It’s the WaPo piece everyone’s talking about. Conrad posted on it, as did the Infidel. Here’s some of it below:
Nowadays, it seems impossible to understand why so few people, at the time of the Auschwitz liberation, even knew that the camp existed. It seems even harder to explain why those who did know did nothing. In recent years a plethora of respectable institutions — the Vatican, the U.S. government, the international Jewish community, the Allied commanders — have all been accused of “allowing” the Holocaust to occur, through ignorance or ill will or fear, or simply because there were other priorities, such as fighting the war.
We shake our heads self-righteously, certain that if we’d been there, liberation would have come earlier — all the while failing to see that the present is no different. Quite a lot has changed in 60 years, but the ways in which information about crimes against humanity can simultaneously be “known” and not known hasn’t changed at all. Nor have other interests and other priorities ceased to distract people from the feelings of shame and guilt they would certainly feel, if only they focused on them.
…Later — in 10 years, or in 60 — it will surely turn out that quite a lot was known in 2004 about the camps of North Korea. It will turn out that information collected by various human rights groups, South Korean churches, oddball journalists and spies added up to a damning and largely accurate picture of an evil regime. It will also turn out that there were things that could have been done, approaches the South Korean government might have made, diplomatic channels the U.S. government might have opened, pressure the Chinese might have applied.
Historians in Asia, Europe and here will finger various institutions, just as we do now, and demand they justify their past actions. And no one will be able to understand how it was possible that we knew of the existence of the gas chambers but failed to act.
Pretty powerful stuff. What makes it even more powerful is that, for the most part, it’s true — the crimes against humanity that have been allowed to take place north of the DMZ are far greater than those that were used to justify other post-war humanitarian interventions, such as the NATO campaigns in the Balkans, UN intervention in Somalia, and the Tanzanian invasion of Idi Amin’s Uganda in 1979. Yet the world has stood by and watched, which isn’t exactly without precedent, considering the failure of the international community to act in other instances of politically-induced human tragedy, such as Rwanda, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Biafra.
I do have some problems with the WaPo piece, however. Firstly, as I pointed out in a previous post, it’s based on a BBC report that may very well be untrue. Keep in mind, I’m not saying that the DPRK is above the use of chemical weapons on its own people — I’m willing to grant that North Korea’s leaders are willing to sink to the lowest depths of depravity in order to keep their hold on power. When you have the Western press, however, making a big deal over a piece on gas chambers in North Korea that may very well be false, it becomes ammunition for South Korean “progressives” who will then use it to call into question ALL reports of gross human rights violations in North Korea. There are enough firmly documented evidence of systematic human rights abuse in the DPRK that it’s completely unnecessary to run a report using a) testimony of a defector who may not have been who he said he was and b) a document that may have been doctored. Ironically enough, the BBC may have actually set back the cause of human rights in North Korea by convincing South Koreans that the West really is simply trying to demonize the North, and they’ll go back to watching cooking shows in P’yongyang and, of course, electing governments that pump money to North Korean leaders.
The other problem I have with the WaPo piece is that while it’s all fine and good to talk about how the international community is sitting by and watching North Korean leaders commit auto-genocide, making viable policy suggestions about what to do about it tends to be problematic. I’m all for regime change in North Korea — I’m of the opinion that as long as the regime exists, the very nature of its decision making process guarantees that it will remain a threat to American interests in the region. I certainly do not condone, as South Korea’s leadership clearly does, helping the regime stay in power because one’s afraid of having to clean up the mess that would result from a North Korean collapse. At the same time, however, a foreign policy based on emotional responses to gut-wrenching tales of atrocities abroad is one that is doomed to fail (as the Infidel points out, the Americans do have a touching yet infuriating — to foreign policy realists, anyway — tendency to “moralize foreign relations”). Yes, a Northeast Asia sans North Korea is a better place for all involved, but policies must be framed with the aim of making North Korea disappear without a) capital cities in major trading partners getting flattened and b) lots of American troops getting killed. And that would seem to preclude direct intervention.
