull back their troops massed along the Demilitarized Zone and so create an even wider region free of weapons and troops between the two countries.\u00a0 They would agree not to reintroduce troops and armaments into the vacated areas and to allow monitoring by international observers. \u00a0Over perhaps a 10-year span the two states would commit to additional military pullbacks plus reductions in the number of weapons each possessed, focusing on retiring those most suited to offensive warfare.<\/p>\n

If Trump is indeed prepared to meet with Kim, it should be to do a deal along these lines, not to deliver in person the sort of ultimatums that the North has rejected for years.<\/p>\n

The Diplomacy-Won\u2019t-Work Trope<\/strong><\/p>\n

Typically, proposals like these are dismissed on the grounds that they combine the worst of all worlds: the appeasement of a despotic regime and reckless na\u00efvet\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the appeasement charge, the gist of which seems to be that Pyongyang\u2019s cruelties bar diplomatic engagement with it. \u00a0This claim amounts to sanctimonious puffery and historical amnesia. \u00a0The United States has, in various forms, supported a vast array of despotic regimes, including Greece during the brutal \u201cregime of the colonels\u201d (1967-74); Indonesia under Suharto (who presided over the slaughter of half a million people in 1965-1966); and Iraq under Saddam Hussein during the 1980s, when his government was gassing Kurds and razing their villages.\u00a0 And of course in South Korea there was the U.S.-backed government of President Syngman Rhee (1948-1960), whose security forces killed<\/a> more than 100,000 people, 30,000 to 60,000 in the infamous 1948 Cheju massacre<\/a> alone, as part of an effort to decimate any left-wing opposition in the country.<\/p>\n

North Korea\u2019s state, while undeniably repressive, has persisted for more than 60 years and must be part of any plan to reduce the risk of war on the peninsula. \u00a0Attempting \u201cregime change,\u201d \u00e0 la<\/em> Iraq in 2003 or Libya in 2011, would certainly prove disastrous.\u00a0 In comparison, the upheaval and death that followed the ousters of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi would seem minor and the bloody reverberations of such an event would extend far beyond the peninsula.<\/p>\n

Counting on China, Pyongyang\u2019s principal benefactor, or Russia to squeeze North Korea so that it undertakes far-reaching reforms amounts to wishful thinking. \u00a0Neither country wants to trigger instability there for fear that the country might collapse, creating mayhem on its borders and releasing a floodtide of refugees that they would have to deal with. \u00a0In addition, China views the North as a buffer with South Korea, an American ally and a forward base for U.S. military power.\u00a0 From Beijing\u2019s vantage point, if changes in North Korea careened out of control, the eventual result could be a unified Korean state allied with Washington. \u00a0For the Chinese, the status quo on the peninsula, while anything but ideal, beats such a roll of the dice.\u00a0 Beijing has been willing to impose sanctions<\/a> on Pyongyang and sees it as mercurial and reckless, but it is not about to strangle it economically.<\/p>\n

As for the charge of na\u00efvet\u00e9 when it comes to a proposal to begin the partial demilitarization of the peninsula, that\u2019s part and parcel of prevailing Washington orthodoxy, a deep conviction that North Korea will never surrender its nuclear weapons as part of a grand bargain. \u00a0In fact, progress toward just such a denuclearization was made during Bill Clinton\u2019s presidency, when the sticks were briefly put aside and the carrots brought out. \u00a0In October 1994, negotiations led to what was called the Agreed Framework<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Its details are complicated, so brace yourself for a barebones summary: North Korea agreed to shut down its reactor at Yongbyon, place the plant\u2019s spent fuel in sealed containers for shipment out of the country, stop construction on two larger reactors (at Yongbyon and Taechon), remain a party to the NPT, and permit the IAEA to inspect its nuclear sites to verify the agreement\u2019s implementation. \u00a0In exchange, the United States, Japan, and South Korea undertook, through a consortium, to build two light-water reactors (LWRs) suitable for generating electricity but not for producing weapons-grade plutonium and to provide Pyongyang with 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil pending the completion of the reactors.<\/p>\n

Eventually the Agreed Framework fell apart, a development for which all the parties share blame<\/a>.\u00a0 North Korea\u2019s ongoing missile tests, while not banned by the deal, bolstered the accord\u2019s critics in Washington.\u00a0 It also faced resistance in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, which in 1994 were, for the first time in four decades, in Republican hands, while the Clinton administration proved inept in defending the agreement. \u00a0Having stopped producing plutonium at Yongbyon, North Korea complained about the delay in building the LWRs.\u00a0 (Work on the first reactor didn\u2019t start until August 2002.) \u00a0The South Korean government, stuck with partially funding those plants, was unenthusiastic, too.<\/p>\n

