The Trump administration is sending mixed signals about what it might do in North Korea, from suggestions of a first-strike military attack to talks aimed at reining in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, reports Dennis J Bernstein.
By Dennis J Bernstein
On Aug. 1, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. is not pushing for regime change in North Korea, but some White House insiders say President Trump is considering going to war. Meanwhile, North Korea claims to have made progress on delivering a potential nuclear strike on the West Coast and beyond.
A map of the Korean Peninsula showing the 38th Parallel where the DMZ was established in 1953. (Wikipedia)
Tillerson, while saying the Pentagon has updated military options, admitted that a confrontation with North Korea could be catastrophic and suggested that there was still time for negotiations backed by economic pressure.
“We do not seek a regime change, we do not seek the collapse of the regime, we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula, we do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th parallel,” said Tillerson, referring to the border between North and South Korea.
“We’re not your enemy, we’re not your threat but you’re presenting an unacceptable threat to us and we have to respond.”
I spoke to Flashpoint’s Special Correspondent for the Koreas, Kay Jay Noh, about the volatile situation that could become a full blown confrontation at any time. Noh, who was recently in China and Korea, is a longtime political activist, writer and teacher. I spoke to him in Berkeley, California, on July 31.
Dennis Bernstein: U.S. pundits and certain Trump administration officials are talking about a “first strike,” a “limited strike.” We are flying bombers over the peninsula. What is your understanding of the situation on the ground in both countries?
Kay Jay Noh: I was in Korea and China recently and the situation on the ground is very different in the two countries. In Korea, people are going about their lives as if things were perfectly normal. In China, there is an escalation to war. It is rather covert but those preparations are becoming more and more evident.
What we do know is that on July 28, the North Koreans launched a Hwasong-14 ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile]. This missile traveled to an altitude of 3,725 kilometers and a distance of 998 kilometers. It was in the air for 47 minutes. So it is clearly an ICBM that has the range to reach the continental United States. The experts are still out on whether the reentry vehicle worked or not.
All of this raises the temperature considerably. As always, the US has stated that all options are on the table. [UN Ambassador] Nikki Haley has said that she is not going to go to the UN anymore because there is no point in doing so. The prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, together with Trump, has said that they are “done talking about North Korea”–ominous last words perhaps.
Again, it is important to point out that North Korea’s missile program is a deterrent one. They do not have a first-strike policy, and they have reiterated on numerous occasions that they are willing to cease their nuclear program if the US will cease its military maneuvers against North Korea.
DB: We need another geography lesson on how close Seoul [the South Korean capital] is to the front lines. What might such a first strike look like?
KJN: A first strike might be on a nuclear facility, it might be on a launch facility, it might be a targeted attempt to take out the leadership. The thing to remember is that the North Korean border is closer to Seoul than Seoul’s main airport. The North has between 7,000 and 12,000 conventional artillery pieces pointed at Seoul and could obliterate the city in a short space of time. Estimates are that between 30,000 and 300,000 people could be killed in the first volley of artillery fire.
North Korea has been using what is referred to in the defense parlance as a “tit for tat.” Every time it perceives a threat, it responds either rhetorically or militarily. The problem with tit for tat as a conflict resolution process is that it often leads to misinterpretation and a spiral of escalation. It seems that we are getting close to a point where things are no longer predictable.
DB: Because the United States refused to sign a peace treaty in 1953 [to officially end the Korean War], we are still essentially in a state of war.
KJN: Korea was forced to open to the West in 1886 by a sort of gunship diplomacy. Since then the Korean relationship with the United States has been a very conflicted one, despite the way it is portrayed in the media.
Seriously wounded North Korean soldiers lie where they fell and wait for medical attention by Navy hospital corpsmen accompanying the Marines in their advance. September 15, 1950. (Photo by Sgt. Frank Kerr, USMC)
Douglas MacArthur said of the Korean War [1950-1953] that “This war will result in a slaughter such as has not been seen in the history of mankind.” This was literally the case. The North was razed to the ground, bombed into the Stone Age, napalmed into one long barbecue pit, and then intentionally flooded. By any reasonable measure, the people of North Korea have grounds now to fear for their safety.
Since that time, they have been threatened with nuclear annihilation on multiple occasions. Twice yearly the US conducts military exercises that include the decapitation and occupation of North Korea. Colin Powell threatened a couple of times to “turn North Korea into a charcoal briquette.” This is a chilling statement for a country that had 50,000 gallons of napalm dropped on it daily for three years. So despite the arguments that North Korea is totally irrational, it would be more rational to conclude that it is acting out of concern for its survival.
