Trump Tweeting to a New Korean War?

Last week, Trump threatened Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) with war tweeting, “North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them!” He followed it up by sending an “armada” towards the Korean peninsula, consisting of aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, submarines, and a number of other ships, and told Fox Business Network, "We are sending an armada. Very powerful...We have submarines. Very powerful. Far more powerful than the aircraft carrier. That I can tell you.”

Anybody with half an iota of knowledge of the Korean situation would know how North Korea and its leadership would react to this threat of war. With the memory of the Korean War, they have responded that if their existence is threatened, they would retaliate with missiles and nuclear strikes.

Sixty four years after the Korean War that devastated North Korea, we are again seeing military threats of a new Korean War. While the Trump administration is threatening military strikes against North Korea for its continued nuclear and missile development, the developments themselves are being presented as the result of an “unstable” and “volatile” Kim Jong-un. That there might be a reason for this apparent madness of the North Korean leaders, is not a part of any western mainstream media report.

What the mainstream media has completely blacked out is that North Korea has offered, and China has repeated their offer, to scale down their nuclear bomb and missile program, if the US and South Korea stop their annual military exercise on North Korean borders. These exercises, south of the 38th Parallel that divides the two Koreas, is carried out every year and is seen by the North as a threat of invasion. It consists of the US and South Korean forces simulating the crossing the 38th Parallel, amphibious landings, and decapitating the North Korean government. This time, the exercise is being carried out by 300,000 South Korean soldiers, 17,000 US soldiers and a smaller set of forces from Japan and Australia. 

Military exercise involving such a large body of troops, can very easily be a camouflage for the real thing. Just to set the record straight, a similar exercise in 1987 that India had planned only 100 kilometres from the Pakistan border -- Operation Brasstacks – had set India and Pakistan on a collision course. AQ Khan had then threatened the use of nuclear bombs, and the Pakistan military was convinced that the exercise was a prelude to an actual Indian invasion.  Though the Indian media remained unconvinced about the aggressive intent of this exercise, Lt. General Prem Nath Hoon, wrote in his biography that General Sundarji had indeed planned Operation Brasstacks to precipitate a war with Pakistan. In his book release, “The Untold Truth”, Gen Hoon said, “Brasstacks was no military exercise, it was a plan to build up a situation for a fourth war with Pakistan.”

The US has been using its annual large scale exercise close to North Korea's border to ratchet up military tensions every year around this time. This forces North Korea to mobilise its forces and disrupts its economy. North Korea has to make large investments in its military that it can ill-afford.   For the world, the Korean War is a forgotten war. For North Korea, which lost 1 out of 5 of its people, savage bombing of its cities and towns, it is very much a part of its living memory. Every year that these exercises take place, it is this shadow of the US genocidal attack that North Korea re-lives.

For North Korea, the Korean War is very much a part of its recent past. Every family lost members, cities and towns were flattened, everything of value was bombed. Napalm was used extensively. Even McArthur, the architect of the Korean War, was sickened by the mass killings of civilians – women and children. He stated during the Congressional hearings (quoted in Anti-communism, the Korean War, (1950- 1953), Jon Halliday, The Socialist Register: 1984), “The war in Korea has already almost destroyed that nation...I have never seen such devastation...I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man, and it just turned my stomach, the last time I was there. After I looked at that wreckage and those thousands of women and children and everything, I vomited...” (MacArthur Hearings, Vol. 1, p. 82).  At the same hearings, Gen. O'Donnell testified, “...I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name...” (Vol. 4, p. 3075).

And before we let amnesia overtake us, let us remember that McArthur wanted to not only use nuclear bombs to destroy the North Korean and the Chinese forces, but also seal off the border with a radioactive belt. In an interview given in 1954 and embargoed until after his death, MacArthur said, “I would have dropped between 30 and 50 atomic bombs...across the neck of Manchuria.” Later he planned “to spread...from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea [i.e., across the middle of North Korea]...a belt of radioactive cobalt...”

By building nuclear weapons and missile delivery capacity, North Korea is not acting irrationally as the western media argues, but with economic and strategic rationality. If the US threatens North Korea militarily, it costs much less to build nuclear and missile deterrence than match it in conventional military terms. This is the lesson that North Korea has learned from the NATO's war on Serbia, Iraq and Libya.

The western media charges that the 1994 US-North Korea Agreed Framework collapsed due to North Korea entering into a clandestine arrangement with AQ Khan and starting a uranium enrichment program. What they forget to mention is that North Korea had carried out its end of the 1994 bargain, dismantled its 5 MW reactor, stopped its plans for 50 and 200 MW reactors, and put under IAEA the spent fuel from the existing 5 MW reactor. It was the US that did not hold up its end and refused to start the construction of two 1,000 MW Light Water Reactors for 8 years. George Bush (Jr) took over as President in 2002. Bush and his team were looking for an excuse to blow up the agreement, and reports of North Korea pursuing a uranium enrichment program provided just that. John Bolton, Bush's Ambassador to the UN said, “This was the hammer I had been looking for to shatter the Agreed Framework.” He has recently proposed that the US ends North Korea's nuclear program by “is to end North Korea”.

The US “suspended” meaning reneged on its obligations under the 1994 Framework Agreement, effectively “shattering” the agreement. Bush administration demanded North Korea dismantle its nuclear and missile program before any talks could resume. North Korea walked out of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and started its nuclear bomb and missile program. They now have nuclear weapons and missiles. They already have missiles that can reach Japan and South Korea. It is only a matter of time before they have long range missiles as well.

This is what it is what North Korea is putting on the table. No military exercises, against its capping and even drawing down its nuclear and missile capability; negotiating a peace agenda in Korea. This is what the US rejected every time North Korea has made this offer, and again rejected out of hand under Trump.

The US wants to retain the right to cross the 38th Parallel that it had done under General McArthur, and take out the North Korean forces. It wants that North Korea should dismantle its nuclear and missile programs. Otherwise, it will “solve the problem”, presumably through military strikes and war, with the real possibility of nuclear exchanges in the Korean peninsula such a war will destroy much of South Korea, North Korea and possibly Japan. Seoul, South Korea's capital is within artillery range of North Korea. This would be a disaster for the Korean people and much of East Asia.

The danger is not that we will get a new Korean War and a nuclear exchange as a part of a thought out US policy. The danger is that we are caught in Trump's desire to look good on TV and social media. A world where a US President tweets himself into a ruinous war.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Newsclick.