SO. KOREAN ELECTION COULD MAKE THE U.S. 180° OUT-OF-STEP WITH NORTH KOREA POLICY
…Secretary Tillerson at Korean Demilitarized
Zone while North Korean soldiers take pictures.
Per Tillerson: “Let me be very clear: the policy of
strategic patience [with North Korea] has ended!”
I wrote many
years ago when writing for the American Chronicle On-Line Magazine
that: “Why is it that lately, when there’s
a Republican in the White House, we end up sending our best and brightest to
war, and later a Democratic president has to clean up the mess.”
Well, now it
looks like with what’s going on in North Korea, the latest Republican in the White House is threatening to do it all again.
While visiting
our Japanese ally, the Trump administration gave its clearest signal yet that
it would consider taking military action against North Korea. The new Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson said
Friday that “all options are on the table”
to deter the threat from Pyongyang.
With North
Korea making progress toward its goal of building a missile that could reach
the United States mainland, and with China being up in arms over South Korea’s
decision to possibly deploy an American antimissile battery, tensions are running high
in northeast Asia.
Tillerson’s
remarks were totally against any more ideas about having more diplomatic
discussions with North Korea.
“Let me be very clear: the policy of
strategic patience has ended,” Tillerson said at a news conference in Seoul
with Yun Byung-se, the South Korean foreign minister. He was referring to the
Obama administration policy of trying to wait North Korea out, hoping that
sanctions would prove so crippling that Pyongyang would have no choice but to
return to de-nuclearization negotiations.
“We’re exploring a new range of diplomatic,
security and economic measures. All options are on the table,” Tillerson
said, adding that while the US did not want military conflict, threats “would be met with an appropriate response.”
If you recall,
when the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said earlier this year that North
Korea is working on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking
the United States’ mainland. President Trump responded (as usual) in a tweet that said : “It won't happen!”
Looks like his
instructions to the new Sec. of State is as Trump always says, “Everything is on the table!” Including
possible military action.
Tillerson’s
remarks about ruling out diplomatic
talks and leaving the door open to military action, this will obviously fuel
fears in the region that the Trump administration is seriously considering what
are carefully being called “kinetic
options” by the Republican hawks in Washington DC.
Tillerson said
that diplomacy with North Korea has ‘failed’
as North Korea’s Pyongyang warns of war
“If they elevate the threat of their weapons
program to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table,”
Tillerson added.
What really
surprised everyone was when the South Korean foreign minister, Yun Byung-se appeared
to suggest that South Korea would support those military options.
“We have various policy methods available,”
said Yun, who will likely not be the foreign minister after the May elections
for a new government leader. “If imposing
diplomatic pressure is building, military deterrence would be one of the
pillars of this building. We plan to have all relevant nations work together
more closely than in the past and make sure that North Korea, feels the pain for
its wrongdoings, & changes its strategy,” he said.
But so far, sanctions
and diplomatic engagement have failed to convince North Korea to abandon its
nuclear weapons program.
But up to now,
former American administrations have long considered that military action was out
of the question because North Korea has artillery targeted directly at Seoul
just over the border. Seoul is the
capital city of more than 25 million civilians and many stationed US military,
and it is just 30 miles south of the
narrow Demilitarized Zone that
divides the two Koreas.
But even the president
of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, Hahm Chai-bong has
said that, “Military threats were
beginning to feel like one of the few remaining options for dealing with North
Korea. But up to now, the US and South Korea have never put much pressure on
North Korea or responded in such a direct way before.”
At one time
decades ago, there were tactical US nuclear weapons stationed in South
Korea. Today, some lawmakers in Seoul
are pushing for the return of those US tactical nuclear weapons. There is also increasing open talk in
Washington of military strikes against North Korea if the North does test a real
intercontinental ballistic missile. (One that could easily reach the United
States mainland.)
The Asan Institute
President, Hahm has said, “It would likely
come down to a question of who blinks first…..and we always blink first because
we have so much more to lose.”
