Sierra Mike
01-02-2003, 12:28 PM
From The Slate:
On Oct. 18, 1962, the third day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy, sitting in the Cabinet room with his advisers, wondered aloud why Nikita Khrushchev had launched this adventure. He figured that it must be part of some bargaining scheme and that, to make him get rid of the missiles, we had to come up with some way of letting the Soviet leader save face, of "giving him some out." It would be good to know if anyone inside President Bush's White House is thinking along similar lines in the current crisis—or, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prefers to call it, "serious situation"—with North Korea. True, this is not the Cuban Missile Crisis; Kim Jong-il is not Nikita Khrushchev; North Korea is not the U.S.S.R. Still, few would dispute that Kim's latest outrageous move—which will have him churning out A-bombs by the dozen in six months' time, unless something is done stop him—amounts to a desperate bargaining ploy, a time-tested way of frightening everyone around him (nukes!) and extorting them into giving him what he needs.Read all about it at Dear Leader Cries, "Love Me, Tease Me, Appease Me!" (http://slate.msn.com/id/2076213/)
Well. I'm not a big proponent of war on the Korean Peninsula--as much as I like Asia, I am resistant to the possibility of having to pull on a cold weather flight suit and strapping on some sort of aircraft to conduct attack operations. But so far, I haven't read anything about China, Japan, or Russia screaming at the US to halt and stop everything and roll over like a dog in the vain hopes that our smiling and ever dashing Dear Leader will rub our collective belly. Not only is he unlikely to do it, but there's also a good chance that dog is still a favored North Korean menu item.
Appeasement sounds nice here, but does it solve the problem? No, it merely makes it go away for a while longer. It's pretty obvious to me (but apparently quite lost upon Fred Kaplan) that peace is not what the DPRK prays for. It is not, in my estimation, what the DPRK hopes to gain from a "non-aggression pact" with the US; all Kim Jong-il and his cronies want is a piece of paper which would serve to tangle up America's military feet should hostilities be imminent. (I, for one, am fairly sure countries such as France would cry foul should the US respond to military belligerence on the DMZ.)
By the way, I must take this moment to correct Mr. Kaplan in one important aspect of his wailings: the existence of a condition of war is not being perpetuated as a yet unreconciled dispute between the DPRK and the US; it is a condition of war between the DPRK and the ROK. The US commitment has been to assisting the ROK in surviving in the face of one of the world's last monolithic threats. To be more direct, all of this non-aggression pact stuff is crap; if the DPRK wants to play, it should lobby for a pact with the ROK. They're the ones they're in an imbroglio with, not the US. I mention this fact only in passing, as it is unlikely Mr. Kaplan is likely to recognize this de facto situation, even though the United Nations has declared it a de jure condition.
If the DPRK wants to sign a non-aggression pact, then it has to make some substantial commitments to the agreement. Remove ten armor divisions about 300 statute miles from the DMZ, which will leave them with around 15,000-20,000 troops stationed at the DMZ. Redeploy their artillery brigades further north, where they can't have them continuously zeroed on Seoul. Scrap all missile sales programs. Allow UN monitors to examine not only their nuclear facilities, but also their chemical and biological installations as well. And yes, damn it, rejoin the "Sunshine policy" with a real commitment to getting some work done easing tensions and reuniting families, as opposed to halfheartedly playing with it like some trucelent child.
In response, the US promises not to attack, but reserves the rights to plus-up troops and materiel in the event of a DPRK violation...such as redeploying their forces back to the DMZ, resuming long-range missile testing, or initiating more piecemeal hostilities against ROK forces. And not only that, we resume much-needed food and fuel shipments to try and keep the suffering at bay.
None of this is reaching too far, but at the same time, none of this is ever likely. The DPRK is built on the solid foundation of a personality cult that is both longstanding and brutally enforced. We have no idea how brutal it truly is to be a citizen of that nation; one can only surmise that if a nation like the People's Republic of China still executes political dissidents and then charges the deceased's family for the costs incurred in the execution, then things must only be worse in the DPRK.