The Bush administration arrived in office in 2001 ready to shred the Agreed Framework.\u00a0 Soon enough, however, it sought to resurrect a version of that deal during the \u201cSix-Party Talks,\u201d which began in 2003 and included both Koreas, the United States, Russia, China, and Japan.<\/p>\n

Here again the details are labyrinthine, but the basic formula that emerged did indeed resemble the Agreed Framework: North Korea was to receive both those LWRs and economic aid in exchange for freezing and then dismantling its nuclear program. \u00a0The North Koreans even allowed American and other technical experts to observe it shutting down the Yongbyon reactor. \u00a0It also provided reams<\/a> — 18,000 pages to be exact — of documentation on its nuclear program. \u00a0Most importantly, having frozen<\/a> plutonium production in 1994, it continued to do so until 2003.<\/p>\n

For its part, the Bush administration removed<\/a> North Korea from the State Department\u2019s list of countries accused of sponsoring terrorism and exempted<\/a> it from the Trading with the Enemy Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There were also threats, theatrics, and setbacks aplenty.\u00a0 In the end, the Six-Party Talks failed for reasons similar to those that killed the Agreed Framework: quarrels over the nature and scope of verification procedures, North Korea\u2019s missile tests and confirmation of reports that it had embarked on efforts to build uranium-based nuclear weapons, and U.N. sanctions. \u00a0President George W. Bush, of course, included that country, along with Iran and Iraq, in what he infamously termed the \u201caxis of evil,\u201d which he called a \u201cgrave and growing danger\u201d in his January 2002 State of the Union address<\/a>.\u00a0 His administration also listed<\/a> North Korea in the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review as one of the states that might become the target of a preventive strike.<\/p>\n

The lessons to be drawn from this grim record are not that North Korea will not negotiate, let alone that it won\u2019t ever agree to freeze, or even terminate, its nuclear program. \u00a0Instead, the history of these failed deals should be looked to for ideas on better ways to reach a consensus-based solution.<\/p>\n

This much remains clear: the more Pyongyang suspects that Washington\u2019s real goal is regime change, the less likely it will be to relinquish its nuclear weapons for fear of suffering the fate of Muammar Gaddafi, who shut down his nuclear program only to be toppled in what began as a U.S. and NATO humanitarian intervention to protect civilians but morphed quickly into a campaign to take him out.<\/p>\n

North Korea and the Legacy of War<\/strong><\/p>\n

The notion that North Korea couldn\u2019t possibly fear an American attack and that its claims to the contrary amount to paranoia reflects a stunning ignorance of history.\u00a0 Between 1950 and 1953, North Korea experienced firsthand the devastation the American military machine was capable of inflicting.\u00a0 As Charles Armstrong, a historian of Korea, has written<\/a>, in those years \u201cAmerican planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea — that is, essentially North Korea — including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to 503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theater of World War II.\u201d Armstrong estimates that 12%-15% of the North Korean population might have died, \u201ca figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.\u201d<\/p>\n

As happened during the Anglo-American terror bombing<\/a> of Germany and Japan, the distinction between civilians and soldiers, so central to International Humanitarian Law<\/a> and Just War Theory<\/a>, was defenestrated.\u00a0 Many Americans know about the bombing of Dresden, Berlin, Hamburg, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki and the deliberate targeting of civilians in an attempt to break their morale. \u00a0But few know what happened to North Korea in the early 1950s. \u00a0In his haunting book, On the Natural History of Destruction<\/em><\/a>, W.G. Sebald writes that Germans did not discuss the wartime bombings because Nazi crimes made them hesitant to cast moral judgments on other states, no matter what they had done to Germany.\u00a0 There has been no such repression of memory or reticence by the state or the citizenry of North Korea.<\/p>\n

As a result, the usual dismissals of Pyongyang\u2019s apprehension about what the United States might do to a denuclearized country are both callous and foolish.\u00a0 Successful negotiations would mean taking its security concerns seriously, not rejecting them as paranoid demands, especially given that American military power remains so close, that Washington has threatened to attack the North more than once, and that the American president only recently boasted<\/a> to the president of the Philippines (in a conversation leaked<\/a> online) of the two U.S. nuclear submarines that were evidently somewhere off the North Korean coast at that moment.<\/p>\n

