This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. VI, No. 51, Jan. 28-Feb. 3, 2007
The Korean Peninsula: U.S. Military Aggression
and Pyongyang’s Response
The presence of a socialist
country in East Asia has been a threat to U.S. economic hegemony in the region
although it has also served as a magnet that would justify U.S. military
supremacy in the guise of “preserving democracy and free market.”
A peninsula in East Asia,
the Korean Peninsula (called by the Koreans as Choson bando or Han bando)
extends southward for about 1,100 kilometers from northeast China and southeast
Russia into the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by the Sea of Japan on the east,
the East China Sea to the south, and the Yellow Sea to the west, the Korean
Strait connecting the first two bodies of water. The peninsula is highly
strategic in that from the Pacific it is the door to mainland Asia particularly
the world’s two large countries, China and Russia. It is also a staging point in
reaching Japan and beyond, the region of Southeast Asia and Oceania. North Korea, the only
remaining socialist country in East Asia today, has been the target of acts of
war, provocative actions and isolationist measures by U.S. imperialism after
World War II, first with the Korean War in which its major cities were
carpet-bombed with a threat to use atomic weapons. Since then, North Korea had
been in the Pentagon’s war map marked by provocative actions with the deployment
of nuclear-armed warships in waters surrounding the peninsula and the deployment
of tens of thousands of forces based in Okinawa, South Korea and elsewhere. The
U.S. has also imposed economic embargoes and other sanctions against North Korea
often with the backing of the United Nations, Japan and other capitalist allies.
The presence of a socialist
country in East Asia has been a threat to U.S. economic hegemony in the region
although it has also served as a magnet that would justify U.S. military
supremacy in the guise of “preserving democracy and free market” but in reality
to protect its long-term trade and commercial interests in the region. At the
height of the Cold War, U.S. military supremacy had been justified as a
deterrent to the two big socialist camps – China and the USSR - in East Asia. U.S. officials have
repeatedly emphasized that strong military presence in the Korean Peninsula is a
key component in U.S. imperialism's strategy of "forward military deployment" to
project its influence throughout Asia.[1]
Today, the U.S. maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea and another 50,000 troops
are stationed in Japan. Altogether, over 100,000 U.S. troops are permanently
based in Asia Pacific while U.S. naval forces prowl the seas. However, if there were no
“North Korean menace”, U.S. imperialism would be hard put in justifying its
strong military presence in the region. This is another reason why the U.S. has
opposed the reunification of the two Koreas negotiations for which actually
began under South Korea’s “sunshine policy” during the mid-1990s until U.S.
President George W. Bush, Jr., torpedoed such efforts with his “axis of evil”
vilification against Pyongyang. “Reunification,” said the Center for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based foreign policy think tank,
“threatens vital U.S. interests in Korea…The emergence of a reunified Korea
might prompt the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the ROK (Republic of Korea or
South Korea) and mean the end of the special security role and influence of the
United States in East Asia, a reunified Korea may mean the loss of the ROK as
the sixth largest importer of U.S. arms.[2]
Erstwhile Secretary of
State and foreign policy realist Henry Kissinger echoed similar sentiments in a
2001 Washington Post article: “Were tensions to ease dramatically, the presence
of American troops could become highly controversial within South Korea. In
turn, if these forces were removed, the future of American bases in Japan would
become problematic. And if American troops left the rim of Asia, an entirely new
security and, above all, political situation would arise all over the continent.
Were this to happen, even a positive evolution on the Korean peninsula could
lead to a quest for autonomous defense policies in Seoul and Tokyo and to a
growth of nationalism in Japan, China and Korea.”[3]
U.S. Secretary of Defense
William Cohen said in Seoul in April 1997 that the U.S. intends to keep its
forces stationed in Korea even if the two Koreas reunite.[4]
U.S. acts of provocation
heightened in 2001 when Bush included North Korea in his “axis of evil” along
with Iraq, Iran, Cuba and Syria. Accusing North Korea of developing “weapons of
mass destruction” particularly nuclear arms, the U.S. included North Korea as a
nuclear target in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review and increased its number of
forces and nuclear warships in the peninsula. In his January 2002 State of the
Union address, Bush again threatened to launch a pre-emptive attack against the
DPRK. Japan, meantime, also undertook its own war preparations including ship
deployments in the Sea of Japan even as it threatened economic sanctions against
North Korea.[5]
All these would precipitate
Pyongyang’s resumption of its nuclear program as a defensive posture and as a
deterrent against potential U.S. pre-emptive nuclear attacks, citing Article 10
of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that “each party shall in exercising its
national sovereign have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides
that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have
jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.”[6]
Although at first claiming
it as civilian-oriented, Pyongyang resumed its nuclear program after the U.S.
