I was going to write a full critique of Cumings, but as a look out upon the blogosphere, it appears a number of people have already gotten to it. Kirk over at It Makes a Difference to the Sheep is probably the man to check out first. Personally, I have yet to see a more accurate description of Cumings than this:
Bruce Cumings is, for me, a admirable but maddeningly frustrating scholar. His work on the Origins of the Korean War, particularly the first volume, is meticulous, uses sources no one else had looked at before (and for the most part, still haven?t looked at), and, in my estimation, establishes the definitive baseline against which all future examinations of the how the Korean War began should be judged?especially when it comes to the Korean side of the story that is so often neglected by Western military historians. He is erudite, witty, and widely read. His prose is often forceful and while often provocative is seldom boring or banal. He has written more, and to more critical acclaim, than I can probably ever hope for. He has helped train some of the best Korea scholars of the up and coming generation. And, having had the opportunity to meet him a few times, he is a genuinely pleasant person.
And yet, when he writes for publications that are not explicitly academic or scholarly, he morphs into a polemical partisan who has seemingly cast any pretense of scholarly objectivity aside in an effort to educate (and denounce) the rest of us unenlightened cretins. He names names of those who he deems to be slaves to money flowing from Washington or Seoul. He engages in ad hominem attacks on those he doesn?t like with gleeful abandon. For example, in his book War and Television he refers to Fouad Ajami as an ?Uncle Tom?? (123) and Charles Kuralt as a ?fatuous toady?? (118). And while many of his individual critiques and criticisms have a certain logic to them, they often seem to combine to create a less than persuasive or harmonious whole.
Kirk then gives Cumings arguments in the LRB a much more balanced treatment than I could ever give them. Just a sample:
So if the DPRK really did intend to use enriched uranium to make nukes, it is still all America?s fault, because of the slow pace of ?Washington?? (e.g. Republican-controlled Congress). I am actually somewhat sympathetic to this view. Too often in the U.S. the perception is that the U.S. kept its end of the bargain and the DPRK didn?t. In actuality, both sides prevaricated, hedged and dodged. The American team figured the DPRK didn?t have long to last (Kim Il Sung had just died, remember) and so to promise LWRs was acceptable because they would end up being finished and run by a ROK-dominated unified Korea. And Republican lawmakers did slow up fuel shipments and continually complain about the Agreed Framework. But, when confronted with American intransigence, it seems to me that the DPRK had two choices: it could play nice and try to convince the U.S. of its genuinely good intentions, or it could embark on a course that, if discovered, even the most engagement-friendly of the Clinton Administration couldn?t sanction. The DPRK, apparently, chose the latter course.
You are encouraged to read the rest of Kirk’s commentary on your own. This brings me to Jessica Harbor’s treatment of Cumings over at jessicaharbour.com. Like Kirk’s analysis, Jessica’s commentary deserves to be read in full - all I will do is treat you to a sample below. Concerning Cumings’s misreading of Japanese attitudes and those goddamned quotation marks he feels the need to encircle evidence with:
Besides Cumings’s apparent misreading of the Japanese stance, why does he put “evidence” in quotes? The kidnappings of Japanese civilians are clearly not evidence of nuclear ambitions; they might be, however, evidence that North Korea is a nasty and oppressive country, and not one necessarily inclined toward holding up its end of the deal. Unable to cite hard evidence that North Korea’s nuclear capabilities haven’t increased — in fact, at one point he admits that even Clinton officials cast a nervous eye on North Korea’s importing of enriched-uranium technology in 1998 — he instead chooses to denigrate any evidence that doesn’t support his thesis that North Korea would have disbanded its nuclear program if only we’d given it a few smiles and some aid.
Towards the end of the article, Cumings seems to endorse a plan that would give North Korea a non-aggression promise and $2 billion a year if it agreed to the end of its nuclear program and “the beginnings of a dialogue on human rights”. Again, this is pretty much where Kim Dae-jung was going, complete with cash handouts, so why can’t Cumings point to results from the sunshine policy — or mention it at all? As with the Gourevitch article, if he were to explain why the sunshine policy didn’t work or how Bush trampled it, that would be one thing; but to ignore it completely smacks of either big Bush Bad! blinders or a desire to keep a weakness out of his argument.