Reports like the one in the WaPo are important, because they force us to confront the reality of what we’re are dealing with in the North. Even if the United States does, in the end, cut a deal with the North Koreans during the 2nd round of the six-party talks, it should do so fully aware of the nature of its negotiating partner. The danger with the piece, however, is that it might lead some to abandon their commitment to rational policy making. And that’s a danger we’re all better off avoiding.
12 Comments
My thoughts from yesterday here…. http://californiansojourn.blog.....ntrat.html
Mainly ranting.
Deterence deters. That explains much of the policies involved with NK and will continue to direct them.
Not because of you, but I’m getting tired of the “morality” angle. What does it mean? What are the examples of major policies carried out for “moral / religious / mystical emotional” reasons?
Too much is blocked in our thinking by getting hung up on some post-Spanish Inquisition post-Vietnam hippie era knee jerk reaction to the idea of “morality.”
You either hear people saying, as we are on NK, that we don’t need some cowboy moralist in the White House crusading due to some moralistic rampage.
Or, the very same type of person is telling us how the US sat and watched as half a million people were killed in Rwanda or how we didn’t care when millions were butched in Cambodia and what not.
I honestly — I mean honestly — no longer have any idea what people are talking about when they mention “morality” and foreign policy….
You made some excellent points–you can see the double bind the US and other donor nations confront, that by giving any kind of aid to the norks it indirectly or directly props up the regime, and ironically the camps, so the same people saved from famine die from forced labor…really sad state of affairs.
Others have said the “best” option, to avoid flat-out war, is to cut off all aid and basically hope for mutiny from within, but Kim seems too wily for that to work, and it’s next to impossible to get SK and China behind that. I suppose that’s why some people want to chop the Gordian knot with an airstrike….
It’s an outstanding column! You make a good point about emotional reaction in foriegn policy. Interesting that she chose the liberation of Auschwitz to open her piece and at the end of it suggests diplomatic pressure. Did she forget the USSR’s diplomatic failure with Nazi Germany? While I, too, don’t advocate a policy that would leave our trading partners’ capitals flattened, I really don’t think any negotiation with the DPRK will be productive, it never has in the past.
Robert, do you think you could expand on your comments about the gulags, and basically “write an apology in advance”.
You are right. When the whole world is liberal democracies, which I expect will happen in my lifetime (don’t laugh, how many saw the Soviet Union collapsing in our lifetimes?), our children will ask what sort of monsters we were that we allowed a form of slavery (dictators) and torture (brutal dictators).
In addition, they will look at the GDP of the combined western forces, and they will look at the OOB of the combined western forces, and say “cakewalk”. As that other reference says, “a few hours and the nightmare for everyone will be over”.
I have seen people giving the US a hard time for policies in South America and Vietnam, without any understanding for the communist dagger at our throats at the time. Once again, looking back at what Russia is now, and adding up the West’s GDP, it is so easy to dismiss the threat and claim we had no right to back right wing dictators.
I’d like to see something that we can give to the survivors of the gulags, and say “sorry, we wanted to help, but here’s what we were thinking at the time”.
Personally, in the same way that I blame the USSR for the fact that USA had no good choices in South America et al, I would similarly blame the Chinese for not shutting down the oil supply. Basically, that bit of the Cold War hasn’t finished yet.
But maybe I’m just making excuses. What’s the best option for an advance apology? A list of actions, and feared repercussions at the time?
If it ever comes out that the NK army was praying daily for us to attack so that they could surrender, and all we needed to do was say “bang”, people are going to be pointing fingers at us for being paranoid, stupid etc. They won’t listen to us if we say “we didn’t know that at the time”. Maybe if we document it NOW though, it won’t be classified as “revisionist history”.