DB: You mentioned the war games, which happen off the coast of Korea twice a year. But there is also a serious move forward by the United States with the “Pacific Pivot.” The program was put on steroids by Obama and includes complete domination of the region by land, sea, air and space. Can you talk about some of the new weaponry that might be making the North Koreans and the Chinese a little jumpy?
KJN: China has been surrounded by some 400 military bases. There has also been economic warfare, legal warfare, information warfare, and cyber warfare. This pivot that was put in place by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama involved the installation of THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense], which is essentially an assault system. South Korea has already installed the THAAD system, through some rather irregular maneuvers, by bypassing the parliament. It did this very rapidly, putting these facts on the ground before the new administration could take office.
The Chinese are most concerned by the radar component of the THAAD system. This radar uses waves on the level of about one inch long. This means that they have a very high resolution and they render the entire nation visible and transparent for US intelligence purposes. This is technology that hasn’t been used before and it makes China extraordinarily vulnerable to the US. They want this system removed at any cost.
There were early indications that [newly elected South Korean] President Moon was going to renegotiate the system and perhaps even push it back. But in the wake of this recent launch, he has said that he is going to put in place right away the four additional launches that have been awaiting clearance.
DB: There were recently national elections in South Korea. The new president seemed to be moving left, he seemed more willing to negotiate with the North. But now that is all sort of going by the wayside and Moon is doing the “go along to get along.”
KJN: Yes, I think that’s a pretty fair assessment. The geopolitical picture is such that he doesn’t have a lot of maneuvering room. He did go to Berlin on July 12 and put forward his North Korean doctrine, which was that there was going to be no attempt to force reunification or to force North Korea to collapse, and there would be some friendly gestures, some cultural exchange. So there was some general language of reconciliation and an apparently genuine attempt to deescalate the situation. All of that is put on the back burner now with this recent launch and the strong rhetoric coming out of Washington.
DB: What should we be careful to monitor at this point, as we move toward the brink of war?
Secretary-General António Guterres (left) addresses the Security Council ministerial-level meeting on the nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). At right is Rex W. Tillerson, U.S. Secretary of State and President of the Security Council for April. Behind Tillerson is U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. (UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe)
KJN: It is anybody’s guess at this point because so much of the language has been contradictory. On the one hand there is the viewpoint that the North Koreans are a joke and you don’t have to give them anything. All we have to do is besiege them and they will collapse. This was the doctrine known as “strategic patience” during the Obama administration.
The UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, has said that she is not going to go to the Security Council this time because resolutions there are violated with impunity. The rhetorical stance is that Beijing must finally confront Pyongyang. But China’s interests regarding North Korea and the interests of the United States are diametrically opposed.
It is foolish to assume that the US will outsource its foreign policy to China when China has opposing interests. That is not going to happen. Furthermore, the Chinese and the Koreans have a relationship that goes back millennia. If you travel to Korea you realize that what you are seeing is Chinese culture preserved in a sediment form.
In a word, we have to watch things very carefully and hope that we don’t cross the threshold into even minimal military action. That would have cascading effects that are catastrophic.
Dennis J Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net.
I saw this story a little bit ago.
h**p://thehill.com/homenews/news/345745-north-korea-has-new-miniature-nuclear-weapons-us-officials-say
Believe it or not, my very first thought was this: how much of that new weapon was from the US of A via the CIA and Iran.
“George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb?
I’ll probably never know, but was this a factor in North Korea’s incredibly swift progress? Or has the CIA been busy with similar projects?
h**ps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/jan/05/energy.g2
Naturally I could be quite wrong in thinking this was some spooking gone wrong. After all, the Military Industrial Complex may be doing this sort of thing routinely to keep the gravy train rolling.
In my day during the Korean War, there was widespread talk about US “encirclement of everything Communist (Russia, China, etc.). There is no change today except that the encirclement is more sophisticated. US thrust is still on world domination, a point Gore Vidal made in “Empire” written over 50 years ago. No. Korea was prepared to defend itself at great sacrifice during that war and their resoluteness doesn’t seem to have changed. American “exceptionalism” is the same disease.
The 38th Parallel has not been the border since 1950. The de facto border since the 1953 armistice does not follow the 38th parallel at all. Tillerson is showing off his ignorance just like his boss does.
