North Korea vs USA: Any peace prospects?

Solly Rakgomo | Thursday March 29, 2018 14:59

 

I have to be brutally honest that I am  no fan of police states or of dictators, whether in Russia, China, North Korea  etc. but let’s at least be honest about what’s behind the news that President Trump has agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the man he has been calling “fat” and “Rocket Man.” It is shocking that the corporate media everywhere has been lavishing at times grudging praise on Trump, claiming that it was his “harsh sanctions” and threatening military moves around the Korean Peninsula, or threats to destroy that country that forced Kim to agree to talks.

From my own perspective, the reality is quite the opposite, though. While many pro-western praise poets may  loath to admit it, the truth is that it has been Kim’s dogged persistence, in the face of US sanctions, boycotts and threats, in testing and developing both a credible nuclear arsenal of atomic and thermonuclear weapons, and in demonstrating that he has missiles that can reach US targets. With as many as 60 such deliverable weapons, according to some estimates by Dave Lindroff, North Korea has reached a point where the only way the US could hope to undo its accomplishment would be an all-out war against the North and its two-million-man army, its dug-in artillery, and even then the chances of doing this without North Korea launching at least some of its nukes would be slim.

 Deep down I think credit should also go to South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, who has defied the US by reaching out to Kim, first by inviting North Korea to participate in the Winter Olympics in South Korea, including the fielding of a joint North and South Korean women’s hockey team, and then offering to meet directly in the North with Kim, after which Moon delivered Kim’s invitation to meet with President Trump.

 Lindroff rightly reminds us that initially the US had opposed the Olympics invitation, and has been pressuring President Moon not to meet with Kim, trying to queer the deal by upping the sanctions against the North, but failed. All along, amid calls in South Korea and by both China and Russia, for the US to negotiate with Kim, the Trump administration, like those before it, has been demanding that North Korea first get rid of its nuclear weapons before any negotiations, a demand which I deeply believe that it knew meant no negotiations. Now, suddenly, faced with a real offer of head-of-state face-to-face negotiations, and a reported offer by Kim to get rid of the country’s nuclear weapons if the US gives a guarantee not to attempt to overthrow the North Korean government, the US has been forced to accept. That’s the real story here.

 Lindroff posits that ever since the Korean War fighting ended in an armed truce in place in 1953, the US has refused negotiations for a real peace treaty, leaving that brutal war technically still on for an astonishing 65 years. During that time, the US has maintained what amounts to an occupation of South Korea, initially propping up a series of brutal dictators, and then simply exercising military authority over South Korea’s own military forces, courtesy of a 1950 UN Security Council Resolution making the US the supreme commander of UN forces dispatched to combat the North’s military. It’s been a great deal for the US, which has been able to maintain a strong military presence of some 30-50,000 troops, naval bases and air bases, and now a THAAD anti-missile array in South Korea, under its own command, on the Korean Peninsula quite near both China and Russia, and to help justify continued massive military budgets even as China was joining the world economic community and Russia was abandoning the Cold War.

But with North Korea now demonstrably a nuclear power, at least on a par with Pakistan and India, and approaching perhaps even Israel, at least in the number of its nuclear weapons, the US is being forced to abandon war as an option for denuclearizing that country.  Interestingly Patrick Cockburn says that with the US invasions of Libya and Iraq, the reality has been impressed on nations of the world that are on America’s “hit list” that “if you don’t have nuclear weapons, you’re toast.” North Korea’s leaders, including Kim’s father, took that lesson to heart and worked assiduously to develop nuclear weapons while they could.

Now while some in the Trump administration are listening to pressure from Israel’s corrupt leader Benjamin Netanyahu calling for an attack on Iran, which reached an agreement with the prior Obama administration to halt its uranium enrichment program in return for a lifting of US sanctions (which never happened), talk of invading North Korea is fading away. What’s the difference: Iran, a nation of over 80 million people, is at risk of attack by the US, Israel, and perhaps Saudi Arabia, while North Korea, a nation less than a third that size and far more impoverished and underdeveloped, is not. The difference: North Korea has nuclear weapons (for deterrence) and Iran does not.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration, by criticizing and appearing increasingly ready to renounce the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement with Iran, has poisoned the well of negotiation on nuclear weapons going forward with countries like Russia and North Korea. If Trump meets with Kim, Trump will have to make some pretty iron-clad commitments not to later renege and invade before Kim can be expected to agree to dismantle his now formidable nuclear arsenal insurance policy. It’s hard to predict where all this will go, but with Kim’s invitation to Trump for negotiations to end the two countries’ multi-generational state of war, and Trump’s apparent acceptance of the offer, it’s important to be clear about what is happening and why, and not to simply assume that hard-line tactics by the White House and its current occupant are what is driving things. The lesson that is being learned by countries around the world that have been resisting US dictates is clear: If you have nuclear weapons, you get treated differently than if you don’t.