The plan to which both Cumings and Jessica refer - the plan being pushed by scholars Michael O’Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki - is one on which I’ve dealt with at length in previous posts. Beware, Kirk - I cite “End Of North Korea” boy Nicholas Eberstadt.
Barry Briggs weighs in with his views as well. Writes Mr. Briggs:
Bruce Cumings is a scholar and historian whom I greatly respect; his magisterial two volume Origins of the Korean War served as a primary source for Land of the Morning Storm. However, his recent essay in the London Review of Books, entitled “Wrong Again,” fails to live up to his reputation.
Cumings dismisses claims about North Korea’s nuclear arms buildup while simultaneously justifying that country’s development of such weapons as a deterrent to a belligerent US. He rails against US plans to build smaller, more targeted weapons that can reach deep underground bunkers — where, he admits, North Korea does indeed stockpile chemical and biological weapons, and possibly (in our view, almost certainly) nuclear arms as well.
Cumings condemns US policy toward North Korea as hostile and condescending — and then makes remarks like Maybe Bush’s resentments have something to do with the widespread perception that both leaders owe their position to Daddy. This sort of thing is unbecoming a great scholar.
I make flippant remarks on my blog all the time, but then again, I’m just a hack English teacher at Kwangju University. When the University of Chicago calls me to teach Korean History, I’ll adjust my style accordingly. Anyway, Briggs concludes:
Cumings writes: Loud in prattling about American sovereignty when it comes to the UN, these officials see no other country whose sovereignty they feel bound to respect.
Given North Korea’s attitudes, belligerence and history, however, I ask: Why should we respect its sovereignty? Should we have respected Nazi Germany’s sovereignty and allowed the Holocaust to proceed?
Would not the region, the United States, the world, humanity itself be better were we to rid the planet of this evil regime?
One has to be a little careful drawing analogies between the DPRK and Nazi Germany - unlike Germany in 1939, North Korea is a poor, failed state surrounded by larger and much more powerful nations. To his credit, Briggs doesn’t draw that particular analogy, but I felt I should make the point anyway just in case anyone out there was thinking along those lines. And yes, I find it difficult to believe that anyone can believe that the world wouldn’t be better off without without the North Korean regime - even William Perry, when drawing up his (much criticized on this blog) review of North Korea policy, was quick to point this out. Certainly, NATO undertook two interventions in the Balkans to put a stop to human rights abuses than come nowhere even close to the horrors being inflicted upon the North Korean people by their own government. Unfortunately, in this case, realpolitik raises its ugly head - do we want to start a potentially devastating war on the Korean Peninsula to put an end to a regime that will collapse on its own if simply left to its own devices? This is not to say that I do not care about the North Korean people - I do, and I think its much to the credit of the Bush Administration that its shown much more concern for human rights abuses north of the DMZ than has the last two South Korean Administrations (and, I should point out, I’ve made it clear that while I do not support military action against the North, I don’t support enabling said nation through aid, either). But we have to be realistic here - as terrible as the situation in North Korea is, it might very well pale in comparison to the human suffering that would result if, God forbid, the shit ever really hit the fan around here.
Kevin at IA takes a shot at Cumings, too:
So according to Cummings, the reasonable and reliable Norks have been trying their damndest to get those crazy, irrational Americans to understand that if they’d only approach negotiations “genuinely,” the entire situation would be magically solved! Stupid Americans…why can’t they comprehend such a simple solution?
Needless to say, Bruce doesn’t seem to understand that while ‘package deals’ sound nice in theory, the devil is in the details. He makes the entire tradeoff sound quite easy, when anyone involved knows it’s nothing of the sort. His summary also implies that North Korea is itching to find a comprehensive solution, but the stubborn Americans really don’t want a solution:
We could have solved the North Korean problem years ago but our leaders have chosen not to try (Clinton is an exception), and in this new century we are all the worse for it.
Nice of you to lay that responsibility bag on every leader’s door but Clinton. Kinda tipped your hand there, didn’t you Bruce?
The North Koreans have spent the last 50+ years doing everything they possibly can to piss us off (and in some extraordinary flagrant ways) - can they really be surprised that the Americans have shelved the “understanding” and responded with hostility?
