The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is
impoverished and decrepit. Its people are starving and risk death
to flee their tragic land. The country is virtually friendless and
suffers under a bizarre system of monarchical communism.
Pyongyang’s armed forces are dwarfed by those of the U.S., the
globe’s premier military power.
Yet the DPRK has struck fear into the hearts of otherwise sober
American policymakers and analysts. The administration announced
plans to spend a billion dollars to add 14 interceptors to the
missile defense in Alaska to guard against a North Korean attack.
Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter rushed to Seoul to consult
the South’s government.
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius worried: “Counting
on North Korean restraint has been a bad bet. It may be wiser to
assume the worst and plan accordingly.” The International Crisis
Group observed that “North Korea has taken a number of recent steps
that raise the risks of miscalculation, inadvertent escalation and
deadly conflict on the Korean peninsula.”
The Associated Press’s Foster Klug warned: “Recent Korean
history reveals a sobering possibility. It may only be a matter of
time before North Korea launches a sudden, deadly attack on the
South. And, perhaps more unsettling, Seoul has vowed that this
time, it will respond with an even stronger blow.”
Worse, declared defense analyst Steven Metz: “Today, North Korea
is the most dangerous country on earth and the greatest threat to
U.S. security.” Indeed, the DPRK foreign ministry might be proved
right when it “asserted that a second Korean War is
inevitable.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner argued that the U.S.
needed “strong military forces to protect” itself from the North
and denounced planned military budget cuts as undermining “U.S.
military capabilities and credibility.” The ICG urged “U.S.
officials, including the president,” to reaffirm “that the U.S.
will fulfill its alliance commitments, including robustly against
any North Korean military attacks.”
In Metz’s view this would be no minor affair. Rather, “The
second Korean war would force military mobilization in the United
States. This would initially involve the military’s existing
reserve component, but it would probably ultimately require a major
expansion of the U.S. military and hence a draft. The military’s
training infrastructure and the defense industrial base would have
to grow.”
It’s a frightening picture, and it seems almost as wildly
overblown as the DPRK’s rhetoric. After all, though the North’s
wild gesticulations are unsettling, this is the seventh time
Pyongyang has renounced the 1953 ceasefire reached. War has yet to
erupt. While one cannot take anything for granted, there’s no
evidence that Kim Jong-un and those around him have turned suicidal
after the death of his father.
The DPRK’s behavior almost certainly reflects other
considerations. Almost alone is Sheila Miyoshi Jager of Oberlin
College, who argued that the North’s “apocalyptic threats” are
primarily intended for a domestic audience. She added: “it would be
a mistake to read into them anything more than the noises of a
dying regime that clearly recognizes the writing on the wall.”
However, there’s a more basic question. Why is any of this
America’s problem?
One need not blame the U.S. for the DPRK’s behavior to recognize
that America is involved in Korean affairs as a result of its own
choosing. If Washington did not guarantee the ROK’s security and
station troops in the South, the North’s behavior would be largely
irrelevant for the U.S.
America’s involvement in the Korean peninsula dates to the end
of World War II. Washington’s intervention in the Korean War grew
out of the larger Cold War. The U.S. stayed for decades because the
South remained vulnerable to a threatening North allied with both
Maoist China and the Soviet Union.
None of these circumstances still apply.
The division of the Korean peninsula lies almost seven decades
in the past. The circumstances which drew America into that
region’s affairs are long over. The Cold War ended more than two
decades ago; the struggle between the two Koreas is no longer tied
to a global struggle with a dangerous hegemonic adversary. War on
the peninsula would be a humanitarian tragedy, not a strategic
disaster.
Washington’s ally has more than recovered from the Korean War.
The ROK has sped past the North on most measures of national power.
Indeed, South Korea has some 40 times the GDP and twice the
population of the North. Thus, the South is capable of defending
itself.
Nor do American forces on the Korean peninsula perform any
larger role, such as helping to contain the People’s Republic of
China. Seoul doesn’t mind being defended against unlikely
contingencies involving the PRC — which has no interest in
attacking the ROK, a country that would not be easy to swallow, let
alone digest. But Seoul would not make a permanent enemy of its
neighbor by helping America to protect, say, Taiwan. A U.S. request
to use South Korean bases in a war against Beijing for such a
purpose likely would lead to a collective nervous breakdown in
Seoul.
It is time for U.S. forces to go home. And to terminate the
American security guarantee for the ROK. Washington is broke. It
can’t afford to continue providing defense welfare to populous and
prosperous allies. And there’s no longer any security justification
for U.S. taxpayers to subsidize South Korea’s defense.
If Americans came home, Pyongyang no longer would be interested
in the U.S. The Kim family dictatorship is criminal, not stupid. It
threatens Washington because Washington’s military confronts North
Korea’s forces. Otherwise Kim & Co. would have as much interest
in America as it has in Europe.
The U.S. still would have a general interest in encouraging
nonproliferation. But a nuclear DPRK is primarily a problem for its
neighbors, not America. There’s no reason for Washington to take on
the thankless task of dealing with Pyongyang.
Indeed, Washington should inform Beijing that if North Korea
develops a growing nuclear arsenal America has no objection to
South Korea and Japan creating countervailing weapons. If that
displeases China, so what? Let the PRC apply real pressure on
Pyongyang to abandon the latter’s nuclear plans. In any case,
Americans should wash their hands of the issue.
There may be no more frustrating experience than dealing with
the DPRK. The U.S. has many problems, but North Korea need not be
one of them. Washington had reason to get involved in Korean
affairs in 1945, but the justification for doing so disappeared
years ago. It’s time to transfer the problem of the radioactive
North to others.
Photo: UPI
