North Korea now says a peace treaty will “automatically” lead to a denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula:
Striking a peace treaty to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War would resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, a spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
The comments, carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency, came before a meeting of regional powers in Beijing on Tuesday for talks aimed at dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programmes in exchange for security guarantees and economic assistance.
“Replacing the ceasefire mechanism by a peace mechanism on the Korean peninsula would lead to putting an end to the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK, which spawned the nuclear issue and the former’s nuclear threat,” a foreign ministry spokesman said in the report carried by KCNA.
He said this would “automatically result in the denuclearisation of the peninsula”.
Well, since Seoul’s “important proposal” will apparently not be enough, perhaps the peace treaty will do. Or perhaps the peace treaty and economic aid? Or perhaps the peace treaty, economic aid and security guarantees? Or perhaps the peace treaty, economic aid, security guarantees, Seoul’s “important proposal” and a promise to send Condoleezza Rice to Pyongyang to polish Kim Jong-il’s nob?
You know, given how quick Seoul was to tell the U.S. not to bring up human rights and Japan not to discuss abductions, I hope the South Korean Foreign Ministry has set similar limits to the scope of concerns North Korea is allowed to address at the talks. For what it’s worth, Seoul did object when the North called for the six-party talks to be turned into mutual disarmament talks, so it will be interesting to note how they react to this latest “offer” from Pyongyang.
16 Comments
This would all be funny if it weren’t so mind-numbingly nut-driving. Clearly, the North Koreans learned how to negotiate from comic books. This whole process is a farce.
Marmot that was spot on about the topics Seoul doesn’t want discussed. You can tell from the Blue House pronouncements that it wants desperately to comparmentalize the talks so it doesn’t have to take a stand on the abductions (Koreans were kidnapped too) or the human rights conditions of their “brothers.”
Also, it might look be a farce, but the U.S. is wearing the clown makeup here–why did Rummy announce a unilateral draw-down from the border without at least making an attempt to get the norks to pull back a few (hundred thousand) of their troops on the DMZ? If I was KJI I’d be laughing my ass off at how easy it was to get everybody to cough up the ransom money, except Japan, but hey, S. Korea’s telling them to shut up, no worries. With the electricity from the South flowing for free and Hyundai getting ready to turn the North into a giant sweatshop (because the “tourist” business is just a pretext to getting first dibs on the labor pool) look for KJI and his successors to be around for years and years, maybe decades. Oh, and expect the nuke program to resume after a suitable pause.
The U.S. had the chance to at least attempt a quid pro quo with the troop reduction, but didn’t capitalize on it. The S. Koreans should actually be angry at this squandered opportunity to force the norks to at least address their massive forward deployment of troops as the U.S. draws down its own.
Even if the U.S. signed a peace treaty and pulled every last soldier out of the South, it would still have regional and humanitarian obligations that would involve dealing with the norks on some level, although with no military presence in the South, which I think would be a disadvantage. No peace treaty, an Air Force presence in the South (and a couple of submarines parked offshore) and pressure on China is the ticket.
Impotent proposal.
The problem with going for a quid pro quo would be that if the US wanted to make the move south, but North Korea balked, what position would the US have been in?
The US has been pushing for base consolidations since the early 1990s and the idea of moving off the DMZ was also not new. The US sees the move as primarily strategic and in its strategic interests, both to get away from a North Korean strength — forward deployed artillery — and as a possible first move out of Korea. US forces locked in at the DMZ are not considered as flexible or easy to pull out.
Deciding that you want to pull troops back because it makes sense to you, then deciding to use it as a poker chip with North Korea to get them to help you out by pulling back some of their own troops sounds good — but what if North Korea refuses? Or, what happens if they agree, then don’t follow through as you do?
Would the US then scrap its own move away from the DMZ? If it went ahead with the move even in the face of North Korea breaking its part of the deal, how would that make the US look? And how would it effect North Korea’s thoughts on how to negociate with the Americans?
Pinning you time schedule for strategic military changes on compliance with North Korea is not a good bet.
So Kim Jong-ill is the only one allowed to play a shell game with other countries? If the norks disagreed or reneged, you just move a few Patriot batteries up to Panmunjom–that would get their attention. Base consolidations are fine, but we’re talking about facing off against a country that constantly threatens war on all its neighbors. In that circumstance, the Pentagon saying “no problem, we’re leaving now anyway” is kind of stupid, frankly.
Stupid for who? and how?
