Posted on 09/03/2017 11:17:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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.
It is beyond tedious to encounter all of the incessant hand-wringing and blather about North Korea. The United States should simply extricate ourselves from that region and let the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Japanese fight it out amongst themselves.
“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.”
and that is the weakness Lil Fat Kim and Xi are looking for ... and that would be the go for broke signal to both both armies - NK to SK, China to Taiwan.
This guy is an expert? Then you’d think he’d know that there haven’t been US troops on the DMZ for may years now. The closest are probably in Uijongbu and are about to be moved quite a few miles south of Seoul.
Sure we would- we would be defeated by having withdrawn from the field, any threats we made would be deemed unbelievable and we would still have to deal with a North Korean nuke threat.
We would be far worse off.
Our best bet is annihilation of North Korea. Trump gives the order, somewhere a Trident sub opens its missile tubes and 30-45 minutes later there's no longer a North Korea.
If Seoul or even Japan get hit with residual strikes, well, they've had decades to prepare and not done as much as they should have to hold up their end of the alliance. Their weakness has put us in a situation where we have to choose between our security and theirs. So it sucks to be them.
The delusions looks pretty correct. There is no “Military option” unless we want to get into a full scale war with China. That was a losing proposition 60 odd years ago, and still is today. No amount of bullshit or so called sanctions is going to make NK give up their nukes. Behind the scenes, no doubt China is encouraging and supporting them and that is unlikely to change...ever. Maybe we should just Nuklearize Japan and let them offset some of the areas BS and problems.
Must have been written by an intellectual. That’s really the only sort of person who would invite failure and defeat in the name of being “smart.”
I was just listening to FoxNews on XM and just caught the end of some "analyst" wringing her hands about how there cannot be a military option because of all of the death and destruction it would cause on the Korean Peninsula. It may have been Marie Harff, which would be typical, but I'm not sure who it was.
Well sweetie, there will be a heck of a lot of death and destruction in one or more American cities if we don't stop this. These idiots with their heads in the sand truly believe we can just close our eyes and wish evil away. We absolutely positively would have lost WWII if these "can'tdonuffin"s had been in charge.
We have a military for a reason, and I can't imagine a more immediate threat deserving of being prevented via the full fury of that military than this one. I challenge any Libertarian isolationist to explain not what shouldn't be done, but instead precisely how they propose that we stop this threat.
Japan Taiwan and S Korea need Nukes for self defense.
“Maybe we should just Nuklearize Japan and let them offset some of the areas BS and problems.”
Nobody in Asia should be so stupid as to piss off Japan.
The writer is delusional.
1. He said: “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.”
As of today, that may have become a fait acommpli.
2. He misses entirely what is not in the self-interest of either China or Russia - robust anti-missile systems in South Korea and the growing possibility of Japan and/or South Korea developing their own nuclear arsenals.
A. Neither China nor Russia want to see that.
B. But both those things continue to increase in likelihood as North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are not shut down.
More and more China are seeing that if they do not want nuclear armed Japan and South Korea and both harboring advanced anti-missile systems, then the continuation of the regime in the north is not in THEIR interests as its actions will surely produced outcomes in Japan and South Korea they do not want.
Given the situation ... no.
Exactly what to do. Anti-missile systems and Nukes. Then watch the Russians and Chinese start moving. Just make Japan and S Korea pay for it (full price). They need skin in the game.
“Then watch the Russians and Chinese start moving. Just make Japan and S Korea pay for it (full price).”
I have no doubt they would. I don’t understand the mistaken idea touted on FR often that they don’t now “pay their share” nor that the wouldn’t on more advanced security measures.
The solution lies in convincing China that it’s in their best interest to take Fat Boi out and put in a more reasonable leader. They control NK, have no doubt about that. They don’t want to see the US have any greater influence at their back door nor do they presently see the urgency of taking him out because the more he keeps the US distracted from MAGA and other things, the better for China. Remember the Chinese philosophy does not include the concept of “win-win”. Only win. Only for China.
Absolutely! Why do we have troops there who are merely set up as the first casualties in any conflict? This is not the WWII era. There won’t be any ground battles. There will be nukes.
His mom used to hang out here in the days of bombing Serbia.
I am surprised to read what he has written here.
Anyone reading this, please add him to your prayers.
Definitely. I pray for our troops and particularly ones who are directly in harm’s way. I wish politicians would stop using them as pawns in their nation-building fantasies.
” Everyone knows there are no military «options» the U.S. could use against North Korea that don’t result in disaster. “
Complete bullshit. This is the language of the soon dead.
There are several military option that do not result in disaster to US persons.
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