Time To Leave Korea
North Korea’s artillery attack on a South Korean island on Tuesday was the latest in a series of Pyongyang’s aggressive moves over the past year and a half. They started with ballistic missile tests in April of last year, soon followed by a nuclear test in May. Kim Jong Il, who may be mad, upped the ante last March with the sinking of a South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, with the loss of 46 lives. Given his erratic ways and the hellish nature of his regime, America would be well advised to leave the Koreans, north and south, to sort out their differences well alone.
Contrary to the flawed and ignorant New York Times “analysis,” the artillery attack had nothing to do with North Korea feeling “under stress or threatened” by the international sanctions, or “frustrated” with the U.S. negotiating position on its nuclear enrichment program. If this were true, all that is needed is a signal from the White House that America is ready for another round of talks and the tension will subside.
Even less was the barrage connected to alleged “recent moves by the ailing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to position his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as heir apparent.” The claim that the Beloved Leader is trying to ensure “that the Kim family dynasty continues for a third generation by winning the loyalty of the powerful military with shows of force” is laughable. The loyalty of North Korea’s officers does not need to be “won,” as any hint that it is anything but total means the death of the suspect. In any event, at the metaphysical level of North Korea’s brand of dialectics the succession debate is superfluous: it is Kim Il Sung—the Great Leader, the Beloved Leader’s father—who is still in charge of the country, having been appointed “Eternal President” by the Supreme People’s Assembly in 1994, four years before his temporal death.
North Korea is acting aggressively because it is weak. Its economy—a surreal mix of Stalinist central planning and Maoist autarky—cannot feed its twenty-odd million people. (Two million are estimated to have died of starvation over the past decade and a half.) Food and money assistance from the South have stopped coming. Kim wants the flow resumed, and he is being obnoxious in the hope of getting a bribe to be tolerable once again. If offered a peace treaty that’s to his liking, he may even become nice. If he gets nothing, he’ll do something even uglier in a few weeks or months. It is a crude ploy, but he is a crude man.
The only reason Kim’s histrionics matter to the United States is the existence of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and the anachronistic and unnecessary presence of American troops in South Korea. The best way to deal with the problem is for the United States to withdraw all its troops from the Korean peninsula and let those most affected by Pyongyang’s behavior—South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia—deal with Kim as they deem fit.
The U.S. withdrawal from the Korean peninsula should be accompanied by a quiet nod to Seoul to go ahead and develop its own nuclear deterrent. Back in the 1970s the Ford Administration induced South Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program in return for not withdrawing American soldiers. Now is the time to reverse the sequence: Washington should grant a free nuclear hand to Seoul in return for the U.S. withdrawal. South Korea has a strong civilian nuclear program with many dual-use activities in place, a physical infrastructure and a technical capability that may result in a credible deterrent within a year or two. As I noted in this column over two years ago, removing the American umbrella from South Korea would be beneficial to both sides because the U.S. would be disengaged from a spot where the dangers of continued military presence exceed benefits, while South Korea would be forced to end its dependence on Washington for its defense:
American withdrawal would prompt South Korea finally to become a mature, self-reliant regional power fully responsible for its self-protection, as befits one of the most highly developed industrial economies in the world. It would also force it to diversify its portfolio of foreign contacts, possibly leading to a Russian-South Korean or a Chinese-South Korean alliance, either of which is preferable to an open-ended American guarantee. Some South Koreans are bound to start dragging their feet while simultaneously clamoring for continued U.S. security guarantee. It would not be the first time, but they should be told that America has no national interest in retaining troops in Korea or in continuing to protect Seoul. Old habits may die hard, but the 55-year habit of garrisoning South Korea has to be kicked because it is dangerous, expensive, and unnecessary. To the argument that South Korea’s military is not strong enough to withstand the threat from the North, the answer is clear: only by removing our tripwire can America finally force South Korea to upgrade its military and to make its people assume the full economic and political burden of defending their own country. For exactly the same reason American troops should be removed from Japan and Germany. A strategic anachronism five decades old would thus be finally ended.
The above conclusions from October 2008 still stand, word for word.
Entries(RSS)
Perhaps North Korea is also sensing the weight of empire has finally worn the US down to where our military options there are severely constrained because of our deployments elsewhere.
Dr. Trifkovic is absolutely correct that our next move on this chessboard should be the departure from the Korean peninsula; that would signal the North Koreans that there is nothing to be gained from the US by its ham-handed sabre-rattling because we would be leaving up to the regional powers to sort it all out.
Also, while our moving vans are deployed to bring us out of there we should bid adieu to virtually every other country where we have troops including Central Europe. It is ludicrous to still have bases in Germany two decades after the Warsaw Pact went to the showers. A country as mired in debt as the US can no longer afford the billions it takes to show the flag in every corner of the earth. If we stumble into another conflict in Korea 60 years after the first one we indeed are in even worse shape than we thought.
I would go further than ST. Instead of encouraging the SKs to develop their own nuclear deterrent I would simply hand over a certain portion of our arsenal, both nuclear and conventional, to Seoul. Simultaneously we could withdraw from the peninsula and institute a tariff policy with regards to SK. Reasonable factions in both nations would be satisfied. We should do the same with Japan.