Cutting the Umbilical Cord <\/strong><\/p>\n

A grand bargain that combines aid and political normalization in return for denuclearization and the pullback and reduction of troops on the Korean peninsula could be made even more attractive to Pyongyang if it included a phased withdrawal of the 28,500 American troops in South Korea.\u00a0 The standard claim — that this would leave South Korea defenseless — is ludicrous.<\/p>\n

South Korea has twice the population of the North: 50.6 million to 25.2 million, and they are better educated, far better fed, and much healthier. Just look at the data on life expectancy<\/a>, infant mortality<\/a>, and the amount and quality of calories<\/a> consumed.\u00a0 The South, then, has far more and better human capital.<\/p>\n

The gap in economic power is gargantuan. \u00a0South Korea, an industrial and technological powerhouse, has a $1.5 trillion<\/a> gross domestic product (GDP), the world\u2019s 12th largest.\u00a0 Valued at $30 billion, North Korea\u2019s ranks 115th<\/a> internationally, barely ahead of Senegal\u2019s. \u00a0In other words, South Korea\u2019s economy is about 50 times larger than the North\u2019s, and its per capita GDP<\/a> ($37,900) exceeds North Korea\u2019s ($1,800 — and so comparable to South Sudan\u2019s) by a factor of 21.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter whether you\u2019re talking about investments in education and technology or living standards, South Korea inhabits a different universe than the North.<\/p>\n

Confronted with such economic comparisons your garden variety Washington military wonk might quip, \u201cFine, but GDP doesn\u2019t fight.\u201d \u00a0Fair enough, strictly speaking. \u00a0So let\u2019s ignore the multiple ways in which wealth shapes military power and consider the military data alone. \u00a0The results may surprise you.<\/p>\n

According to the most recent State Department estimate, South Korea spends more than seven times<\/a> what North Korea does on its armed forces. And given the South\u2019s technological prowess and purchases of American arms, it has a far more modern military than the North, which still uses Soviet and Chinese armor and aircraft developed during the 1950s and 1960s. \u00a0Then there\u2019s the relative burden<\/a> of military spending. South Korea allocates 2.6% of its GDP to its armed forces, North Korea, 23.3%. In other words, South Korea can easily increase military spending without undue hardship. \u00a0Not so North Korea.<\/p>\n

Remember this the next time you hear that the North has many more troops, tanks, artillery, and submarines. Remember as well that the numerical balance<\/a> is about even or substantially favors the South in other armaments, such as combat aircraft, frigates, and destroyers.<\/p>\n

In other words, in a future settlement that includes a stage-by-stage U.S. military withdrawal, South Korea will hardly be left defenseless.<\/p>\n

Averting Apocalypse?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the end of the Korean War, crises on the peninsula have come and gone. \u00a0Some have been dangerous indeed. \u00a0In the run-up to the 1994 Agreed Framework, for example, Defense Secretary William Perry proposed military options<\/a> that included increasing the number of American troops in South Korea and readying long-range bombers and aircraft carrier battle groups to strike the Yongbyon reactor.<\/p>\n

Still, the current crisis has no equal. \u00a0Sitting in the White House is a president whose narcissism knows no bounds, whose ignorance of the world is staggering, who talks blithely about war and nuclear weapons, and who is besieged by political scandals. \u00a0Meanwhile, North Korea\u2019s ruler, like his predecessors, refuses to be cowed by American shows of force and continues to test ballistic missiles — three in May alone.<\/p>\n

A deal resembling the one sketched above may never be reached and, given past history, it won\u2019t be arrived at easily. Yet threats and displays of military power by the United States haven\u2019t worked.\u00a0 Ever.\u00a0 If President Trump acts on the assumption that he and \u201chis\u201d generals can make them work and that North Korea will become reasonable only when faced with the certainty of war, there could be a conflagration on the Korean peninsula the likes of which would be almost unimaginable.<\/p>\n

___________________________________<\/p>\n

Rajan Menon is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University\u2019s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. He is the author, most recently, of <\/em>The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright 2017 Rajan Menon<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 tomdispatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Diplomacy Is Not Na\u00efve Appeasement in the Korean Crisis – The Korean peninsula, all 85,270 square miles of it, is about the size of Idaho. It contains more soldiers (2.8 million, not counting reserves) and armaments (nearly 6,000 tanks, 31,000 artillery pieces, and 1,134 combat aircraft) than any other place on the planet. Clearly, the North\u2019s leaders reject the proposition that American approval is required for them to build nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}