Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What to do about North Korea

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China, embargo, Japan, Kim Jong Un, missile defense, missiles, Nikki Haley, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, sanctions, Shinzo Abe, South Korea, Trade, Trump, United Nations

Tuesday’s post explained my reasons for concluding that, contrary to the emerging conventional wisdom in the U.S. foreign policy establishment that North Korea’s use of its growing and increasingly powerful arsenal of nuclear weapons can be deterred with the same kind of policies that the United States used to keep the nuclear peace during the Cold War.

As I’ve argued, the resulting dangers mean that the best way to serve America’s paramount interest (by a long shot) of preventing a nuclear attack on its own territory is to pull U.S. forces out of the immediate area, and letting Northeast Asia’s powerful, wealthy countries deal with dictator Kim Jong Un as they see fit. This move would both ensure that the governments with the greatest stake in keeping North Korea’s missiles in their silos, and even eliminated, bear the costs and risks of handling the problem, and that the only plausible pretext for Pyongyang attacking the United States itself is eliminated.

Of course, Washington has chosen not to take this route. But America’s response so far to the escalating North Korea threat is turning into a major failure based even on its own criteria for success. After all, the latest North Korean missile overflew Japanese territory. Although the overflight was brief, the combined U.S. and Japanese response could not help but send a message of weakness and egg on Kim further.

According to Japan’s defense minister, Tokyo decided not to shoot down the missile because the government determined it wasn’t intended to land on Japanese territory. I don’t know how to say “Baloney!” in Japanese, but complete contempt is the only justifiable reaction. For despite this stated confidence, as the missile approached, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government sent out regular early morning alerts to the public – including in far off Tokyo – warning it to “seek cover” and describing the situation as “very dangerous.”

Another nonsensical rationale for the inaction from both Japanese and U.S. forces, this from a staunch defender of America’s Asia policy status quo: “If we shoot and miss, it would hand Kim Jong-Un an incalculable propaganda victory.” That’s of course true – because as this former official has noted, anti-missile technology is anything but proven. But of course, keeping the defensive missiles in their launchers also winds up telling North Korea that the United States and its allies have little faith in their systems.

Moreover, the Pentagon and its foreign counterparts can conduct all the tests they want, but adequate confidence in missile defenses won’t be legitimately justified until they’ve shown they can work in real-world situations. And better to try shoot-downs sooner rather than later – both because North Korea’s offensive capabilities will only improve as time passes, and because its better to find out about the real-world shortcomings of allied systems ASAP.

So if I’m Kim Jong Un, I’m looking at the U.S. and Japanese failure even to try a shoot-down and asking myself, “Let’s see what else I can get away with?” And when he develops reasonably reliable intercontinental missiles capable of hitting American territory and destroying American cities, he could easily conclude that the “what else” includes major threats against South Korea that would be entirely credible, and that could move him closer to effective mastery over the entire peninsula.

How, then, can Washington and its regional allies send some credible messages themselves? The following list is meant to start a (long overdue) serious discussion:

>First, the allies can actually try to shoot down North Korean missiles judged on a flight path anywhere near some of their territories. Again, even if they miss, they’ll at least get some truly reliable data on their systems’ capabilities.

>Second, they could urge the United Nations to authorize a total ban on trade and commerce with North Korea. The United States, Japan, and South Korea could also announce that they will enforce the ban with punitive measures against violators. The North’s business partners would then face a clear – and no-brainer – choice: They can continue trading with economically miniscule North Korea or they can continue trading with three of the world’s largest economies, but they can’t do both.

It’s true that North Korea’s biggest trade partner is China, that all three allies have extensive economic ties with the PRC, and that even the United States – a clear loser in China trade – has been reluctant to disrupt these relations significantly. But now the subject is war and peace and the core security of Japan and South Korea. If this reluctance continues even after North Korea has sent missiles over Japanese territory, Kim will inevitably conclude that his main adversaries lack the stomach to resist further provocations.

>The United States, Japan, and South Korea could blockade air and sea trade with North Korea. China’s overland trade would continue – but ever-stronger economic sanctions on China finally could persuade Beijing to halt this commerce once and for all.