Mr. Collins, we didn't occupy Europe to liberate it or defend it from the Warsaw Pact. The fact that we're still there two decades after the end of the Cold War merely underscores the fact.
Why now, and who actually started all this mess? Who will benefit and why?
It looks to me that whole setup around "sinking" destroyer Cheonan by the North was a quite lousy job (Russian report), and because of that it was just quickly put under the carpet. And now here we have it again.
Yeonpyeong island is just 8 miles from the North Korean coast and according the international law everything under 12 miles is considered to be country's coastal waters.
We may like it or not but South Korea with US Navy help and support intentionally started their military exercises too close actually shelling Yeonpyeong island first, and North just answered.
I'm afraid Koreans (both north and south) are not in charge and they do not control the situation... this can turn out to be very, VERY ugly very soon.
The neo-con chicken hawks are thumping their chests. Another Asian war, what fond memories. There are still over 8,000 American men(no women) missing from the first unnecessary police action. They think they could sell this one easier than the false pretenses for invading and conquering Iraq. Leave the Korea peninsula to the kimchi breaths. The Japanese disliked them for good reasons. But who am I kidding we'll placate the Koreans in some way and keep troops there until judgement day.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/11/united-states-strategies-for-korean.html
Chuck Devore (LTC USA) and current California state assemblyman:
"Evacuating U.S. forces from South Korea would allow American foreign policy makers wider latitude in dealing with North Korea... But, so long as America remains tied at the hip with South Korea, none of these more effective steps will be taken.
Absolutely wrong analysis and conclusion. Why don't we just walk away from NATO as well as SEATO? Withdrawing from Korea would signal to our allies from India to Taiwan to Australia to Japan that America is truly a paper tiger and is handing over hegemony of Asia to China and it's puppet state North Korea. You forget, Dr. T., that America faces other enemies besides jihadists. Just in recent months China has imprisoned its Nobel Peace lauriate and his family and declared war on the Catholic Church. Are these not also attacks on Western values and culture? China must be confronted, as quietly as possible but to just leave South Korea would be the greatest act of appeasement to a dictatorship since World War II.
Absolutely not! Check out Doug Bandow's "U.S. should get out of Korean peninsula" published three weeks ago, which contains more detailed elaboration of my basic premise:
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_bandow1_11-01-10_SGKJR27_v14.2757b79.html
"It is a nasty situation. But why are Americans expected to sort out the mess? ... America can no longer afford to garrison the world. The Korean peninsula is a good place for the U.S. to again start acting like a republic."
To continue garrisoning the 38th parallel as a means of protecting China's Catholics is a truly extraordinary suggestion. Tell that to the dwindling Christian community in Iraq...
In my part of the world, Americans are sometimes regarded as knowing almost nothing of what happens outside their own country. Although most such crticism is unfounded and often leveled by people who ought to know about the dangers of throwing stones in glass houses, SEATO, R.J. Rafferty, was disbanded in 1977.
... and NATO should have been disbanded in 1991. As last week's Lisbon summit, and the Strategic Concept associated with it, have shown, NATO is devoid of a coherent mission and strategic purpose.
Its ongoing quest for a new mission is either absurd (the new Strategic Concept entrusts NATO inter alia with fighting global warming & human traficking), or criminal and destabilizing (e.g. during the attack on Serbia in 1999).
Either way, in terms of realist grand strategy, NATO is detrimental to the American interest and irrelevant to the security of our European allies and should be abolished.
"South Korea has a strong civilian nuclear program with many dual-use activities in place, a physical infrastructure and a technical capability that may result in a credible deterrent within a year or two."
Would it even take that long? And couldn't the US just give them the weapons, or loan them --they are our allies after all? Or is there a treaty that we would be violating by doing that? And if there is a treaty, so what? Wouldn't there be a way to diplomatically work around that? In sum, with regards to nuclear deterrent, what would prevent us from leaving in, say, a month?
North Korea, Iran, Afganistan, Iraq, Iran, Serbia ( to name just a few infected and inflicted countries)...When are you going to learn a lesson in life, proud and humble Americans...The world, the way it is , does not need and wants your enlightement and freedom...Happy Thanksgiving!
great analysis, in many ways at odds with Justin Reymondo's, but the pacifist conclusions are identical.
What is to worry about is the physical act of withdrawing troops. During that period of time we will be seen as being in retreat no matter how necessary and sensible the withdrawal. The world is a pack of dogs. We should have withdrawn from Korea when we were ahead. I still agree with ST that it should be done but there is no telling who will take a pot shot at us as we retreat. First off, withdrawal from anywhere will embolden the Moslems.
#9
NATO is now fighting global warming? How does NATO expect to do that?