decided to stop shipments of heavy fuel oil to North Korea for its light water
reactors needed for energy and food production under the 1994 Agreed Framework[7],
which was a precondition to Pyongyang’s freezing of its nuclear production.
Critics said the U.S. deliberately stopped implementing its own obligations to
the agreement to blackmail Pyongyang and surrender to American terms and
preconditions. In October 2002 and upon instructions by Bush, U.S. Assistant
State Secretary James Kelly told North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Wan
in Pyongyang “that the U.S. now had a precondition to further engagement
(negotiations on the nuclear issue) – that the DPRK’s uranium enrichment program
be dismantled immediately.”[8] With the U.S. already
violating every provision of the Agreed Framework there were no reasons for
Pyongyang to honor the agreement any further. A few days before Christmas of
2002 it removed the monitoring devices from the Yongbyon nuclear facilities and
started repairs. Before the October 2006 Korean Peninsula crisis, North Korea
and the United States had engaged in multilateral talks hosted by Beijing, along
with South Korea, Japan and Russia. The talks came into a deadlock in 2005 with
North Korea’s insistence that it be allowed to pursue a civilian nuclear energy
program along with a commitment by the U.S. to agree to a non-aggression treaty
and another commitment to remove its nuclear threat to North Korea. It has
insisted that bilateral talks between Pyongyang and Washington be pursued
instead of the multilateral talks.[9]
North Korea was forced to
finally walk out of the six-party talks in November 2005 and in particular due
to the sanctions already being implemented against it by Washington forcing U.S.
banks to end relations with a number of Asian and European banks that have DPRK
accounts. Under the guise of opposing illicit activities, the sanctions were
aimed at restricting North Korea’s limited access to foreign exchange and
economically strangling the DPRK.[10]
It should be noted that
South Korea had agreed earlier to reunification talks with its northern neighbor
and saw no problem with Pyongyang pursuing a civilian nuclear program. Both
positions run opposite that of the U.S.[11]
North Korea has no other
choice but to develop its nuclear weapons as a deterrent to a nuclear attack by
the U.S., a possibility that has loomed due to the provocative acts of the U.S.
and Japan. On April 6, 2003, it announced that only by arming itself with a
“tremendous military deterrent” could it guarantee its security.[12]
Pyongyang cannot count on the full or unequivocal support of China either owing
to the latter’s soft policy vis-à-vis the U.S. and the latter’s offensive
military presence in East Asia. Still, although now ideologically split with
Pyongyang, China – and, for that matter, Russia - need socialist North Korea as
a buffer against U.S. imperialist hegemony in East Asia especially because of
the Pentagon’s hostile military encirclement of the former socialist giants. As a matter of policy, the
DPRK has consistently proposed it would dismantle its nuclear program only if
the U.S. would sign a non-aggression and peace treaty that would replace the
1953 armistice treaty forged in Panmunjon. South Korea has supported this
proposal as it had also signed way back in 1991 the “Mutual Non-Aggression
Treaty” with Pyonyang.[13]
Were Washington to agree to this North Korean proposal, it would have meant
pulling out all its forces and nuclear warships in the Korean Peninsula and the
eventual reunification of the two Koreas. But as the then defense secretary of
Bill Clinton, William Cohen, warned, far from expecting an U.S. pull-out,
American military presence in South Korea will be a permanent fixture even in a
scenario of reunification. Bulatlat
[1]
“Who Creates Tension on the Korean
Peninsula?,” Commentary, Anti-Imperialist News Service, March 5, 2002,
Chicago, Illinois.