How would any small country feel if someone with a huge war machine and a record of using it to devastate countries, would frequently have huge military exercises right on your borders for exactly the purpose of attacking and devastating your country? Plus constant blaring mega-amped sound systems on your border broadcasting threats constantly. The US ego cannot stand it that this little country has defied their threats of annihilation for all these years, even after we devastated their country once already, literally killing about FIVE MILLION of their people.
It’s disheartening to me to hear anybody talking about “the numbers are manageable.” Ten million people live in Seoul, many of them in the downtown area. What “manageable” numbers would those be, I wonder. How many would “manageable” be to satisfy this cold and materialistic guess at damages? We might also ask what North Korea’s one million person military would be doing from just across the way in an attack. On the other side of the Han river Seoul stretches out, as with L.A., toward an airport miles away. But the heart of the city is close to the North. You can see it, with its low ancient rocky mountains just over there. As to the style of Kim Jong Un, first of all he has been groomed with the appearance of Kim Il Sung, who is revered like a saint. His truculence is very Korean–not that they are truculent but they will give you their views openly and brashly. They are sometimes spoken of as “the Irish of the Orient.” They are the opposite of the Japanese style in being in your face types. Additionally, they have reason to be angry, and to mask that anger with humor and bravado. The history is plain in America’s trying to destroy them. The US troops on their streets are also not always diplomats, often reflecting in their street behavior the arrogance of US know-nothings and posturers. The war games twice a year are insulting, abrasive, stupid, inciting to the very attitudes America sanctimoniously puts down. And all of it to mask the real reason of being there–not in fear of this tiny country that wants to be left alone, but to reinforce the hegemonic poisoning of the global well with a policy of one world-ism for power and profit paraded hypocritically as “democracy.” This we know well and have been watching unfold for at least the past 20 years, and Trump led his campaign audience to think he knew it also. Instead we have more pretense of toughness in a little man who is probably very frightened at what he’s gotten himself into.
I remarked that destroying 700 artillery pieces is a much more practical proposition than wiping out 12,000 of them. How that is “disheartening” is a mystery to me.
No one wants a war in Korea, but it seems pretty obvious that Kim is trying to provoke a very volatile Trump. That scare me more than him trying to provoke a cool headed Obama
Kim Jong Un realizes the importance for the survival of North Korea of standing up strongly to the threats from Donald Trump. This determined defensive stance has been demonized by American propagandists as a crazy, aggressive, out of control leader. This is the opposite of the truth. Kim is a dedicated protector of the people of his nation by the only effective means left to him, due to the threats and persecutions of the US government. If anybody is crazy and dangerous, it is the US government that refuses North Korea’s repeated offers to sit down and work out a stable peace together.
The leadership of the US, whomever ‘they’ are, needs to end the war with N Korea. Then a binding treaty needs to be negotiated, by some cool headed diplomats of which we seem to in short supply at this time. I believe any strike on the North would be the death of most of the Korean peninsula and could/would escalate into a catastrophic disaster for all involved. Both Russia and China share a border with the North and my guess is they wouldn’t look the other way. We need some cooler heads than I’ve seen lately to de-escalate the growing tensions of late. Remember N Korea just wants to be left alone to do their thing and from what I see their actions are mostly defensive.
I don’t think there is any real danger of the US geting into a war with North Korea. Trump is desperately trying to kill Russiagate without actually making war on Putin. So he’s fishing around for some other war to fight: China, Iran, Yemen, ISIS, anything but Putin, in fact. Precisely that fishing around is enflaming Russiagate rather than killing it, so Trump will sooner or later put NK on the back burner and stand up to Putin.
Stand up to Putin? You really are a neocon nut aren’t you Michael? i don’t think you are a troll, you are too sincerely wrong for that. I think you probably see most everything on this site to be terribly wrong and untrue – the same way most folks here see you!
yo Donald, keep on DISTRACTING the plebs “baffling with BS” and your own very special brand of buffoonery while ATTEMPTING to trash the United SNAKES Corp, Sodom-on-the-Potomac, D[e]C[eit] “smoke-and-mirrors cabinet”. Might want to be a little more careful though about flying glass slicing off that huge scrotum.
The US news media has been hyping the North Korea threat. It gives them good material to run with when they don’t have a Russia leak story to print. Is Trump stupid enough to attack them, or will he realize that a move like that will do huge damage to the US?
Never underestimate the stupidity and instability of the Donald.