>The United States could further pressure China by deciding to sell all of its neighbors – including Taiwan – any conventional weapons they wanted, and to provide whatever training they needed to operate them effectively. (President Trump is thinking along these lines regarding South Korea, but the new policy should go much further.) This step of course would also help deal with China’s aggressiveness in the South China and East China Seas, and boost America’s own production and export of these advanced manufactures. So Beijing would need to decide whether coddling North Korea was worth seeing Asia’s other countries – including many bearing major historic and/or current grudges against China – become much stronger militarily

>Finally – for now – the United States could announce a full-scale review of its nuclear non-proliferation policies in Asia, with a special focus on whether it would continue opposing the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Japan and South Korea. As with the previous proposal, China would need to decide whether coddling North Korea was worth seeing one of its major national security nightmares – nuclear arms possessed by the same Japan that launched devastating attacks against it in 1894 and 1937 – come to life.

Shortly after the latest North Korea launch, American envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, declared, “No country should have missiles flying over them like those 130 million people in Japan. It is unacceptable. They (North Korea) have violated every single UN Security Council Resolution that we’ve had. So I think something serious has to happen.”

She’s absolutely right in implying that neither the United States nor the so-called world community has done anything “serious” yet regarding the threat posed by North Korea. Options like the above would qualify. If Washington genuinely wants to maintain its current North Korea and broader East Asia strategies, they need to be actively, and urgently, considered.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Kissinger Comes Up Short on North Korea

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alliances, China, East Asia-Pacific, foreign policy establishment, Henry Kissinger, Japan, missiles, North Korea, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, realism, South Korea, The Wall Street Journal

Henry Kissinger’s plan – or at least outline of a plan – to resolve the North Korea crisis is out. And even though the 94 (94!)-year old former Secretary of State and presidential national security adviser has not held public office in decades, you should pay attention because you can bet American leaders in the Executive Branch and Congress are. So are foreign governments (many of which, including China, Kissinger has made millions – at least – “consulting”for).

Kissinger’s approach, laid out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last Friday, is definitely a cut above the usual (often dangerously misleading) drivel that most commentators have been issuing since North Korea recently demonstrated dramatic and unexpected progress toward being able to hit the U.S. homeland with a nuclear-armed missile. But since Kissinger is a creature of the foreign policy establishment that keeps clinging to an obsolete Korea strategy that is now needlessly exposing the United States to nuclear attack, his proposals ultimately fail to promote and defend America’s interests first, or even to acknowledge the deep splits that must no longer be papered over between U.S. needs and South Korean needs.

The strongest argument Kissinger makes, as I see it, is the suggestion that there’s only one way of persuading China to exert enough pressure on North Korea to achieve Pyongyang’s de-nuclearization, or to start its regime down that road. It’s emphasizing to Beijing that an increasingly powerful nuclear North Korea will inevitably lead other countries to follow suit, and place China in the middle of a ring of nuclear-armed neighbors – many of which are hardly friendly. In other words, Kissinger is identifying an especially compelling reason for China to conclude (finally) that its Korea bottom line must include defanging the North – and quickly, not one of these days.

A public statement of this reasoning also matters because it signals Kissinger’s agreement that preventing nuclear proliferation in Asia may need to take a back seat in U.S. Korea policy to the status quo/establishment position that the United States must bear the main costs and risks (including nuclear risks) of handling North Korea. Not that I doubt the dangers of a regional nuclear arms race. But if that’s the price to be paid for minimizing and possibly eliminating a nuclear to the United States itself, it’s a price that’s a clear bargain. So it’s gratifying to read that Kissinger looks to be in agreement. 

But Kissinger never explains why North Korea would relent absent the kinds of truly comprehensive and strictly enforced economic sanctions whose importance he appears to belittle or dismiss altogether. Instead, he appears to believe that a joint Sino-American statement conveying strong bilateral agreement on the peninsula’s future “would bring home to Pyongyang its isolation and provide a basis for the international guarantee essential to safeguard its outcome.” Unfortunately, nothing publicly known about the North Korean regime indicates that it’s prepared to substitute paper guarantees of its survival for the protection provided by a nuclear arsenal.

Similarly, Kissinger signals support for a solution that would leave Korea divided as at present, but that would trade off de-nuclearization in the North for a permanent ban on reintroducing American nuclear weapons to South Korea (which were removed by former President George H.W. Bush in 1991) and an international agreement prohibiting Seoul from developing its own nuclear arms. But in addition to the “paper promises” problem, Kissinger’s proposal appears to forget that nuclear weapons from anywhere have been included in strategies to defend South Korea in the first place stem from the need to offset the belligerent North’s conventional superiority – which it presumably would still enjoy. So a dangerous military imbalance would be left on the peninsula.

