- The Bush administration is preparing to escalate the
current standoff over North Korea's nuclear program into a full-blown confrontation,
with reckless indifference to the potentially disastrous consequences for
the Korean peninsula and the entire region.
-
- According to a report in yesterday's New York Times,
the US has drawn up "a comprehensive plan to intensify financial and
political pressure on North Korea" aimed at precipitating an economic
and political collapse. "Administration officials said the threat
of growing isolation was the best way to force North Korea to give up its
nuclear ambitions and, if it refused to, to bring down the government,"
the article explained.
-
- Under the strategy, euphemistically known as "tailored
containment," the US intends to pressure neighbouring countries to
reduce economic ties with North Korea and to push for the UN Security Council
to impose economic sanctions. Other key aspects include the use of the
US military to intercept North Korea's missile exports in order to dry
up one of the country's few sources of hard currency. "It is a lot
about putting political stress and putting economic stress," one senior
official told the newspaper.
-
- While the US has cynically declared its willingness to
negotiate, this "offer" is effectively an ultimatum. Bush has
insisted that no talks will take place until North Korea has scrapped its
nuclear program. Moreover, as Washington has repeatedly made clear, the
dismantling of nuclear facilities is just one of a long list of US demands,
which include North Korea ending its ballistic missile production and reducing
its conventional military forces, in particular along the border with South
Korea.
-
- To date, Washington has made no direct military threat
against Pyongyang. But US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strongly implied
that the Pentagon had made contingency plans when he provocatively told
a press conference on December 23 that the American military was "perfectly
capable" of waging a war against North Korea at the same time as invading
Iraq.
-
- Rumsfeld declared that it would be a mistake for North
Korea to feel emboldened because of Washington's current focus on Iraq.
"We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts. We're capable
of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other.
Let there be no doubt about it," he said.
-
- The defence secretary did not directly contradict other
White House officials, who have been insisting that the US has no intention
of attacking North Korea. But when asked if there was "a military
option on the table", he refused to rule it out. "Well, let me
put it this way," he said. "One of the assignments of the [defence]
department is to prepare for a whole host of contingencies."
-
- Rumsfeld's comments triggered an angry reaction in Pyongyang.
North Korea's Defence Minister Kim Il-chol denounced the US for bringing
its hostile policy to "an extremely dangerous phase". He warned
that his country could not remain a passive onlooker while its sovereignty
and right to exist were threatened by "the US hawks who are pushing
the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war."
-
- The Bush administration, with the uncritical backing
of the media, blames the crisis entirely on North Korea. Commentators habitually
brand the Pyongyang regime as belligerent and irrational, speculate on
the malevolent motives behind its actions and focus attention on the supposed
threat posed by North Korea's nuclear and other weapons programs. Each
step by North Korea to restart its nuclear facilities-the removal of seals
and monitoring equipment, the movement of fuel rods and the expulsion of
UN observers-is treated as proof of Pyongyang's "nuclear brinkmanship".
-
- But this stands reality on its head. North Korea is a
small, impoverished country of some 20 million people, which has been systematically
isolated economically and politically by the US over decades. It confronts
the world's largest imperialist power with the capacity to obliterate North
Korea's major cities and military installations many times over, and an
administration that has adopted a provocative stance towards Pyongyang
from day one.
-
- Axis of evil
-
-
-
- On assuming office, George W. Bush immediately froze
the high-level negotiations conducted under Clinton. Then, after a lengthy
"policy review," his administration issued a new set of demands
to be addressed by Pyongyang. In his State of the Union speech in January
2002, Bush branded North Korea, along with Iraq and Iran, as part of an
"axis of evil"-a label that, as the current US military buildup
against Baghdad demonstrates, is tantamount to a declaration of war. In
March, portions of the Pentagon's "Nuclear Posture Review," which
were leaked to the press, revealed that the US was prepared to use nuclear
weapons against North Korea.