Anyway, this is the blogger reaction as I’ve seen so far. If anyone’s got a link to anyone a little more sympathetic to Bruce, I’d love to have it, because this post is starting to look a little like a Cumings gang bang (not that he doesn’t deserve one after the LRB, in my opinion).
11 Comments
The Cummings article was such a nice, big, slow moving target that I figured other Korean Bloggeristas would be all over it. So I decided to work on the China-Taiwan thing for a bit.
Don’t worry though. If I have time to finish the Taiwan stuff this weekend (I will need at least two more posts), I will bring it back and show what it means to Korea.
BTW, go over to my blog and lend me your Arabic skills. Or did you forget?
My Arabic was always pretty shitty - heck, I doubt I can read it anymore.
Robert, You say: “But we have to be realistic here - as terrible as the situation in North Korea is, it might very well pale in comparison to the human suffering that would result if, God forbid, the shit ever really hit the fan around here.”
Is that really true? Let us go back in a time machine 10 years and have a war that brings an end to the Pyongyang regime. Well, such a war would have killed a lot of people. But would it have killed as many people as died of starvation and illness and from being in concentration camps? It would have killed different people and South Korean and American people. But might it on balance have saved more North Koreans than it caused the death of South Koreans?
We face the problem going forward of trying to guess what the death toll will be for continuing to leave the Pyongyang regime in power. How to count that per year? What sort of spike will there be if the Dear Leader sells some nukes to some Middle Eastern customers? There’s a lot of uncertainty in trying to guess the numbers of those future deaths.
I think Cummings is getting too much credit from the majority of
the blogs you quoted from. He did a damn good job with his research
for the two part work he won his fame on, but even there, his bias shines
through and does, in my opinion, damage to the value of the work.
I recommend it to everyone who wants to know about Korea, but it
sure isn’t hard to peg where Cummings is coming from.
I asked someone who went through school with Cumming, and he confirmed
much of my guess about him. He is clearly a product of the Vietnam Era.
They way I described him in this conversation is that he has made a career
out of trying his damnest to make the Korean War the Vietnam one.
This other well-known Korean scholar said, “Sure. At that time, with all
the stories coming about about how the US government was lieing to us and doing
all this nasty stuff, you started to ask questions about what other terrible things
they’d been doing.”
Cummings isn’t alone in this. He is a part of his generation. It was also a generation
that had significant numbers of intellectuals who fought hard to ignore the reality of the
Soviet Union well into the 1980s, because they wanted to believe in an alternative system to
the corruptive nature of capitalism they saw especially personified in the United States.
But Cummings is a more extreme version than the norm from this group. He is still doggedly
fighting the battles of the 1960s and 70s.
And I think people should call him on it.
He does show it most in these articles. Search around the internet and find his reaction to
the AP story of the Nogunri Massacre and see how much Vietnam colors his thought.
And heck, I’ll go even further. Cummings is a dangerous type of intellect, much like the Korean-
German Song. They have the allure of great scholarship and have great intellect,
but that just makes their final products that much worse.
What I mean is, how many of you after reading Cummings believe, if he were made Ultimate Arbitrator
between North Korea and the world, he would work things out in a way that they would be so much better?
That his great scholarship has lead him to understand the situation better and thus able to make it all
great if he had the power to do as he wished?
That is what bothers me greatly about people like Cummings and Chompshky and Said.
They are so wrapped up in finding ways to strike at what they don’t like, they distort reality to the point
they hamper making things better.
The fact that I’ve heard from a couple of people that Cummings has thin skin and a sharp tongue when people
critize his giving a pass to North Korea on most occasions only makes me feel I’d dislike him as a person as
much as I dislike his career as a scholar.