If there is little chance North Korea would recipricate with a strategic shift in force structure —- NK artillery away from the DMZ thus lowering its ability to hit SK US forces and Seoul in an attack —- why is the US going ahead with its own plan — pulling troops away from NK artillery and short range rockets — to better protect US troops stupid?
If you are arguing that pulling the troops back lowers the deterent offered in your statement “but we?re talking about facing off against a country that constantly threatens war on all its neighbors” — and that USFK should only pull back if North Korea does - because a pull back of both troops would maintain or increase the deterent we currently have or would make the chance of war equally or more unlikely, that is an argument that can be made.
But, it would be a tough discussion to figure out how much deterent there is now vs what it would be like with US troops pulled back and North Korea staying put.
There is also the argument going around that the US pullback is designed in part to give it greater flexibility in striking NK with punitive or limited target bombing. The idea is that since US soldier would be harder to hit south of the Han, the costs of a short strike goes down.
And it seems clear NK worries that is the design. So, is that not somewhat of a deterent enhancement? Or an enhancement to prod NK into negociating?
I doubt it is a big one, but if pulling troops south of the Han is really good strategic thinking on USFK’s part, tieing it to North Korean concessions doesn’t make sense. Pretending you are making consessions when you are really doing what makes sense militarily for yourself is a good trick. But again, if North Korea won’t be suckered in, you should go ahead and move the troops.
The US isn’t likely to invade North Korea period. Baring some incredibly stupid move by Pyongyang.
So, US troops sitting on the DMZ zoned in by NK’s artillery, which it has developed as one of its key strategic elements, has been known as a hostage type situation for a long time.
Trying to get North Korea to pull back from the DMZ while you are planning your own move is a good idea. Going ahead with the move you think is best despite NK’s refusal, however, is not stupid at all.
If “at least attempting” means what it says, I agree, but since it is a move the US wants to make, it should make it anyway, and it would take some skill to convince them we didn’t really want to do it but were considering the “concession” if the North would reciprocate. One of the biggest problems is that we have a free press and open society, so it’s hard to fool people on something like that.
On Juggertha’s idea of the factions in the North, that is one reason I believe there is no solution to the nuclear problem. It isn’t just Kim Jong Il that has owed their fat life while millions starved.
When NK collapses, it will be interesting to see what happens —- will the masses born and raised for life on an oppressive system that steals your soul — lead them to relatively quietly accept whatever new government rises from the asses and whoever sponsors it? Or, will the total deprivation lead to a blood bath of a 19th C. or 14th C. scale?
What about the US? Unless the Koreas and others bunggle it terribly, the US will be a key to getting North Korea back on its feet, at least minimally, but how will the conditioned people in North Korea respond? Will the years of pumping their brains cause, once the shock of the opprissive state dieing wears off a little, into a triumphant love-fest with the US as something like rich aliens from another galaxy comging to safe the whole earth from a species killer plague? Or, will the deep distrust, hatred of the outside world carry over to a very high degree and lead North Korea into even more prolonged agony until 2 or 3 generations have passed (once the Pyongyang style regime of the past is dead)???
I have no clue….
In the initial hours of a conventional war, it’s a lot easier to accomplish things (getting ready to fight) if you don’t have to do it under immediate and continous artillery bombardment.
I commented here before on the possible “counterbattery” (anti-NorK artillery tactics) of US and ROK forces, but I didn’t emphasize just how hard a task this would be. It might take several days to accomplish.
With the recent withdrawl of one of the two 2nd ID brigades, in the one remaining Bde the US has only one infantry battalion left. The two US M1 tank battalions remaining (along with the attack helicopters and the MLRS battalions) are an extremely powerful force, but the best use of such a force is not in static fixed positions but in a “counter-offensive” role; ie, used to counterattack against a possible North Korean ground offensive, one that has penetrated some distance into the ROK from across the DMZ. After such a hypothetical June-1950-style attack by the North, such NorK forces will be away from their own heavily fortified positions defensive positions north of the DMZ, along with their own supporting “fixed” (dug in) artillery up there: they would then be extremely vulnerable to a combined air-land US-ROK counterattack.
Continued forward positioning of remaining US forces only makes sense if the US and ROK are going to “pre-emptively” attack across the DMZ themselves, or if it’s absolutely imperative to stop any penetration at all. But stopping such a penetration, particularly in the difficult terrain that prevails along most of the southern side of the DMZ, is a job for dug-in infantry fortifications behind intensive obstacle belts (the infantry’s job is to simply hold what they have while other forces elsewhere mount the counterattack).