Ultimately, the DPRK continues its age-old gambits of blackmail. It is almost an inarguable position to take that for decades, the DPRK has successfully blackmailed the ROK and Japan, and by extension, the US; now, with the divulgence that it is a nascent nuclear power, one can logically extrapolate that Beijing and ultimately Moscow--with whom Pyongyang has long been disenfranchised--will be legitimate targets for North Korean adventurism. Beijing, at the very least, has been in a major hurry to distance itself from the Dear Leader's latest antics. Not because it is in disagreement with the North's desire to bait the US; but because it fears to be implicated in espousing such by the international community.
Even America's uber-dove, Colin Powell, has seen it fit to publically refuse to provide the DPRK with any amelioration on the public affairs front. While downplaying the event as a "serious event' rather than a "crisis," which is what Pyongyang is striving for, Powell also maintains the line that rewarding the DPRK for "bad behavior" is out of the question. And why not? The American left, be it far or center, routinely decries the use of force against Iraq, maintaining the US created Saddam Hussein. By giving in and rewarding Pyongyang with what it desires, does the US in turn not in effect play a hand in supporting a diseased dragon? After all, one cannot be certain that economic aid provided to the DPRK will not be resold for currency, wherein additional military advancements can be made. Most certainly, the PRC is shortsighted enough to provide arms and combat logistics supplies to the DPRK in a bid to keep the North Korean leadership happy. After all, it's to the PRC's advantage, so long as it's kept quet; America's orientation remains fixed on the DPRK, allowing the PRC to continue its own military modernizations and--surprise, surprise--continue its pursuit of becoming a hegemonistic power with the martial might to fulfill its eventual aims.
However, the ROK is clearly beginning to buckle beneath stress fatigue. The scarcely-concealed hostility between the North and South has been a source of social and economic unrest for the Republic of Korea for decades. In this, the DPRK has been either extremely wise or extremely lucky; as democracy and liberalism flourish in the south, where the East Pacific's first real viable economy in the 21st Century has emerged, people have grown weary of living under the threat of war. It does appear the ROK government has lost its focus in a way Europe never did when it was faced by the Soviet threat. The ROK is manifesting a rather curious belief that since war has not broken out over the course of the last 50 years, then it is likely to never occur. That Pyongyang has twisted every overture of peace into a dagger and sunk it into the ROK's heart at every turn is inexplicably lost upon them. They do wish to "appease" the DPRK...even though it could, eventually, mean the loss of everything they've worked so hard to build.
SM
On Oct. 18, 1962, the third day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy, sitting in the Cabinet room with his advisers, wondered aloud why Nikita Khrushchev had launched this adventure. He figured that it must be part of some bargaining scheme and that, to make him get rid of the missiles, we had to come up with some way of letting the Soviet leader save face, of "giving him some out." It would be good to know if anyone inside President Bush's White House is thinking along similar lines in the current crisis—or, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prefers to call it, "serious situation"—with North Korea. True, this is not the Cuban Missile Crisis; Kim Jong-il is not Nikita Khrushchev; North Korea is not the U.S.S.R. Still, few would dispute that Kim's latest outrageous move—which will have him churning out A-bombs by the dozen in six months' time, unless something is done stop him—amounts to a desperate bargaining ploy, a time-tested way of frightening everyone around him (nukes!) and extorting them into giving him what he needs.Read all about it at Dear Leader Cries, "Love Me, Tease Me, Appease Me!" (http://slate.msn.com/id/2076213/)
Well. I'm not a big proponent of war on the Korean Peninsula--as much as I like Asia, I am resistant to the possibility of having to pull on a cold weather flight suit and strapping on some sort of aircraft to conduct attack operations. But so far, I haven't read anything about China, Japan, or Russia screaming at the US to halt and stop everything and roll over like a dog in the vain hopes that our smiling and ever dashing Dear Leader will rub our collective belly. Not only is he unlikely to do it, but there's also a good chance that dog is still a favored North Korean menu item.
Appeasement sounds nice here, but does it solve the problem? No, it merely makes it go away for a while longer. It's pretty obvious to me (but apparently quite lost upon Fred Kaplan) that peace is not what the DPRK prays for. It is not, in my estimation, what the DPRK hopes to gain from a "non-aggression pact" with the US; all Kim Jong-il and his cronies want is a piece of paper which would serve to tangle up America's military feet should hostilities be imminent. (I, for one, am fairly sure countries such as France would cry foul should the US respond to military belligerence on the DMZ.)