This trip was
Tillerson’s debut in Asia, and so far, North Korea is his #1 issue. And this makes a lot of sense as the caldron of
tension and threats between all the parties just continues to grow.
First, we have
the outrageous young leader of North Korea who exaggerates his rhetoric against
the South and the United States. But
there is also the anger of the Chinese at South Korea and at the US with China’s
perceived interference of the US in the South China Seas which China has always
considered a Chinese territory.
Even though
the South Koreans and Japanese militaries have worked together with the US and their
annual military exercise in the Sea of Japan, this year the Chinese are unusually
upset with those exercises.
That is probably
because this time, the exercises includes multiple US aircraft carriers, nuclear
submarines and over 17,000 US military personnel.
What is really
concerning all the parties in this conversation is that in the comments made in
Tokyo about the issues with North Korea, Secretary Tillerson stated that “Twenty years of diplomatic efforts to
convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions had failed.”
He went even further in Seoul the next day, signaling that multi-lateral talks were currently not under consideration.
“Conditions must change before there’s any
scope for talks to resume, whether they be five party or six party,”
Tillerson said. The six party talks had been a multilateral effort toward
de-nuclearization involving the US, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas.
The group had previously met without North Korea on various occasions.
Tillerson did
make it clear that the US and its allies still had more options between
diplomatic talks and military action for convincing Kim and his regime to give
up their nuclear weapons. “There are still more sanctions that could be
applied, and China could put more pressure on North Korea”, Tillerson said.
He will head to Beijing on the weekend to try to urge the government there to
use more of its leverage over North Korea.
While in South
Korea, Tillerson toured the joint security area in the Demilitarized Zone, a spot
that former president Bill Clinton once famously described as “the scariest place on Earth.” North
Korean soldiers in helmets stood just a few feet away from Tillerson as he
stood at the line and inside the meeting hut. North Korean soldiers took photos of the
secretary throughout his visit.
“With his visit, he was sending a message to
North Korea: We are watching you closely,” said Park Cheol-hee, Professor
of international relations at Seoul
National University.
But the
reality of this area is that as the North Korean arsenal grows, most experts
see a seriously heightened risk of a ‘miscalculation’.
On top of all
this is that it has become significantly more complicated with the impeachment
last week of former South Korean President, Park Geun-hye on corruption charges. Tillerson met with the acting president,
Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is running the country until the new election is held on May
9. In his talks with the foreign
minister Yun, Tillerson had a readily agreeable ally.
But that could
change in early May as the opinion polls give a strong lead to the progressive
candidate, Moon Jae-in, who has vowed to steer South Korean policy toward North
Korea in a sharply different direction from the hardline approach taken by the former
conservative Park government.
Moon has
heralded a return
to the “sunshine policy” of previous
liberal governments. He has said he will resume economic engagement with North
Korea, including reopening the joint industrial complex that the former
President Park said was helping fund Pyongyang’s weapons and ballistic missile programs.
But regardless
of all this, the major focus is whatever can be done to protect the civilians
in South Korea from the 2 million North Korean soldiers that are just over the
border 30 miles from Seoul. One possibility
has been for the US to offer a new, High Tech anti-missile battery called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or
THAAD. This battery is meant to guard against the threat to South Korea
from North Korea's missiles.
Unfortunately, China has strongly protested the deployment of THAAD, fearing that the system’s radar
would be used to peer into mainland China.
Because of the
possibility of installing THAAD in Seoul, to
convince Seoul to NOT install THAAD, the
Chinese government is now inflicting serious economic pain on South Korea. They are banning many imports from South
Korea and stopping Chinese tourist groups from traveling to Seoul.
So, now it’s a
wait and see for the outcome of the new election results on May 9th. If the government changes to a more
progressive approach, the Trump/Tillerson, US policy would be 180 degrees out of
step with the policy on North Korea.
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