Second Korean War Imminent Warns Dr. Nalapat at Global Peace Leadership Conference Seoul 2016 (Global Peace Foundation)
Global Peace Leadership Conference Seoul 2016
Professor Madhav Das Nalapat
"New Approach to a Critical Turning Point: Buliding a Global Consensus for 1 Korea"
December 7, 2016, National Assembly Hall, Seoul, Korea Professor Madhav Das Nalapat, UNESCO Peace Chair, Department of Geopolitics and International Relations, Manipal University, India
THE ALLIES HAVE JUST FOUR YEARS TO AVOID A SECOND KOREAN WAR
The
1950-53 Korean War ended in a stalemate because the United States
followed the same strategy of what may be termed "truncated objectives"
that was in play during the 1990-91 campaign by mainly U.S. forces
against the Iraqi armed forces led by Saddam Hussein. That campaign
deliberately stopped short of occupying the country and removing the
Baghdad-based dictator from power, exactly as the Korean War ended with
Kim Il Sung still in power in Pyongyang.
Although the USSR
threatened to retaliate against any non-conventional (chiefly nuclear)
expansion of U.S. military operations in Korea, the reality is that such
a threat was almost certainly a bluff, as at that point in time, U.S.
nuclear weapon resources were far more advanced than in the Soviet
Union. However, it would not have been necessary to use the nuclear
option in order to ensure a decisive outcome to the 1950-53 war. The
capital of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing, was well within
missile distance of U.S. forces operating on land and sea in the Korean
theatre, and an intensification of the threat to its capital may have
ensured that the People’s Republic of China agree to cease fire on terms
much less favourable to the North Korean side than was eventually the
case.
President Eisenhower had clearly had enough of war, and
after personally witnessing the desolation caused by the 1939-45 war in
Europe, had not the will to expand the conflict in Korea to the
full-scope level demanded by General Douglas MacArthur. Truman, his
predecessor, had even less of an appetite for conflict, blocking KMT
forces in Taiwan from intervening in the situation caused by the
People’s Liberation Army getting involved in Korea, and blocking
MacArthur from doing any damage to military assets in the China side of
the PRC-Korea border, when such an assault would have sharply reduced
the firepower and offensive capabilities of Chinese and partner forces.
Finally,
unsure of whether the general would obey the restrictive orders placed
his way by President Truman, the 1939-45 war hero was replaced by
General Mathew Ridgeway, whose adherence to the restrictive instructions
of Truman as well as Eisenhower ensured not only two years of a
stalemate costly in human lives, but in a partition of the ancient
country of Korea that has continued to this date.
(right to left) Dr. Nalapat, Mr. Greg Scarlatoiu, Dr. Emanuel Pastreich, session moderator Dr. Jin Shin, and Mr. David Caprara
When
Mao Zedong took the offensive in the civil war with KMT forces during
1946, after a half decade of a policy of largely keeping his forces
intact while Chiang Kai-shek flung his troops into battle against the
occupying Japanese, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader did not
stop until his forces had taken control of tracts of land effectively
ungoverned by Beijing for extended periods of time such as Inner
Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang.
Plainly, Mao was not in favour of a
"truncated objectives" strategy. In hindsight, had Chiang been less
active in seeking to reverse territorial gains made by Tokyo and instead
adopted a policy of holding on to the residual territory left to his
forces, they may have been able to finally overcome the PLA and reclaim
China from rule by the Chinese Communist Party.
Another factor
behind the success of the PLA was the supply of U.S. weaponry that
flowed to them in order to militarily confront the Japanese, despite the
reality that much of this was being stored for future use against
Chiang. It is to the credit of Mao Zedong that he sensed the direction
of the future wind, understanding that it was only a question of time
before the superior technology and resources of the United States
prevailed over the much less impressive forces under the command of
Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, just as towards the close of the 1960s, as
he surveyed the months-long clash with Soviet forces at the Ussuri river
in 1969, Mao understood the need for a modus vivendi with Washington if
he were to secure his country from trouble fomented by a far more
potent military force than he had, the armies and arsenals of the USSR.