Hey, what’s this “Mr. Briggs” stuff? It’s “Barry” fer cryin’ out loud.
marmot not wanting a gangbang, i’ll provide a wee bit a’ coitus interruptus.
first off, a bit much is being made by many of cumings the supposed jerk and not enough about the issue at hand. while i’ll grant that character flaws obviously must be taken into account in assessing the validity of fact claims (especially in the maddening absence of source citations… lord, undergrads get eviscerated for less), it seems that much (i’m not saying all) of the criticism is based on avoiding the policy issues.
that said, i think IMADTTS skillfully captures the crux of the dilemma (sorry marmot, for filling your blog with another’s work, but s/he doesn’t have comments)
“As for the contention that ???๋ฑo one really knows what Bush wants from his Korea policy,??? I thought that Bolton made it clear: The End of North Korea. The determination of Bush to eliminate the Kim Jong Il regime and his unwillingness to treat Kim Jong Il as if he were simply another world leader is exactly what Cumings et al have pilloried Bush for. In this case, I think they??ั๊ฝre right: refusing to acknowledge or deal with North Korea may make the U.S. feel morally consistent but it probably won??ั๊ฝt make the regime go away any time soon and, therefore, will do little to relieve the plight of the North Korean people.”
Now, i’d say the bipolarism of the Bush admin. is indeed true and can be found within the State Department. Powell has been far more on the diplomatic side (see http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2002/10983.htm where Powell says “we wholeheartedly support South Korea’s sunshine policy”), even as Burton takes the “crime and punishment” (leon sigal’s term) regime destruction approach.
More importantly, it is IMADTTS’s final assertion that seems irrefutable.
Unless you feel that agreement in any shape or form = appeasement, perhaps you can overcome the distaste for Cuming’s partisanship to acknowledge that the reason he spares Clinton is because under Clinton (via Carter of course) progress was made, while under Bush, domestic politics or personal conviction are making such progress impossible. In sum, the hard line is in effect, no line.
For those who shun “agreasement,” let’s just say that your moral calculus is far more cold than even the former CINCROK, Gen. Luck (no commie hippie obviously), who has assessed the situation as such: “If you fight, you win. But you spend a billion dollars, you lose a million lives, and you bring great trauma and hardship on the psyche of both countries, so I’m not sure winning is a win. . . Every day we don’t fight, we win.” (http://www.thebulletin.org/iss.....sigal.html)
Granted it’s a shitty win, but at least one in which the peninsula remains habitable (even if, yes, that habitation means the repression of the DPRK).
A little off topic, but I would recommend that those who advocate regime change at all costs to take a short while to meditate on Young-hae Chang’s powerful “Operation NuKorea”. While it is obviously wrong to compare the power of such art to the harrowing testimony of “Hidden Gulag” and the other material at freenorthkorea.net, it does provide some flesh and blood, if even abstractly (yes, a paradox, i know… such is art), to our contemplation of the ultimate “what if?”
I think Parker had it right, and is just what the last
comment is saying as well –
It is easier for South Korea, China, Japan and the US to
watch NK’s die alone than seek regime change and lead to
death of the citizens of any of those other countries.
I just wish the rest of the people would admit that choice.
But they never do, do they? They cringe from the word “appeasement”
and switch it to terms like progress and diplomacy and “finding a way”
to “turn North Korea around.”
We would rather pretend we are going to get “adequate inspections” and
use aid as a means to force NK into reforms, but the reality has always
been —- the cost of seeking a North Korean collapse (and possible
explosion outward) or take them out through direct military confrontation
are to high.
I should say, because it is the central point, we mean “costs to us”
because the cost to the North Koreans is going to be high no matter
which path is taken….
But at least we get to feel better about ourselves….
chubbybee - feel perfectly free to fill my blog with other people’s work - most of my blog is, in fact, filled with other people’s work. I should also point out that, my problems with some of his procedures aside, I have heard from one of Cumings’s former students (one of my professors at Kyung Hee University) that he’s a pretty cool guy; speaking personally, my criticism of him stems less from his character flaws than his playing fast and loose with proper academic norms.
Your comments are well taken, and I agree that a war with the North Koreans is something that we should try our best to avoid. We are greatly assisted in this aim, however, by the fact that North Korea would like very much to avoid a major conflagration as well, especially a major conflagration it knows it can’t win. I’m not convinced we need “progress” to avoid the situation described in Young-hae Chang’s “Operation NuKorea” - assuming that the North Korean leadership is concerned, first and foremost, for its own surivival, the regional power structure (with North Korea at the bottom) guarantees that, barring a miscalculation of truly biblical proportions, North Korea will not be starting a war anytime soon. And frankly, even IF the US decided to launch airstrikes against North Korean nuclear targets, I don’t believe the North Koreans would respond by starting a regime-terminating war. I say (and will continue to say) a lot of bad things about the North Koreans on this blog, but two words I have never used (seriously) to describe the North Korean leadership are “crazy” and “suicidal.”