According to the list of “threats” and “challenges” named by NATO GenSec Rasmussen in various speeches & papers over the past few months, the North Atlantic Alliance has taken over Alliance Insurance, Inc. In addition to piracy, Rasmussen says, NATO will handle:
cyber security, climate change, extreme weather events such as catastrophic storms and flooding, rising sea levels, major population movements, water shortages, droughts, decreasing food production, global warming, CO2 emissions, the retreat of Arctic ice and availability of hitherto inaccessible resources, and fuel efficiency. The list is open-ended.
#12
Mr. Hewlett, withdrawal would embolden the Moslems to do what, exactly?
They can't attack China - they'd cut off the food and probably retaliate. Attacking US forces in their own right would just get them a lot of trouble. Same for Japan. The South, though, has to put up with them in the end.
A day too late, a dollar too short.
The nuclear powered carrier George Washington already set sail towards both Koreas. Let's see if Gulf of Tonkin incident will be repeated or will the new "planners" be more imaginative.
The U.S. "planners, strategists - and other brainiacs never had much luck in Asia (except for the Alaska purchase. Any use of fire-power in Asia will have grave consequences for our fragile peace illustrate our collective shortcomings especially our President's impotence (should it ever escalate to the use of fire-power).
The American policy in Asia has been a success story surpassing the Pax Romanna. All the countries in the Pacific Basin are prosperous under our leadership. Those American Firsters who have crawled out of the woodwork since Iraq, have lost site of the great successes that America has achieved in foreign policy across the world. No one but the Irish economic journalist Emon Fingleton has alerted us to the possibility that if we pull out of Korea, Japan may turn around and team up with China and turn on us. Bombing Serbia was wrong, but in response to that crime, to turn around and tout every line the gangster Russian government puts out it very foolish.
Let it also be remembered that, according to a story in Worldtribune.com, China recently gave us the option to pull our Navy back to Hawaii, and they would leave us alone. Also, a leader in the Chinese government announced that the cause of the 1950 Korea War was US agression. We need to demand reparations from China and Russia for giving the North Koreas the green light to attack South Korea in 1950. Let's give the A Bomb to Taiwan, Vietnam, the Phillipines and Japan along with South Korea.
Mr. Chan, The Moslems would be emboldened to do that which Moslems do - act in opposition to us, frequently through violence. Are you trying to make a point?
NATO to combat human trafficking? Doctor, heal thyself. NATO protectorate Kosovo is one of the world's great centers of human trafficking, to say nothing of human organ harvesting! Also, in addition to NATO's role in the destruction of Kosovo's Christian heritage and its replacement by Wahhabism, NATO has overseen, in Kosovo, the worst treatment of the Roma since the Holocaust, of which NATO's Balkans policy has been an extension. Naturally, NATO and the other "humanitarian" internationalists, such as George Soros and his Myrmidons, have been silent about all this, though elsewhere they gleefully use the Roma as a battering ram by which they seek to remold traditional European societies into their ideal of a New World Order, to be run, naturally, by themselves, with the help of a few pitiful, well-rewarded, and most willing native accomplices/apparatchiks.
Mr. Hewlett, I don't think those [Moslems] who wish to attack the U.S. would look at withdrawal from Korea as a weakness or as an occasion to attack. They will do so when they think it is opportune and advances their goals, regardless of any perceived weakness in the Federal government, unless they're interested in regime change.
The U.S. is long overdue in reverting back to our "Republic" roots. Our so-called leaders and many analysts still approach international relations using a cold-war mentality. This is a serious flaw. The US must redefine our role from "defense" to "offense," and the *first step* is pulling our troops home. The doc is right . . . let South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia deal with the insane, spoiled brat Kim.
Sometimes the "right" strategy is the one that is initially viewed as "weak" by others. As Frederick the Great said, "Everything which the enemy least expects will succeed the best."
It has taken me a long time to come on board on this subjec but, yes, it is indeed high time that we disengage ourselves, to the fullest extent possible, from what George Washington described as "foreign entanglements".
I see Dr. Trifkovic's point about withdrawing troops from South Korea, but I am concerned about the calls, both by Dr. T and in the comments, for encouraging nuclear proliferation. Even if the governments which we would give the nod to are not a threat, we have no guarantee that won't change; and, these would be just that many more places from which technology and weapons could be bought illicitly or stolen. We have enough of a proliferation problem with foreign intelligence services infiltrating the US, and with corrupt US officials on the payroll of foreign organized crime that traffics in, among other things, nuclear weapons technology.
Point of order: Mr. Gilmartin, I'm not sure if, by your comment, you mean to accuse Dr. Trifkovic of parroting the Kremlin's latest party line, but Dr. T strikes me as the most intelligent, informed and informative author on the internet today; I have no doubt he is an original thinker. [Besides, everyone knows Dr. T really works for the Serbian Secret Service - the champagne, the caviar...
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26 Comment by Early Light on 27 November 2010:
I see Dr. Trifkovic’s point about withdrawing troops from South Korea, but I am concerned about the calls, both by Dr. T and in the comments, for encouraging nuclear proliferation.
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I agree completely, I can see no benefit to handing out nukes like candy to assuage our unfounded guilt. Our time as World Police needs to come to an end.
No, no -- more like the meat skewers, the sliwowitz...