The reality is that NOW, we have no idea what state the NK army is in. They could be brainwashed fanatics. Or they could be starving to death and praying for us to invade and bring food with us. It’s only NOW that we can write down genuine feelings. The moment after the war and we find out the truth, every Tom, Dick and Harry will be saying “it was obvious that “. Just like they did with the Soviet Union, and the claims that backing dictators during the Cold War was completely unnecessary. Some even want to charge Kissinger with war crimes. Amazing but true.
The Iraqi army didn’t defect to our side when pushed, as some people expected. Nor was every city fought for to the bitter end. Nor was it necessary to wear a gas mask, but the soldiers at the time weren’t wearing them as a “cover” for “Bush’s lies”. The revisionist history has already set in on that one.
If it turns out that NK is a paper tiger, after they fall certain folks will wonder how our intelligence could have been so wrong…(sigh!)
I wouldn’t count on the paper tiger too much. The recent article about how NK has built extensive production and protection facilities underground shows that NK has not simply wasted away its resources or pocketed them in Swiss bank accounts like so many other dictatorial regimes has done. I’m sure the morale of the troops must be low, because I can’t imagine people not being effected by watching the society starve to death, but there is probably a sizable core who owes everything to the regime and will be toast without it. Their motivation will be high. And also, the regime has been very effective at blocking knowledge of the outside world and its influence. This isn’t the same as in Iraq. I hate to say it, but even though they did it at the expense of the masses of its citizens, NK has accomplished much of what it wanted….
When you say “wasted away its resources”, what resources? This is not Iraq where at least there is a no-brainer “sell the oil” pathway to riches for one dictator. As for blocking access to info from the outside, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. It is human nature to imagine that the grass is greener on the other side. I asked a Russian if they knew that the west was better, or whether they believed their propaganda, and she said that everyone knew.
People may be able to maintain “revolutionary zeal” for a year. Maybe. But when you don’t see the fruits of the revolution, the gloss shines off pretty quickly. Gorbachev took down the sign on the kremlin which said “work harder, comrades” when asked if he honestly thought even 1% of people were inspired by it.
When the UN forces were in retreat in North Korea, they were evacuating by ship. Huge numbers of civilians tried to move south. Maybe they were the school dropouts who hadn’t learnt about the glorious revolution?
In actual fact, when you’re that far down the food chain, “standard of living” appears to be more important even than “personal freedom”. Even the gloss of being able to democratically elect your own representatives doesn’t make up for not having a VCR. That’s why the Russians hate Gorbachev instead of naming him “father of free Russia”, like most in the west would do (I hope!).
Our own countries have sacrificed millions of lives and much treasure to maintain our freedoms. Others would trade it for a VCR, nevermind rice. I doubt you’ll find 1% ready to sacrifice all for their “Dear Leader”.
“Paper tiger” is a very realistic possibility. But unfortunately, we don’t have enough scientific data to be able to accurately assess NK reaction. We can’t compare to what happened when we invaded Poland to overthrow the communist dictatorship, because we never did. Even if Iraqis and Afghans and Koreans were all the same race, same culture, same history, even then we couldn’t compare.
In Afghanistan they fought because they thought they could win when the ground war started. They thought they were invincible for the same reason much of the west thought they were too.
In Iraq, the bulk went home, but there was a hard core that remained to the bitter end. Even now I don’t know whether that’s because they believed their own propaganda, or didn’t want to lose privileges, or racist against whites/Christians/Shiites.
As soon as NK collapses, everyone will be saying how obvious it was that xxx yyy zzz. But right now, from where I’m sitting, there are heaps of theories, all of which sound very possible. Also, even with exactly the same enemy, the tactics that are used may make a difference.
E.g. maybe they will defect if we drop food parcels on them, overwhelmed that we’re the first people to ever give them something nice. Or maybe they will think we have been growing flowers instead of building weapons all this time.
Maybe massive strikes will make them surrender, or maybe it will piss them off that we didn’t give them a chance to surrender, and unleash their own barrage out of spite.