By the way, I must take this moment to correct Mr. Kaplan in one important aspect of his wailings: the existence of a condition of war is not being perpetuated as a yet unreconciled dispute between the DPRK and the US; it is a condition of war between the DPRK and the ROK. The US commitment has been to assisting the ROK in surviving in the face of one of the world's last monolithic threats. To be more direct, all of this non-aggression pact stuff is crap; if the DPRK wants to play, it should lobby for a pact with the ROK. They're the ones they're in an imbroglio with, not the US. I mention this fact only in passing, as it is unlikely Mr. Kaplan is likely to recognize this de facto situation, even though the United Nations has declared it a de jure condition.
If the DPRK wants to sign a non-aggression pact, then it has to make some substantial commitments to the agreement. Remove ten armor divisions about 300 statute miles from the DMZ, which will leave them with around 15,000-20,000 troops stationed at the DMZ. Redeploy their artillery brigades further north, where they can't have them continuously zeroed on Seoul. Scrap all missile sales programs. Allow UN monitors to examine not only their nuclear facilities, but also their chemical and biological installations as well. And yes, damn it, rejoin the "Sunshine policy" with a real commitment to getting some work done easing tensions and reuniting families, as opposed to halfheartedly playing with it like some trucelent child.
In response, the US promises not to attack, but reserves the rights to plus-up troops and materiel in the event of a DPRK violation...such as redeploying their forces back to the DMZ, resuming long-range missile testing, or initiating more piecemeal hostilities against ROK forces. And not only that, we resume much-needed food and fuel shipments to try and keep the suffering at bay.
None of this is reaching too far, but at the same time, none of this is ever likely. The DPRK is built on the solid foundation of a personality cult that is both longstanding and brutally enforced. We have no idea how brutal it truly is to be a citizen of that nation; one can only surmise that if a nation like the People's Republic of China still executes political dissidents and then charges the deceased's family for the costs incurred in the execution, then things must only be worse in the DPRK.
Ultimately, the DPRK continues its age-old gambits of blackmail. It is almost an inarguable position to take that for decades, the DPRK has successfully blackmailed the ROK and Japan, and by extension, the US; now, with the divulgence that it is a nascent nuclear power, one can logically extrapolate that Beijing and ultimately Moscow--with whom Pyongyang has long been disenfranchised--will be legitimate targets for North Korean adventurism. Beijing, at the very least, has been in a major hurry to distance itself from the Dear Leader's latest antics. Not because it is in disagreement with the North's desire to bait the US; but because it fears to be implicated in espousing such by the international community.
Even America's uber-dove, Colin Powell, has seen it fit to publically refuse to provide the DPRK with any amelioration on the public affairs front. While downplaying the event as a "serious event' rather than a "crisis," which is what Pyongyang is striving for, Powell also maintains the line that rewarding the DPRK for "bad behavior" is out of the question. And why not? The American left, be it far or center, routinely decries the use of force against Iraq, maintaining the US created Saddam Hussein. By giving in and rewarding Pyongyang with what it desires, does the US in turn not in effect play a hand in supporting a diseased dragon? After all, one cannot be certain that economic aid provided to the DPRK will not be resold for currency, wherein additional military advancements can be made. Most certainly, the PRC is shortsighted enough to provide arms and combat logistics supplies to the DPRK in a bid to keep the North Korean leadership happy. After all, it's to the PRC's advantage, so long as it's kept quet; America's orientation remains fixed on the DPRK, allowing the PRC to continue its own military modernizations and--surprise, surprise--continue its pursuit of becoming a hegemonistic power with the martial might to fulfill its eventual aims.
However, the ROK is clearly beginning to buckle beneath stress fatigue. The scarcely-concealed hostility between the North and South has been a source of social and economic unrest for the Republic of Korea for decades. In this, the DPRK has been either extremely wise or extremely lucky; as democracy and liberalism flourish in the south, where the East Pacific's first real viable economy in the 21st Century has emerged, people have grown weary of living under the threat of war. It does appear the ROK government has lost its focus in a way Europe never did when it was faced by the Soviet threat. The ROK is manifesting a rather curious belief that since war has not broken out over the course of the last 50 years, then it is likely to never occur. That Pyongyang has twisted every overture of peace into a dagger and sunk it into the ROK's heart at every turn is inexplicably lost upon them. They do wish to "appease" the DPRK...even though it could, eventually, mean the loss of everything they've worked so hard to build.
SM