In almost any possible scenario you can think of, such a cross-DMZ attack (by either side) is realistically out of the question in almost any pollitical context you can imagine. And the presence of the remaining US forces well forward long ago stopped being mostly a military issue, and assumed mainly political significance.
Not to mention that it would be extraordinarily difficult militarily for the US and the ROK to invade NorK across the DMZ, even if the entire current active strength of the US Army was deployed into forward positions in the ROK. The North has honeycombed their side of the DMZ with what are undoubtedly extremely heavy defensive fortifications in depth; these positions also serve to conceal their own forward deployed offensive strength (they would try to use their own mobile forces to counterattack against a US ROK invasion in a similar manner, though it would be a lot harder for them due to almost certain loss of control of the air).
Patriot missiles are not “offensive” weapons in any way; all they do is defend against aircraft and incoming missiles.
You can argue that in the opening stages of a war, the North can use the heavy bombardment of longer-range missiles to go after US encampments that have been moved to the south of the country, out of conventional artillery range.
However, such missiles are not particularly effective in knocking out “point” targets (ie a motor pool of parked tanks), unless of course they are capped with nuclear or chemical warheads. (Or if they are armed with “scatterable” cluster type bombs. But then, the question becomes whether the North has this capability. And if they do, do they have enough of them; and if they have enough, do they have enough confidence in the low “CEP” (circular error probability) of their individual missiles so that they can be confident of hitting very specific targets — the US motor pools and barracks).
Even with “cluster” type individual warheads, you’ve still got to burst these long-range missile at the exact right point in the ballistic trajectory so that the munitions come down right above your intended target. Even a “near miss” won’t do much against a parked tank.
Remember how Saddam’s long range missiles went up and then came down “where they landed nobody knew”; his aim was more a political statement meant to awe the world and his fellow Arabs, rather than an attempt to hit exact specific military targets in KSA, Kuwait, or Israel.
Plus the use of these missiles (even armed with only conventional warheads is a clearly stark political “escalation”, one that is an order of magnitude away from conventional short range (30 km or less) artillery. Look at the first Gulf war for an example; in the 6 week period of the air campaign preceding the ground campaign, the Iraqi and coalition forces had conventional artillery duels back and forth across the border. (I remember seeing some stories about such duels in the news at that time).
But how many people remember such artillery fires now, as compared to the way everyone remembers the “Scud” launches? The use of long-range missiles is both a military and a political escalation far beyond the use of conventional tube artillery (and short-range multiple-rocket-launch) fires.
This is why it makes such eminent good sense, both politically and militarily, for the US to “step back” and avoid the “first punch”, being then prepared to move in for a “counter punch”.
Plus the ROK won’t allow the USFK to do anything else anyway. And it’s long past the time that the ROK took over the entire burden of forward fixed defense of the DMZ themselves.
The North understands this military strategy all too well, which is why you hear an occasional squawk from them about the proposed USFK move south.
One thing that most people here are doing is presuming that the North has a directed foreign policy. There is at least a little solace in thinking that there is one mind behind all this lunacy.
But for all my observations I have noted quite a diverse set of “DPRK responses” this week alone.
I think we should possibly keep in mind the large chance that there are many seperate agencies jockeying for power/prestige/survival in the North.
USA–I think a unilateral drawdown of U.S. troops without at least attempting to get something from the norks in return is a mistake, and apparently you don’t. Cheers.
Much depends on the exact scenario of how any such collapse occurs. I don’t see how it can happen; China wouldn’t want it and won’t let it happen. And if it did happen abruptly in some unexpected way, I can’t imagine China not sending in troops to immediately stabilize the situation.
A hypothetical Soviet Union-style collapse (by that I mean an internal, more or less orderly collapse in such a manner that no outside power gets involved) would probably mean the establishment of a successor authoritarian goverment. I think it would be a much more intense and immediate version of a Putin-style regime (ie without any intervening period of “Yeltsin” style democratization).
For a hint of this, see the current posting at NKZone, where Lankov talks about the small business type entrepreneurs working in the area of China-NK trade. His source discusses how the NK state security agencies in the border areas are basically becoming protection rackets (not just against arrest by the state, but against local criminal hijack gangs).
Reminded me of the stories of the Russian mafia. I think this gives a hint into what life might be like in a successor “non-Communist” North Korean regime.
If there’s one thing Communism is efficient at doing, it’s destroying all old regime/ non-governmental sources of morality and ethics in society, given enough decades in power.