Maybe if we were to strike the capital, the guys in the trenches would realise it was only the leadership we were after, and they hate them even more than we do, so they rise from the trenches dancing.
Who the hell knows. All we know for sure is that as soon as we do find out, there will be fingers pointed at us saying “it was obvious” and “you lied about the danger of NK just to ensure that defence contractors got funded”.
By the way, I’ve talked to plenty of Chinese, from mainland China, and haven’t found any who long for democratic Taiwan to liberate them from their dictatorship. In fact, it’s pretty hard just to find ones who think that it is quite reasonable that people in Taiwan would not want to give up their capitalist democracy to be the slave in the master-slave relationship of a communist dictatorship.
And there’s enough moral bankruptcy in my own democracy (we shouldn’t invade Iraq because Bush the liar is more evil than Saddam the rapist). I wouldn’t want to stake my life on any “obvious uniform response” from the North Koreans.
Although like I said, “work harder comrades” will generate a pretty uniform response, so nor can it be dismissed out of hand either.
Either way, we need an apology for either not recognizing, ignoring, or avoiding a confrontation with, what is basically modern-day slavery. When there are no more dictators, our children will be asking painful questions. The same questions German children ask about what exactly the Jews did to deserve being incinerated. “Seemed like a good idea at the time” won’t be good enough when we reach that day.
And I personally think/hope that if we play our cards right, we could have obliterated dictators from the face of the earth in about 20 years. Did you see that wonderful domino effect Iraq/Libya/Pakistan/Iran?
Can you imagine a UN that signs off on the invasion of Burma et al? They sort of signed off on Korea, don’t laugh too early. No-one thought the USSR would collapse either, remember. Much easier to crack the UN than it was to crack the USSR, I reckon.
To start with something from the end first, the German childern were asking why their father’s had killed the Jews. The guilt in the US for letting the holocaust happen isn’t too high.
Next, I’m not so sure about the Russia knowing part either. I saw a special on that time, and a Russian buisnessman who went to England when things were loosening up brought home a video tape he had shot at a grocery store. The special showed it. It was just shots of him walking down ailes filming fresh fruits, canned food, and what not. He said when he showed it to his mother, she could do nothing but cry, because the reality of just how much they had been lied to hit home.
The resources NK used to build up what is a good deterent came from China and the Soviet Union before they cut NK off after the end of the Cold War.
You are right, we have no idea what the spirit of the NK people is like now, but NK has made itself a much more isolated nation than any other similar regime we’ve dealt with. I read an article that interviewed refugees hiding in Manchuria, and they said that things like video CDs and players had been trickling into the country so people could see the outside world and that such things were having an impact, but I don’t think it is too strong yet.
And I think the biggest problem is NK’s first strike capability. Missiles and bio agents don’t have morale problems. Even at the most optimistic level, we won’t be able to keep them from firing some devastating salvoes if they decide to fight fire with fire. If I can find the link to the article about the underground fortresses NK has built to protect artillery and other military weapons as well as whole factory communities for war production needs. I think it gives a glimpse at how NK has built up a fairly good deterent.
On the subject of US guilt about the holocaust not being high. Damn right. In my opinion, and I’m not pretending to represent my country (Australia), if the US wants something to be ashamed of, it should be the fact that it watched an ally, the UK, get pounded into the ground, and the only thing it could bring itself to do was sell weapons. At the end of the day, I can say thank the gods for the US selling those weapons, the alternative doesn’t bear contemplation. And it certainly made up for it by being the one who subsequently took pole position against the USSR, while others were threatening to pull out of NATO etc, or inhibiting those protective forces from doing their mission because (shock, horror) they might have been carrying nukes.
On the Russians not knowing. Let me give you an analogy you’d probably understand. Now, you already knew that Saddam’s goons raped women, and fed them to dogs etc. You know these horrors exist. Did you ever break down and cry when you heard about them? Now I ask you to imagine what would happen if you met an Iranian (sorry, don’t have a similar Iraqi picture). If you were in th same room as this Iranian woman, and she stripped off in front of you to show you what had happened, would you break down then? Imagine she is 2 metres away from you.
http://www.homa.org/Details.as.....2083225413
Next point, the NK resources. You’re talking about weapons that were donated. Of course the USSR and China didn’t give the man free cash which he could put into a Swiss bank account.