-
- Far from being "irrational", North Korea's
response to Washington's threats is completely logical. According to a
number of commentators, the country is incapable of fighting a sustained
war. Its large conventional armed forces are starved of spare parts and
fuel and dependent on an economy that is on the brink of collapse. Boxed
into a corner by Washington, Pyongyang's decision to restart its nuclear
program is a desperate attempt to create a nuclear threat, either real
or potential, with which to keep the US at bay.
-
- If Pyongyang is proceeding in defiance of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it is because it has concluded that compliance
with international weapons treaties is no guarantee against US military
action. After all, Baghdad has complied with all the US demands elaborated
in the latest UN Security Council resolution, UN inspectors have found
no evidence of "weapons of mass destruction," yet the US preparations
for an invasion of Iraq continue relentlessly. North Korea is entirely
justified in concluding that it could well be the next target of the Bush
administration's doctrine of unilateral, preemptive strikes.
-
- The US administration attempts to justify its belligerent
stance against North Korea by pointing to the regime's anti-democratic
methods and the country's appalling social conditions. But its expressions
of concern for the Korean people are completely hypocritical. While Bush
denounces North Korean leader Kim Il-jung for "starving his people,"
he has no compunction about using poverty and starvation as a weapon to
bring Pyongyang to its knees. His administration has already suspended
its limited food aid and is now preparing to tighten an economic noose
around the country.
-
- The Bush administration's aggressive stance towards North
Korea is driven by its determination to assert US economic and strategic
interests in North East Asia. By demonising North Korea, Washington can
justify the large US military presence in South Korea and Japan as well
as its decision to tear up the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and build
a Nuclear Missile Defence.
-
- There are also broader considerations. By provoking a
crisis, the US has effectively scuttled the "sunshine policy"
of South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, which was aimed at opening up North
Korea to investment and the Korean peninsula as a major transport route
between Europe and East Asia. Those who stood to benefit most from the
"sunshine policy" and the lessening of tensions were the US's
main economic rivals-Europe and Japan-along with the regional powers, China
and South Korea.
-
- The World Socialist Web Site gives no political support
to North Korea's Stalinist regime, which is a brutal and oppressive dictatorship
that has nothing to do with socialism. Like its counterparts in Beijing,
Moscow and the capitals of Eastern Europe, the Pyongyang bureaucracy abandoned
its anti-capitalist pretensions long ago and has been seeking to reach
a deal with the major powers to establish North Korea as a cheap labour
haven. Nonetheless, North Korea as a small, poverty-stricken nation has
the right to arm itself, by any means available, against the growing military
threat from US imperialism.
-
- The Agreed Framework
-
-
-
- The pretext for the Bush administration's latest actions
is the claim that North Korea has breached the Agreed Framework signed
with the US in 1994. In October, after being confronted with American evidence,
North Korea admitted to having established a secret uranium enrichment
program in violation of international agreements and declared its intention
to abrogate the 1994 deal.
-
- White House spokesmen now piously declare that there
can be no negotiations with Pyongyang until it demonstrates its willingness
to abide by the Agreed Framework. North Korea's repeated offer to negotiate
a comprehensive security pact with the US has been spurned. US Secretary
of State Powell, for instance, told the media yesterday: "What they
want is not a discussion. They want us to give them something for them
to stop the bad behaviour. What we can't do is enter into a negotiation
right away where we are appeasing them."
-
- However, like the Bush administration's stance on other
international treaties, its attitude to the Agreed Framework is completely
one-sided. It expects North Korea to live up to all its obligations while
ignoring the fact that the US has openly breached both the spirit and the
letter of the agreement for years.
-
- North Korea only signed the deal in 1994 after the Clinton
administration threatened to carry out military strikes against its nuclear
infrastructure. Under the arrangement, Pyongyang agreed to shut down its
small 5MW nuclear research reactor, plutonium processing plant and associated
facilities at Yongbyon and to halt construction on two nuclear power plants
that were due to be completed by 1996. The latter was a major concession
given the country's dire economic straits and desperate shortage of electricity.