One more thing before I go - the “progress” made during the Clinton Administration was no “progress” - it was a lost bet. It’s fairly common knowledge now that the concessions made by the North Koreans were made with the expectation that North Korea would go belly up before the US had to make good on those concessions. The North Koreans, for their part, hedged their bets as well by continuing a clandestine nuclear program. Given that the “progress” was based on false expectations from everyone involved, it seems to me rather poor term to apply in this case.
I’d write something much more coherent, but I’m a bit sleepy at the moment.
I think Marmot is exactly right. I’ve written about that on my blog. That there is a fundamental contradition in the convential wisdom on NK — that they will fly into full war at the drop of a hat and they are obsessed with regime survival.
It dawned on me when NK intercepted the US spy plane in internatinal air space that NK seeks to understand well what it can and can’t get away with.
The intercept was such a weak action by NK. They have done much worse and could have done many other things to put greater pressure on the US — like testing a nuclear bomb or firing another ICBM or any number of things they’ve done over the years.
They held back, I concluded, because they knew they couldn’t afford to alienate China at at time when China is finding it hard to sit on the fence with big US pressure.
The North Korea that calculates that much wouldn’t not respond to a US provocation with “total war” as everybody says. They would have to strike back in a significant way, because they must maintain the “crazy Koreans!” image, because it gains them so much leverage in negociations and garners them much needed riches from the scared nations.
But any tit-for-tat use of the military could spiral out of control.
So again, the calculation is that it is better to watch the North Koreans die alone than risk the shedding the blood of others.
Thank you so much!
First, let me give kudos to the Marmot for such an in-depth site. It’s refreshing to see thoughtful analysis on things Korean from the ex-pat perspective.
I myself am a five-year resident of Korea, so I naturally am interested in the subject at hand.
I am originally from Chicago and I still manage to keep up with the “worldview” from my hometown. One way I do this is to listen to WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR station. BEZ has a program, titled Worldview, that does a good job of educating the locals on global issues. And whenever an issue related to Korea arises, they call in none other than Bruce Cumings. Last spring, I listened to a ten-minute clip with Bruce and the host discussing the “rise in anti-Americanism” in Seoul. What I listened to blew my mind.
In Chicago (and elsewhere for that matter) the name “University of Chicago” carries a massive amount of weight. Mr. Cumings proceeded to blame American troops, and their heinous crimes against the Korean people. I was so infuriated. At the time, I was working as a teacher trainer for the city of Seoul and I was acutely aware of the true origins of the xenophobic attitudes found on the peninsula. As you all know, the media, eucation unions etc., have fomented this feeling for a long time.
Anyhow, I felt strongly enough about it to send Mr. Cumings an e-mail stating what I saw as the real sociological reasons behind the phenomenom. His response was stunning. I should have saved it……but basically it read like a mad-blogosphere leftist rant about imperial rapists (he asked me to imagine foreign troops stationed i Central Park raping American women!!!)
I had a hard time believing that a grown man had written it, let alone a U of C professor. I suppose it’s possible a TA (Korean) wrote it, but after reading about Bruce’s previous inability to move out of the 60’s, I’m pretty confident it was him.
I have no opinion about his scholarship, but I have a strong suspicion that he is a man who starts his research with a conclusion, and works backwards from there.
PING:
TITLE: Eyes on Korea: 12-09-2003
BLOG NAME: Winds of Change.NET
JAN 9/03 TOPICS INCL: Masterful analysis of reunification, Future of U.S. Forces Korea; South Koreans killed in Iraq; China & Korea fight over ancient history; Josh Marshall on Korean diplomacy; Riots; Bruce Cumings attacks; Hunger strikes; North Korea…
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TITLE: more Korea goodness
BLOG NAME: jessicaharbour.com
Believe it or not, that’s Lee Young-ae of Joint Security Area and One Fine Spring Day fame, channeling Madonna circa 1986.Anyway, the Marmot has posted another roundup of posts and reports about Korea over on Winds of Change. I…