Less
than two years later, the thaw with Washington came about, in large
part because in President Richard M Nixon the Chinese leader found a
practitioner of realpolitiik as clear about the evolving situation and
its needs as he himself was. As for the USSR, the entente between
Beijing and Washington so damaged its confidence that the immense
military arsenal the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had
built up over the decades since 1945 were made subject to the same
limitations that Truman and Eisenhower had imposed on their generals,
that of stopping short of carrying the battle into the territory of the
country that was sustaining the fighting capacity of the power in
combat, Kim il Sung's Korea in the case of the 1950-53 war and
Zia-ul-Haq's Pakistan in the case of the war that ended in the
humiliation and defeat of the Soviet armies in Afghanistan.
Had
Moscow carried the attack to Pakistan, for example by targeting
mujahedeen launch pads in Peshawar and Quetta, and warning of possible
attacks on Lahore and Karachi, assistance to the mujahedeen from within
Pakistan territory would have almost certainly been reduced to a level
capable of being overwhelmed by Soviet and secular Afghan forces.
The
geopolitical pain caused to the ancient Korean people by the division
of their country into two antithetical parts is in large part the
consequence of the early 1950s hesitations of two U.S. Presidents,
Truman and Eisenhower, who refused to deploy sufficiently the military
assets available to them to ensure that the peninsula remained united.
Such an outcome suited two neighbours of Korea. Both China and Japan
gained from the division of Korea, the first by ensuring that an ally -
in effect a satellite state - formed a vital flank on its external
boundaries rather than a power linked in a military alliance that was
also in strategic control of a former and potentially future adversary,
Japan.
Given the closeness of the Yalu River to Beijing and to the
Chinese heartland, it is obvious that the Chinese Communist Party would
not wish to see any power not under its sway in control of the
territory now in thrall to the regime in Pyongyang.
For almost a
decade which began towards the close of the 1990s, it seemed as though
the Republic of Korea (RoK) was leaving the magnetic pull of Washington
and moving into the geopolitical orbit of Beijing, the way Islamabad was
and still is. However, in recent years, the dissonance between CCP
support for the Kim family in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
(DPRK) and the core interests of the RoK have become more palpable, with
the consequence that there has been a return by Seoul to the strategic
ambience of the United States.
As for Japan, although the division
of Korea and resultant Pyongyang-Seoul tensions enabled Tokyo to
outpace the south of the Korean peninsula in economic terms for close to
three decades, finally the determination of the ancient Korean people
ensured that the RoK began to level with Japan in economic prowess
towards the close of the 1980s despite the vivisection of the peninsula,
in like manner as the Republic of India has emerged as a fast-growing
major economy despite the shock of its 1947 division through the
creation of the first country in the world formed exclusively on the
basis of religious belief, Pakistan, that from the first weeks of its
formation has expended its strategic assets on seeking to slow down and
finally reverse India's forward movement towards economic success.
If
Truman and Eisenhower were to get pointed out as the causes behind the
vivisection of the Korean peninsula, the focus needs to be on Presidents
Clinton and Bush II for their policy of side-stepping the operational
consequences of the evolution of the Pyongyang regime into, first a
significant threat to the RoK and Japan and, subsequently, to parts of
the U.S. itself. Both Clinton and Bush had the military power at their
command to decapitate the Pyongyang regime through "micro surgery"
before it could operationalise a credible response against Seoul.
By
"micro surgery" is meant the destruction of mainly military assets
without much damage to civilian infrastructure. Their successor,
President Barack Obama, does not have that luxury. To be effective, an
attack on the Pyongyang regime has to be of such kinetic velocity that
it would not be possible in between for the DPRK to let loose
destruction on a significant scale on assets within the RoK.
While
during the Clinton-Bush years, given the limited force of the DPRK
offensive machine, such a velocity would not have needed to have
resulted in a large number of non-military casualties. However, since
then the arsenal of this family-run half of the Korean peninsula has
developed to a level and sophistication that would take much more effort
to neutralize in the short time period needed to ensure the absence of
retaliation sufficient to raise the costs of such an intervention to a
level that would take a considerable time to rectify.