Regarding the first strike bio-agent. My understanding is that no-one knows how to spread bio-agents without incinerating them in the process. This is one of those things that will be “obvious” after we find out for sure that they don’t have any good way to spread it either. But honestly, what sort of nutcases are these South Koreans that they built Seoul withing artillery range of the DMZ?
On the subject of South Korean nutcases. Correct me if I’m wrong, but South Korea democratically elected a president on an anti-US platform, and furthermore, undermined our efforts in bringing NK to its knees by sending them cash. In addition, they make tearful movies about their brothers loving them, and they hold anti-US demonstrations, and claim that the US is more of a threat than NK, etc etc etc, right?
Well I reckon it’s time to find out whether the money they sent in brotherly love was well spent or not. I reckon pull the US troops out of South Korea, and then bring in the carriers, and start bombing. I’m not sure what the NKs will actually do in response, but certainly no innocents will get hurt. The Norks, who harbour no ill will towards their brothers in the South (who at this point will be saying the most vile things about the aggressive US, yada yada), certainly won’t be striking Seoul. The majority in SK agree that they have nothing to fear from their brothers, and I completely agree with them. Nothing to fear boys. Don’t mind us.
Depending on what happens after the bombing (make sure all oil pipelines are part of the deal), we’ll decide what to do next. I consider this to be a proportionate response to the NKs seizing that spy ship that allowed the Soviets to read all US traffic for a decade or something.
I’m willing to negotiate. Hu Jintao? Knock, knock. Oil. Off. As many Olympic hockey/figureskating medals as you want. Our power to give, yours for the taking. Ask any Russian.
The only downside I’ve been able to figure out so far was my grand project to buy a new motherboard and install 4 gig of memory (maximum addressable by 32 bit processor) on it, just because I can! But if it becomes expensive for me, I’m sure Hu will be spending the next 50 years fossicking for old Commodore 64s. Think once. Think twice. Think oil off. It’s that easy.
Oh, and I know what you’re thinking. Iran will supply NK by ship, right? Iran. What a great topic to move on to. They’re the ones who sponsor terrorism, and violate the NPT, aren’t they? These people never cease to amaze me how they go out of their way to draw attention to themselves.
Oh, and don’t forget to click on that link I gave you above. Just when you thought there was something immoral about bombing the crap out of dictators and imposing the will of the people onto the government, as opposed to imposing our own will onto the people…
On the resources the Soviet Union and China gave NK, I heard an interesting story from a Russian prof in the US who is a linguist on Korean, but due to his linguistic skills, often had dealings with the delegations and stuff from North Korea. (This Russian was all for the military option to get rid of Korea by the way, but was the lone voice on this panel discussion.) Anyway, the guy said he wanted to show you how a place like NK thinks. He said they had taken most of the gold they had gotten from the Soviet Union and used it to build a foundation for a mega-statue to Kim Il Sung. They didn’t have enough money to finish the statue, so they asked for more gold, and the Soviet Union said no. Just an interesting story. My orignial point was that they put the resources to good use.
I am probably near you on one idea — I think NK would want to limit any military exchange to something short of total war, because it knows it can’t win. But, it must also strike back - at somebody. It has to maintain the terror effect.
I simply don’t expect enough people will agree that the US can bomb NK and accept the losses in South Korea and/or Japan.
If this is the path the government decides to go for, it will have to create a foundation for the case that at least a strong majority of Americans will accept.
We’d have to put pressure on NK to the point of them firing the first shot somewhere. Like shooting down a spy plane instead of harassing it or another Peublo incident or such.
Even this will come with strong backlash from SK, perhaps Japan, and certainly China and Russia just as it has in other instances.