-
- In return, the Clinton administration promised to build
two commercial lightwater reactors and to provide 500,000 tonnes of fuel
oil annually, prior to the completion of the reactors. Unlike North Korea's
gas-graphite reactors, the replacements would not have the same capacity
to produce weapons-grade plutonium. While the US-led consortium has provided
the fuel oil, the construction of the lightwater reactors, which was due
to be completed by 2003, has barely started.
-
- As far as Pyongyang was concerned, however, the most
significant clause in the Agreed Framework was one that pledged to "move
toward full normalisation of political and economic relations". Specific
promises included the reduction of trade and investment barriers, formal
US assurances ruling out the threat or use of nuclear weapons against North
Korea, and eventual moves towards the establishment of full diplomatic
relations.
-
- The clause was never treated seriously by Clinton, who,
having extracted a North Korean pledge to shut its nuclear facilities,
proceeded to make a string of further accusations and demands. His administration
only lifted the US economic blockade of North Korea, in force since the
Korean War, in 1999 and then only in a restricted fashion. Just prior to
the 2000 election campaign, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made
the first tentative high-level visit to Pyongyang.
-
- Even these limited measures came to an abrupt halt when
Bush was installed in office. In a recent letter to the UN, declaring the
intention to reopen its nuclear facilities, Pyongyang specifically cited
the US designation of North Korea as part of the "axis of evil"
and as a target for nuclear attack as evidence for "the substantive
breakdown of the Agreed Framework". As far as North Korea is concerned,
it has gained nothing from the arrangement. The deal has not produced any
normalisation of political and economic relations with the US; the completion
of the lightwater reactors is nowhere in sight; and, since October, the
US has punished North Korea for its uranium enrichment program by cutting
off supplies of fuel oil.
-
- The provocative character of the Bush administration's
actions is highlighted by the fact that the Republican Party rightwing
has long denounced the Agreed Framework. The very people who described
the deal from the outset as grovelling appeasement and proof of Clinton's
weakness on foreign policy now hold the levers of power. It is hardly surprising,
therefore, that the current incumbents in the White House have treated
the terms of the Agreed Framework with ill-disguised contempt.
-
- If the Bush administration has proceeded relatively slowly
in confronting North Korea, it is because there are fears in US ruling
circles about the consequences of such a reckless course of action. It
is by no means certain that Washington will be able to bully South Korea,
Japan, China and Russia into backing its blockade of North Korea. Official
opposition has already been voiced in Moscow and Beijing. In South Korea,
the outsider Roh Moo-myun won the recent presidential elections by appealing
to growing popular hostility to Washington's belligerent policy towards
North Korea and widespread fears of a military conflagration.
-
- What is at stake in the current standoff is highlighted
by the last major confrontation in 1994. As Clinton and his advisors dispatched
stealth warplanes to South Korea and prepared to strike North Korea, knowing
that the result could be full-scale war, the Pentagon presented the administration
with a sobering calculation of the potential costs and casualties.
-
- "General Luck [US commander in Korea] estimated,
on the basis of the experience in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, that due
to the colossal lethality of modern weapons in the urban environments of
Korea, as many as one million people would be killed in the resumption
of full-scale war on the peninsula, including 80,000 to 100,000 Americans,
that the out-of-pocket costs to the United States would exceed $100 billion,
and that the destruction of property and interruption of business activity
would cost more than $1,000 billion dollars to the countries involved and
their immediate neighbours" [The Two Koreas, Don Oberdorfer, p.324].
-
- The Clinton administration was prepared to take an enormous
gamble in order to extract an agreement from North Korea. Now those who
berated him for his softness are careering down the path to conflict. No
confidence whatsoever can be place in their soothing public assurances
that the situation is under control and that a military strike against
North Korea is off the agenda. If war does erupt then the responsibility
for its disastrous consequences lies squarely with the Bush administration
and its allies.
-
- Copyright 1998-2002
- World Socialist Web Site
- All rights reserved
-
- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/dec2002/nkor-d30.shtml
|