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Does
Bush Want War with North Korea?
By JONATHAN
POWER
March 21, 2001
LONDON - It is hard to watch the most sensible foreign
policy of the Clinton Administration being crumpled
before our eyes. Particularly so when it is being done
for the most malevolent of reasons- to resurrect an enemy
that had decided to make its peace with America, so that
the advocacy of missile defence for America could be seen
to be based on a real rogue missile threat rather, than
as hitherto, a make believe one.
President George Bush is being given the benefit of
the doubt with his new hard line policy towards North
Korea, even as he overrides his more far-sighted
Secretary of State, Colin Powell. General Powell had
tried to get it on to the record, before the Gang of Two,
Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence
Donald Rumsfeld, could bend the novice president's ear
back towards the dark ages, that the Bush Administration
intended "to pick up where President Clinton and his
administration left off". It is not to be, says Bush.
Already his policy of distrust has led to the indefinite
postponement by the North Korean leader Kim Jong il of
his planned trip to South Korea.
Yet how aware is Mr Bush how dark the age was before
ex-president Jimmy Carter flew into Pyongyang and rescued
president Bill Clinton from a nose to nose confrontation
that could have easily slipped into a new Korean war,
with the Pentagon telling Clinton it might lead to 50,000
American dead?
At the time it seemed that the evidence was
incontrovertible that North Korea had nuclear weapons,
was building more and developing the rockets to carry
them as far as Alaska. Now seven years later we can be
fairly sure that while it is possible North Korea has
plutonium sufficient for one or two nuclear weapons, it
is not increasing its stock of plutonium and its rockets,
even if they can reach Alaska, are not powerful enough to
carry a nuclear payload. The Carter-Clinton deal did
bring about a freeze in North Korean nuclear weapons
development in return for the commitment to build two
nuclear power stations for the country and an end to the
long-standing economic embargo. In fact the Clinton
administration, whilst moving ahead with South Korea and
Japan to construct the civilian power stations, was
extraordinarily lethargic about lifting sanctions.
Indeed, Mr Clinton only seemed to engage with matters
Korean when they were on the edge of the precipice. Yet
looking back it was perhaps his greatest foreign policy
success. He pulled some nuclear teeth without the painful
necessity of military dentistry.
It is a pity he never fully appreciated what he had
done. But the Republican foreign policy thinkers did.
Always more gung-ho on developing America's own
land-based system of missile defence, they knew that the
only good case they could cite to prove the necessity for
it was North Korea. It is not supposed to break the old
time Mutual Assured Destruction relationship with Russia.
It is not supposed to neutralize China's deterrent,
although it will, since China is not an official "enemy".
It can't be used to justify whatever ambitions Iran might
have for nuclear weapons since the hostility of now
democratic Iran towards the "Great Satan" is much
diminished. As for Iraq, thanks to the war, the UN
dismantling of its nuclear establishment and the current
tight military embargo, Saddam Hussein is light years
away from developing long distance rockets with nuclear
warheads. Thus it is only North Korea that can even lend
the thin veneer of an argument to this cause so dear to
the hearts and minds of those in the Republican
administration that temperamentally find it hard to live
without a military crusade. And they have behind them the
might of the powerful lobby of the U.S. arms industry for
which a project of this magnitude promises profits and
jobs for decades to come.
In June last year South Korea's peace-minded
president, Kim Dae jung, travelled North to meet his
counterpart, Kim Jong il, in what was by any stretch of
the imagination an historic summit. It has set the ball
rolling on rapprochement between the two halves of the
peninsular, making all manner of difficulties for U.S.
foreign policy at large in eastern Asia. A counterpart to
Korean pride at the summit's achievements has been a rise
in anti-American sentiment in the South. No longer
confined to left wing students, mainstream opinion is
beginning to wonder about the value of a continued
American military presence.
But the ripples run further out that this. Japan that
has for long stood four square behind the American
military presence in East Asia is now beginning to ask,
if there is no longer a need to deter a North Korean
attack then is it necessary to have such a large American
military presence in Japan? If the sole remaining
argument is to balance China, this is, in many
influential Japanese eyes, quite counterproductive,
working to turn China into the enemy it is not. All
along, moreover, the Japanese have held profound
reservations about American arguments for missile
defence, convinced it will unnecessarily antagonise
China.
This brings us to the nub of the argument. China has
been an essential interlocutor in persuading Kim Jong il
to drop his country's traditional hostile policy to the
West. The road to Pyongyang runs, at least for some its
length, through Beijing. Washington should expect to be
charged a toll, and that for China is an end to America's
affair with missile defence.
For Cheney and Rumsfeld, who see missile defence as
the cutting edge of a new distinct Republican foreign
policy, it must seem as if the growing moves towards
peace in the Korean peninsular could end up pulling the
rug from underneath them. Distrustful anyway of the
North's good intentions and tending to believe that
Carter, Clinton and South Korea have been duped, it
should come as no surprise they are out to sabotage the
peace process.
Only one person stands between them and the ear of the
president: Secretary of State Colin Powell. The outcome
of this potentially deadly dual in the higher echelons of
the U.S. government will probably determine whether we
have peace in our time in East Asia or not.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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