And we’d have to do other things to “sell” the military option like putting out much more information on just how horrible the NK regime is.
I can’t really see it happening, though, at this point in time.
As for the shame of not helping the UK in WWII, I’ve always thought it was not a great American moment, but it wasn’t taught too much as shame in school. At least where I went to school as a kid, it was taught as a sign of the type of collective foreign policy the US “used to have” and why we were doing things like taking on the Soviet Union at the time. A “we learned our lesson” message.
I’m not sure it will strike back “at someone”. Yugoslavia didn’t. They just tried to shoot the planes down. If they start shooting at Japan/South Korea, hopefully that will make them start taking a tougher line. In fairness to Japan, I think US forces should vacate Japan prior to launching strikes, so that whoever NK chooses to strike, it will be a non-belligerent. Which will prove that they were an intolerable element in the region, that needed to be dealt with in the first place! Bit of a circular argument.
And a bit like that “test” for witches they used to have.
But yeah, there’s no good options, and that’s why the extreme hesitance. But I can assure you, the moment we find out that NK was one month away from internal collapse when we launched a preemptive strike etc, people will be making tearful documentaries about how stupid we were, how obvious it was at the time that NK had nukes (they had announced it, and many smart people in the west had warned that this was the case) and was prepared to use them on Tokyo and Seoul and Los Angeles. The arrogance of warmongers in the west brought destruction to three western cities. And the lesson we learnt from that was to take arms away from warmongers, and that disarmament is the best policy. Diplomacy would have saved the day. It is obvious that a bankrupt country can’t operate indefinitely. We knew from the USSR that collapse was imminent.
Oh, and the other documentary that is currently being made as a backup is how the NKs were still 1 year away from making the nuke that ended up taking out Los Angeles, and we failed to act. Our generation was too stupid to have learnt the lesson from WWII about striking a growing threat before it got out of hand. The signs were there, both that they didn’t have nukes (all weapons need to be tested, even a 4 year old can tell you that), and that they intended to sell them to terrorists (they announced that they’d sell it to anyone already, and we knew they were short of cash). What were we waiting for? A message from God? Obvious, obvious, obvious. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
By the way, another option I would put on the table is an economic blockade of China. I’d like to see how many are willing to run the gauntlet. It’s about time some of these people were put on the spot. If you are really an enemy, show your face now. Make sure it’s worth the cost. And let the new Cold War begin.
I don’t think that it is too much to ask China to shut off the oil supplies, given that they were directly responsible for creating this problem in the first place. We’ll even forgive them for all the westerners they killed 50 years ago, if they clean up their own mess this once.
There’s probably a nicer way of asking them though. I’ve never been very good on the “how to win friends and influence people” side.
But seriously, we do need to document this now. Everything is “bleeding obvious” with 20/20 hindsight, and even you and me will be saying “yeah, the signs were certainly there that xyz”. Because the signs for ANY CONCLUSION are ALREADY here. It’s only NOW that we can’t tell which signs are correct. We will be calling ourselves stupid if we don’t document our feelings now. After the event is not the time to be making excuses for a knowingly incorrect interpretation. It is NOW that we are operating with imperfect knowledge. Something that will be lost on our descendants, and given no weight.
Did you notice any left-wingers saying that our soldiers didn’t need to wear gas masks on the way to Baghdad, at the time? Did you notice any of them saying “forget the gas masks, forget civilian deaths, has someone remembered to secure the libraries and museums - an essential part of military planning?”? They became a fountain of wisdom after the event, and everything was bloody obvious to them. I don’t know how these people manage to keep a straight face, but they do. And they sound really intelligent too, not simply dismissed as morally bankrupt, revisionist, wishful thinkers.
PING:
TITLE: “No One Will Understand”
BLOG NAME: Barry Talks!
Moving piece in the Washington Post about the plight of North Korea: …it will surely turn out that quite a lot was known in 2004 about the camps of North Korea.