Trump isn’t stupid, but his being a complete and total ignoramus makes the distinction a very fine one. The man has handed off his role of Commander In Chief to the generals. They aren’t ignorant, but could be instead ambitious fanatics. Which is just as dangerous for us and the rest of the world.
I would ask how the author can claim North Korea doesn’t have a “first strike” policy when that nation doesn’t even have a “first strike” missile capability. And also, it seems to me extremely unlikely NK would give up its investment in nuclear weapons in exchange for only a cessation of maneuvers.
That’s an awful lot of artillery, so I made a search on that topic.
h**ps://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/03/11/why-north-korea-cant-flatten-seoul/
All of a sudden the numbers are manageable. Assuming a US/SK attack, the sky would be full of recon aircraft, both manned and unmanned. The instant a big NK gun or rocket was fired, the site coordinates would be noted and transferred to overhead aircraft carrying big missiles and/or big bombs. The large NK cannon and rockets wouldn’t be operating for long.
The physical damage to Seoul would be awful, but I’d dispute the casualty count. Evacuations would have already happened, and shelters of all types would be stocked and full of people. This assumes North Korea couldn’t manage to transport one or more of their nukes to Seoul.
China is poised to intervene again, both to offset an invasion and to stage a mini-land grab of its own. Look at a globe/map and you’ll see China is only about 10 miles from the Sea of Japan on the north end of NK. I’d expect them to have their naval base there shortly after the shooting ends.
IMO the Trumpies aren’t capable of organizing a 1-float parade, so their starting any kind of war in Korea would be a disaster for most everybody. Especially the Koreans.
“All of a sudden the numbers are manageable.” (With regard to how many could be killed by a mere 500 of these long range artillery pieces aimed at Seoul.)
You seem to be making a pretty good argument for those who favor a first strike against North Korea, like Donald Trump.
Since the first strike proponents are mostly talking going nuclear, the consequences of such an attack go far beyond Korea. The bean counting armchair warriors in the pentagon (where the beans are human beings to be sacrificed on the altar of the war machine and it’s supposedly lofty aims) never care to calculate the overall effects of their Grisly “games” on the fate of human beings going into the future, if there is one.
That wasn’t my intention. I’m merely claiming that if an attack is made on North Korea those fortified big guns need to be destroyed as quickly as they are uncovered. Since the US and South Korea have been examining this for the past half-century, they might know the location of most of the hidden cannon.
Notice that “if” – probably an attack is a bad idea. I’m not a strategist, and even if I was I don’t possess enough information about the situation to make a call. In my opinion whatever settlement is made must involve China. But China has its own agenda, and a national chip on the shoulder as well. They may not want to rock the boat in any way whatever. But why not dicker with China to find out? That’s where the unimaginable incompetence of the Trumpies comes into play. I doubt if they even know what they want, let alone how to negotiate towards that goal.
Still an opinion, but there is presently no possible justification for the US or anybody else to use nuclear weapons in North Korea. Any attack on that nation – preemptive or retaliation – can be handled with conventional weapons. Should North Korea attack somebody else with its own nuclear weapons all of that changes, of course. Even then a nuclear retaliation might be neither necessary nor desirable. If the leadership which ordered use of the A-bomb has dug itself into a deep mountain, possibly a tactical nuclear weapon would be needed to exterminate them. Presently I can’t imagine any scenario where the US would need to bomb NK cities with nukes, napalm, or anything else. Doing any of that would be a genuine war crime – but considering recent US Imperial behavior with the illegal invasions and bombings and torture, who cares about war crimes anymore?
It should be absolutely clear that if the United States starts a war in East Asia that leads to hundreds of thousands or millions of victims (in North and South Korea and possibly Japan), the United States will be treated as a pariah nation as long as it exists in the present form, and the rest of the world will unite against it.
Don’t count on it. All the wars & covert/overt regime changes the US has executed since WW2 have not dented its position as the world’s “boss” 1 iota. A nuclear war in East Asia might make a dent initially, but that won’t last too long. As long as everyone is still keen to do business with the US, its future is pretty secure.
There is a growing school of thought that the thrashing around (wars and attacks everywhere) by the US is a sign that the Imperial Ambitions are on their deathbed. That the US is living on an overextended national credit card which is being ever more reluctantly accepted. That we may be on the verge of replicating the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. That the Power Elites are so desperate to avoid this fate they are willing to take extreme risks, even ones which may result in a nuclear exchange.
