I’m just an amateur at this with no particular expertise in
international relations, but it seems to me we’re going about this
North Korea business all wrong.
What’s the situation? North Korea’s childlike aggression
with its new toy of nuclear weapons is the problem, but the real
question mark in the area is China. If it were just North Koreans
we were dealing with, we could put them away quickly and not worry
too much about it. Just bomb their nuclear facilities and let them
go back to eating grass. But the problem is they have this powerful
ally on their flank. We already went through this in 1950 when
China was willing to intervene when our armies reached the Yalu
River. It would probably take action on behalf of North Korea
again.
China is a powerful nation getting stronger every day.
It’s four times the size of the United States and just beginning to
feel the measure its industrial strength. It’s already overtaken us
in energy consumption and will probably pass us on GNP within the
next 20 years. Of course that will mean the average Chinese still
lives on only one-fourth the level of the average American, but
they will be big enough to throw their weight around.
At the same time, the Chinese have never been a
particularly belligerent nation and don’t seem bent on conquest.
It’s not as if this is some Muslim nation, always battling its
neighbors. The Chinese are a very smart people. They score at the
very top on international IQ tests. They’ve always been content to
live in their Middle Kingdom. Their most troublesome neighbor has
been Mongolia but it’s always been the Mongols invading them
instead of vice versa. That’s why they built The Great
Wall.
If the Chinese have been aggressive in Asia, it’s been a
commercial aggression, not military. The
Overseas Chinese have migrated into every Southeast Asian country
and in most cases have become a dominant commercial minority.
Thomas Sowell uses this to illustrate the fallacy that commercial
groups get rich by exploiting the rest of the population. He says
that in every country the Overseas Chinese are resented and accused
of becoming rich only by robbing the natives. But the richest
Overseas Chinese were in Hong Kong, where the “native population”
is the British, who formed only one percent of the
community!
The important lesson, however, is that even though
Overseas Chinese are a vulnerable minority and often subject to
persecution and pogroms, Mainland China has almost never intervened
militarily. This isn’t Hitler protecting Germans in the
Sudetenland. China’s only exception was when it invaded North
Vietnam in 1979 after the expulsion of the Boat People, a large
number of whom were Overseas Chinese. In that case, it left after a
year, announcing it had “taught Vietnam a lesson.” Militarily the
Chinese still abide by the teachings of Sun Zu in The Art of
War, who taught that the object of war is to achieve the
interests of the states by feints and positioning, rather than
outright slaughter of the enemy.
The old days when China and Russia were imbued with the
gospel of Communism and world dominion are over. China is a growing
commercial power that now embraces technology and runs businesses
better than we do. We may one day regain our equilibrium and
out-compete China on that score, but in the meantime there isn’t
any reason why we can’t be friends. Commercial nations have every
reason to get along with each other. Economics is not a zero-sum
game. So what’s the problem?
Well, the problem is the historical accident of North
Korea. This half-nation is a bastardized monstrosity created in the
closing days of World War II. Legend has it that Korea was divided
when Stalin’s armies were marching down the peninsula and we asked
them to halt. Somebody asked where we should draw the line and a
staff sergeant, looking at the map, suggested the 38th parallel.
(Dean Rusk is supposed to have been involved.) The North became a
Soviet protectorate and eventually morphed into what is perhaps the
world’s first truly insane nation. No one really knows what goes
through Kim Il Jong’s head or what keeps his people in submission,
but it has advanced far beyond anything George Orwell ever
imagined.
Is China happy with this? Probably not. But it puts up
with it because — according to the newspapers, at least — it
wants to “keep the American army off its borders.” The theory is
that any collapse of the North Korean government would lead to
reunification and since South Korea is a U.S. puppet, a unified
Korea means American lands on China’s doorstep. It’s General
Douglas MacArthur all over again.
Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. South Korea is not a
U.S. puppet and we have no purpose in being there except to protect
South Korea from being invaded by the North, as it was in 1949 and
probably would be again if we left. We don’t have to have an army
in South Korea any more than we have to have an army in Vietnam,
Taiwan, or any other country on China’s border. China is not going
to invade South Korea any more than it is going to invade Mongolia
or Vietnam or Singapore. (I know somebody is going to bring up
Tibet here and I have to admit that was a pure act of international
aggression. However, it did occur at the height of China’s
Communist religious fervor and the Chinese did have some vague
historical claims there. With that one exception, the Chinese have
not shown any tendency to invade their neighbors.)
So here’s what we do. Let’s strike a deal with China. We
both invade North Korea. They come in from the north, we come in
form the south. Or put together an international coalition the way
George Bush did in Kuwait. We’ll meet in Pyongyang and knock the
Jong dynasty off its pedestal. This will require a joint air
operation to knock out North Korea’s nuclear bombs before they get
a chance to use them. After that, however, the North Koreans
probably won’t offer more than two weeks’ resistance.
At that point we settle down to the ten-year task of
reuniting North and South Korea. Ironically, before World War II
the North was the advanced industrialized sector while the South an
agricultural backwater. Communism and capitalism reversed this.
Certainly there will be painful cultural and economic adjustments
and lots of foreign aid will be required, but the two Koreas speak
the same language. They were once one country and can be again. It
would be a job of about the same magnitude as reuniting East and
West Germany — costly but worth the effort.
So why would the Chinese agree to this? The answer is
simple. After the ten-year reunification is completed,
we pull out. There isn’t any reason for
us to maintain an army in Korea once the two halves are reunited. I
realize this arrangement carries all the dangers and pitfalls of
the original agreement between the Soviets and the U.S. to divide
Germany and Berlin. It is a temporary situation that could easily
become permanent. But we’ll just have to be honest and forthright
about it. If we establish good relations with China on this task,
there isn’t any reason we can’t cooperate on lots of other things
as well. The Chinese are not our natural enemies. It’s time to put
World War II to rest.
The alternative is to drift toward confrontation the way
we are now. We put an aircraft carrier in the Yellow Sea as a “show
of force.” The Chinese take offense and say it’s like them holding
military maneuvers in the Gulf of Mexico — which in fact it is. So
what happens if someone attacks the aircraft carrier? Isn’t North
Korea crazy enough to do it? They do have an atomic bomb, remember.
Suppose they sink the carrier? What do we do then? Isn’t this how
the Vietnam War started, with a series of half measures that
provoked half measures from the other side until it was too late to
turn back?
So let’s sit down and take stock. China is not a
belligerent country. There’s no reason we can’t be friends. It’s
North Korea that’s crazy. Let’s team up and get rid of it. Then the
Chinese can have their half of the Pacific and we have ours. They
continue to buy our debt and we continue to buy their television
sets. What’s wrong with that?
I’m preparing a petition to send to Peking and Washington.
Anybody want to sign?