The mind boggles at how brutal and “Darwinistic” (survival of the fittest) society must be in North Korea.
If there’s any chance to avoid Chinese intervention, I think it would be if only the ROK were to be the one to intervene in the North. (Again, this assumes a relatively peaceful collapse of the DPRK; I don’t see how this could happen, but maybe those of you who know Korea first hand can see a possible, plausible scenario for this).
I suspect there’s more of a chance Chinese acquiesence in an ROK-only intervention could be obtained if US ground forces had departed from the South. And I suppose avoiding such Chinese intervention is what a good Korean nationalist would want.
Speaking for myself, I’ve got no confidence that the current ROK administration would be willing to undertake such a task. So, I’d be extremely anxious for the Chinese to get in there quickly and secure the nuclear weapons and chemical stockpiles, before some fanatic DPRK general or criminal gang decided to utilize some of them (or sell them on the black market).
Some interesting points, Paul. I think people have taken it too much for granted that North and South see each other as their own territory (the non-benign view) or that the two sides’ goal should be eventual reunification because they are the same nation (the benign view), such that with a government collapse then acquiescing to the South would be the natural thing to do. There’s little precedence for this kind of thing, but there’s little precedence for a divided country, too.
China might intervene, but with UN resolutions and world opinion on the side of a unified Korea independent of China (or Japan or the US or Russia), there would be considerable pressure against staying in the long term.
As for U.S. troops in Korea, I agree China would not want any troops along its border. The question is whether they would accept U.S. troops already in South Korea as the status quo or not. This is where a diplomatic touch is important. At the very least, Seoul and Washington will probably have to make assurances that U.S. troops will not be deployed to territory of the former DPRK.
I know you want to see all troops out of Korea, but it is especially after reunification where they will be important. The US military mission in Northeast Asia, including Korea, is not just to deter or defend against a North Korean and/or Chinese attack on Korean territory, but also to maintain stability in the region. That second function will be even more important after reunification, whether or not the Taiwanese situation is resolved (e.g., by some sort of political arrangement).
In the past 52 years, there has been almost total peace in this region, in only a slightly longer period before that, there have been four major wars fought over or in Korea. The U.S. leaving Korea would lead to a major vacuum filled by the Chinese (whether the Koreans wanted that or not) that would make Japan, Taiwan, and other U.S. allies very vulnerable, and lead to an arms race that would eventually boil over into real fighting, very possibly in the form of major fighting.
Like it or not, the U.S. is a damper on such escalating tension, and its presence is an essential source of stability here. For the political and economic interests of itself and its allies, the US military should remain in Korea afterward.
JTB, don’t believe the hype.
And just how many more decades do you think must pass before there will be “stability” in the region Kushibo? To me the model is Israel; at the center of the most “unstable” area in the world, yet the last thing Israel wants is US troops between them and the Palestinians to provide “stability”. Thank God for that, as I always shudder when someone (mostly from the liberal/Democratic side of the spectrum) occasionally brings up this chestnut (I think Friedman, the NY Times foreign affairs columnist, will bring this idea up regularly when he goes through one of his periodic emotional downswings).
The only thing our troops can do now is deter against a 1950-style NorK invasion across the DMZ, something that is impossible for them now as neither China nor Russia would logistically support such an attack by the North. And even if there were a DPRK total collapse tomorrow, China won’t want US troops being used to move into the North for “stability” (and the US troops in ROK now are not suited for such occupation duty anyway: what would be needed are infantry and MP’s, and ours are busy elsewhere right now).
The citizens of the ROK are determined to prop up the North with their own resources while clinging to us as a “Linus”-type security blanket (and regularly putting their “blanket” through the wringer when it suits them to do so for political purposes).
Taiwan has gotten along fine since the late 70’s with zero US troops (indeed, all they had before that were US advisors). Now their guarantee is only an “over the horizon” US presence; ROK can get by now with the same.
Israel and Taiwan aren’t perfect analogies for the situation in South Korea. Since the U.S. was never in either, a pullout of the U.S. never upset the status quo of stability.
Neither has either been the flashpoint or staging grounds for as many major wars as the Korean peninsula has in the past 110 years.
How long will it take for stability to reign? I don’t know. Maybe decades, maybe never. I don’t know. But it is worth it for the U.S. to maintain that stability for its own political and economic aims, not to mention its democratic ideals. It sucks that that might be the case, but that doesn’t make it any less true.