@Zachary Smith
I hope you are right, and that it does not take too long to take effect & that it happens in my life time.
You must be aware of the horrendous obliteration of every city and town in North Korea by American forces saturation bombing campaign? They sure remember it, and do not therefore have the trust in the measured and rational intentions and actions of the US as you seem to entertain. Then there is the matter of our impulsive, irrational, and unpredictable Commander in Chief. He is famous for saying, “What’s the use of having nuclear weapons if you don’t use them?”
Sorry Zachary, my country right or wrong is not a motto I live by. My motto is more like truth and goodness above all else. If we make a preemptive strike on North Korea, I will not be one chanting USA! USA! USA! The American Empire is not something I will support or defend. Period. Human Beings are not even a prime priority for me, if they are going to destroy every other living entity on Earth, then my mind and my hand is against them.
BTW Zachary, I agree with and support most everything you have shared on these pages, this discussion on Korea is a rare exception. And even here most of what you wrote is OK by me. And I don’t condemn anyone for disagreeing with me, I encourage it.
So according to you, A new Korean war ( actually a continuation of the first Korean War) would be a cakewalk. A slam dunk. the North Koreans would throw flowers into the paths of the US invading troops.They would be welcomed as liberators.
Where have we heard that line before? I know that for Americans the study of history is for geeks. but I would be remiss if I did not remind you of the First Korean War. Then as now the US military made the argument that it would be a short war. That the US would be victorious. That in other words it would be a slam dunk and all of the other bullshit that goes around when the US wants to attack another country. WELL IT WASN´T!!. The North Koreans and Chinese out fought, out manuvered, and had superior strategy than their US enemies. What they lacked in modern war fighting equipment they made up for with superior militarily intelligen leadership. MacArthur was made to look like a military armchair general. He was made to look foolish.
This was against a nation that had not even recovered from the Second World War. Half of their soldiers did not even have rifles to fight with. They just picked them up from their fallen comrades and carried on the fight. Now both the Chinese and North Koreans do have the equipment to fight the US and South Korea. Oh and even if you were not aware of this. North Korea also shares a border with Russia, so you might count on the both the Russians and the Chinese getting involved as well. The US needs to stop waving it´s big stick around and keep it´s hands in it´s pockets so that it does not suffer another embarrassing defeat such as Korea One, Vietnam, Iraq etc.
The US is rich in military equipment, but poor in military leadership as was mentioned by President Trump in a meeting he had this week with his Joint Chiefs. He threatened to fire General Nocholson because of his failure to defeat a bunch of poppy farmers in Afghanistan. How many US Generals have been tasked with Afghanistan over the last 16 years, with the same result. Abject failure. And these clowns think that North Kore would be a cakewalk. Go spare the American People from the fools that lead them.
Oops! I wish I had read your comment before responding to Zachary above. You make a lot of good points that I agree with. Thanks for sharing your insights.
Probably it’s from the straw man item on the Logical Fallacies list. I didn’t say any of the “cakewalk” or “flowers” stuff, and don’t believe I even implied them.
North Korea invaded: 25 June 1950
Seoul recaptured: 25 September
In my opinion a person can define that as a short war, and a US victory. Unfortunately, the unholy trio of MacArthur, Truman, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff then proceeded to throw away that victory and kill uncounted numbers of people because of their incompetent greed.
Perhaps that's because MacArthur actually was a foolish and arrogant and vain old man. And a below-average General.
Transparent nonsense.
China definitely “yes”. Russia, almost certainly “no”.
I don’t understand the geopolitical situation in Korea, and won’t pretend otherwise. Probably an invasion would be extremely undesirable. On the other hand, a coordinated “disarming” attack on strictly military targets might be something worth considering, especially if “good faith” diplomacy failed. Or it might not.
Well I guess putting my hopes behind Moon Jae in, is now like that ‘hope and change’ thing that Obama once gathered us all around with.
I also wish that the U.S. would put an end to the Korean War, what’s the problem with that anyway? Maybe, one of you comment posters can elaborate on my question.
Hillary’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ is a disgrace. Here I must mention, is one more reason to be glad that her lying ass didn’t end up in the White House. In fact for those who wonder to why Donald Trump is now sitting in the Oval Office, or is it Mar-a-Lago, analyse no more just look at Hillary’s foreign policies when the question arises. In any regard everything Hillary did, as Secretary of State, was mean spirited, and just plain wrong.