But my biggest complaint about Kissinger’s ideas is the apparent refusal to consider my own favored option – a U.S. military pullout from South Korea (and possibly Japan) that would deny the North any plausible reason to attack the American homeland, and that would force the powerful and wealthy countries of Northeast Asia, which have the greatest stakes by far in a viable North Korea strategy, to take on this responsibility themselves.

The risk? An entire East Asia-Pacific region that’s profoundly destabilized, and even plunged into conflict. The benefit? A dramatic reduction in the odds that a North Korean nuclear weapon would decimate an American city. Or two. Or three. This is even a close call?

Moreover, a U.S. pullout seems to be taboo to Kissinger because he, along with most of the rest of the foreign policy establishment, perversely appears to view protecting allies as being just as important as protecting the United States. What else could be mean when he warns that certain American policies “may be perceived as concentrating on protecting its own territory, while leaving the rest of Asia exposed to nuclear blackmail….”?

Not to put to fine a point on it, but when the stakes involve preventing nuclear warheads from killing possibly tens of millions of Americans, why on earth shouldn’t the United States be “perceived as concentrating on protecting its own territory”? In fact, any American leader with different priorities should be immediately removed from office and banned for life.

So I continue to admire the force of Henry Kissinger’s intellect, his mastery of a wide range of international issues (except economics), and his command of history. Yet I also continue to view him as a paragon of a peculiarly American species: a so-called diplomatic realist who is anything but.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Establishment’s Korea Nuclear Cover-Up Continues

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alliances, allies, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, East Asia, free-riding, missiles, North Korea, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, polls, South Korea

If a pollster asked respondents a question on the order of “Would you favor the government handing Americans unlimited amounts of money?” without specifying that “it might destroy the economy,” you wouldn’t take it very seriously, would you? In fact, you’d probably (and rightly) condemn the survey as a con job.

And that’s exactly the reaction you should have to a new “finding” by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that this year, for the first time [since 1990, when the organization began asking the question], “a majority of Americans express support for using US forces to defend South Korea” if it was attacked by North Korea. According to the Council, moreover, this figure has risen sharply since 2015 – from 47 percent to 62 percent.

If you’re a RealityChek regular, you know why this question is fraudulent. It doesn’t tell respondents that North Korea is terrifyingly close to being able to retaliate against such U.S. military involvement by destroying an American city or two with nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.

In fact, the question doesn’t mention anything about specific consequences for riding militarily to South Korea’s rescue. Even granting that the public realizes that wars are not picnics, the Council’s full phrasing was inexcusably anodyne:

“There has been some discussion about the circumstances that might justify using US troops in other parts of the world. Please give your opinion about some situations. Would you favor or oppose the use of US troops if North Korea invaded South Korea?”

Like the issue was simply being debated in a seminar.

Nor did the Council tell Americans why their country would need to risk blood and treasure to aid South Korea. It’s because, even though the South’s economy is vastly larger than the North’s, and even though the North actions have been threatening for decades, this long-time U.S. protectorate spends a negligible fraction of its wealth on its own defense.

So here’s what the Council should have asked:

“For nearly seventy years, the United States has pledged to defend South Korea militarily from attack by communist North Korea. But this promise was made when it created no risk for the American homeland, when the South was dirt poor, and when Washington feared that communism was on the march worldwide. Now it’s clear the North will very soon be able to launch a successful nuclear attack on the United States if it keeps its promise to the South. Since the alliance was formed, South Korea has skimped on its own defense spending even though it’s become one of the world’s richest countries. And communism is dead as a global military menace. Would you favor or oppose using U.S. troops to defend a free-riding South Korea if the result could be the nuclear destruction of an American city?”

Of course, my phrasing could be toned down. It could also add the argument American trade and other forms of business with economically dynamic East Asia would suffer if major war broke out anywhere in the region (although it’s easy to argue that business with the region has been a big net loser for the American economy), and that so far, the U.S. military presence and commitment have helped keep the peace. And to be fair, the Council didn’t mention any pro-interventionist arguments, either.

But the main point is that it’s hard to imagine any consideration surrounding the decision to intervene in a Korean war remotely comparing with this development: Until recently, Americans could be certain that their own territory would remain unscathed. Now such involvement could kill and maim millions of their compatriots, and turn important metropolitan areas into radioactive wastelands.

As I’ve long written (along with others), the American foreign policy establishment has been so irrationally wed to the country’s alliances that it’s concealed the catastrophic, and sometimes suicidal, (in the case of Europe, where the antagonist has been the Soviet Union and now Russia) dangers they have inevitably created. The only useful information contained in this Chicago Council on Global Affairs Korea finding is that, wittingly or not, this group is participating in the cover-up.