[2]
Edwin Licaros, “If War Breaks out in Korea,
Don’t Blame the North,” Monograph, Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies (CAIS),
Philippines; posted by Bulatlat.com, Jan. 19-25, 2003; citing Leon V. Sigal,
“Jimmy Carter Makes a Deal,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, January/February
1998. In 1999, hard-line sentiment in the U.S. Congress and among key
policy-makers continued to define the U.S. government’s more hawkish stance.
Many in the CIA and Pentagon were deeply skeptical of engagement and
preferred to see the imminent collapse of the North Korean government,
regardless of its consequences. When the U.S. signed the Agreed Framework,
they thought the North Korean government would collapse before the promised
light-water nuclear reactors would be operational in 2003. John Feffer,
“U.S.-North Korea Relations,” Foreign Policy in Focus, published by the
Interhemispheric Resource Center and Institute for Policy Studies, May 1999.
[3]
Licaros, ibid, citing “Preemptive Posturing,”
Hans M. Kristensen, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October
2002.
[4]
Chalmers Johnson, Blowback.
[5]Anti-Imperialist
News Service, March 2002. Japan, which is in the process of reviewing its
constitution in its bid to increase its militarization, spends $42 billion
for defense every year or higher than China’s. South China Morning Post,
Nov. 1, 2006.
[6]
Pyongyang’s missile capability cannot even
reach the U.S. territory and can therefore be seen as of no immediate
threat. Conversely, the U.S. has a nuclear arsenal of 5,400 multiple-megaton
warheads atop intercontinental ballistic missiles based on land and at sea;
an additional 1,750 nuclear bombs and cruise missiles ready to be launched
from B-2 and B-52 bombers; and a further 1,670 nuclear weapons classified as
“tactical.” Not fully deployed but available are an additional 10,000 or so
nuclear warheads stored in bunkers around the U.S. Newsweek, June
25,2001, cited by Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism,
Secrecy and the End of the Republic, NY: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and
Company, 2004.
[7]The
agreement called for the U.S. to arrange for the construction by 2003 of two
1,000-megawatt light-water reactors in North Korea and provide fuel oil to
replace energy lost by the closing of that country’s reactors, and it was to
guarantee that it would not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons on the
Korea Peninsula. For its part, North Korea agreed to stop using and then
dismantle its Russian reactors, ship its nuclear fuel rods out of the
country, remain a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and allow
IAEA inspections of its nuclear sites. Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs
and Consequences of American Empire, 2000, NY: Owl Book, Henry Holt and
Company.
[8]Licaros,
op cit.
[9]
North Korea and the United States:
Declassified Documents from the Bush I and Clinton Administrations; National
Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 164; Edited by Robert A.
Wampler - 202/994-7000 Posted - August 23, 2005.
[10]
Green Left Weekly, October 11, 2006.
[11]
In June 2000, South Korean President Kim
Dae-jung, acting on his own initiative and without consulting the U.S.,
undertook a historic journey of reconciliation to Pyongyang, trying to
eradicate the last vestiges of the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula. His
visit produced a breakthrough, and for his efforts he received the Nobel
Peace Prize. Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, p. 89.
[12]Chalmers
Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, p. 91. The South Koreans estimate that the North
possesses 175-200 Rodong missiles with a range of 1,300 kilometers, capable
of striking anywhere in Japan, and 650 to 800 intermediate-range Scud
missiles targeted on South Korea and stored in underground facilities. Asahi
Shimbun, Tokyo, April 25, 2003.
[13]
Jaewoo Choo, “U.S.-Korea Talks: Prelude to
Peace Treaty?” Asia Times, April 29, 2003. *This is part of a paper
discussed by the author at the conference of the International League of
Peoples’ Struggles in East Asia and Oceania on Dec. 11, 2006. It will also be
part of a forthcoming book on East Asia today. *This is part of a paper
discussed by the author at the conference of the International League of
Peoples’ Struggles in East Asia and Oceania on Dec. 11, 2006. It will also be
part of a forthcoming book on East Asia today.
U.S.
and China: Harmony Today, Confrontation Tomorrow?
China vs
Japan: FTAs, Oil and Taiwan © 2007 Bulatlat
■
Alipato Publications Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.
Third of four parts
By Bobby Tuazon
Bulatlat
Hegemony or Cooperation: Major Contradictions in East Asia Today*
First of four parts
Second of four parts
Last of four parts