The Nobel
Committee showed extraordinary prescience in giving the Peace Prize to
an individual who had barely settled into his job. While President Obama
deserves some commendation for his refusal to get involved in wars such
as in Syria that are favoured by regional allies seeking to replicate
Libya in that country, in the case of the DPRK the hesitation of the
Obama administration to move beyond the timid bounds set by Carter,
Reagan, Clinton and Bush in their chastisement of Pyongyang has ensured
that the Kim Jong Un regime has developed into a security threat that
could in brief years ensure immunity for itself through the possession
of retaliatory capacity far in excess of that needed to prevent an
attack on itself.
As was pointed out immediately following the
events of 2003 and 2011, the fate of the two dictators who had actually
given up their WMD stockpiles acted to convince the Kim regime to avoid
that slippery slope towards an undignified end. The very advent of a
Donald J Trump administration on the heels of that led by Barack Obama
has convinced several leaders that it would be folly to rely on the word
of a President or a Prime Minister, not only because he or she may soon
get replaced, but because he or she may change his or her mind, the way
Nicholas Sarkozy did about Muammar Gadhafi. Such a dynamic has made the
reaching of an amicable settlement with the Kim dynasty in Pyongyang
unlikely.
Working out an arrangement that would assure an amnesty
to Kim Jong Un and other regime heavyweights in exchange for peaceful
reunification would be the best case scenario, despite offending human
rights purists intent on "sending a message" to other serial depredators
of human rights by inflicting severe punishment on the Kim group in
Pyongyang. While such an outcome would be possible, the cost in human
terms would be considerable, thereby making it more advantageous to
"write off" the sufferings inflicted by the DPRK regime on its victims
while ensuring that these get capped as a consequence of the agreement
reached.
In the recently conducted Presidential elections in the
U.S., Donald Trump was from a foreign policy perspective a more hopeful
prospect than Hillary Clinton, his presumed "weakness" being in reality
his strength. The weakness of Donald Trump has been his lack of
familiarity with foreign policy doctrines and those who have fashioned
them. This sets him apart from Hillary Clinton, who visibly relies on
the autopilot mode in policy discussions, going by the wisdom of her
advisors on what would be the best course to take.
Trump, on the
contrary, flies manually. If we consider that the primary "control
towers" (aka policy formulators) within the Atlantic Alliance have often
guided their "aircraft" into squalls and occasional crashes (among the
more spectacular being interventions in the Middle East since 2011), a
"pilot" who refuses to follow such guidance is much more likely to land
his aircraft safely, i.e., ensure that a policy get formulated and
operationalised that ensures a favourable outcome for the country making
them.
Within the U.S., or indeed the British and the French,
policy zones, there is a constant return to the errors of the past.
Given that adopting a contrary line would amount to admission of error,
it seems almost reasonable why so many "experts" would lay out policy
menus for their political patrons that are in essentials
indistinguishable from options given in the past and which later proved
disastrous.
In the Korean theatre, a longstanding policy of
carrots that are too small to entice followed by sticks, the effects of
which on the Pyongyang elite are limited, has failed and yet gets
endlessly repeated. Given the reality of the Kim regime moving closer
to a stage in which it would have the capacity to deter any attack by
the credible threat of unacceptable damage, the four years of the Donald
Trump administration that begin January 20, 2017 represent perhaps the
last window available to resolve the Korea problem through a peaceful
unification of both parts of this vibrant territory. Once this is
achieved, avoiding the errors made during the German unification process
in the 1990s could be possible, including an artificial equalisation of
currency used in both sectors, thereby erasing the cost advantages of
investing in the poorer segment.
Given the essentiality of
unification, literature needs to be created that is designed to ensure a
smooth fit in modern Korea for those who for their entire lives have
survived in a time warp. It is difficult to visualize a glide path
towards unification, but this would be certainly be preceded by a
showcasing of force and resolve by the U.S., the RoK and other
militaries that convinces the leadership in the north that any conflict
would result in a defeat for the lesser armed force.
Next, it is
necessary to ensure that Beijing be on board in international efforts to
unify the peninsula, by for example guaranteeing the demilitarisation
of the territory north of the 38 parallel and by imposing financial and
other geopolitical costs should the PRC not participate in punitive
measures activated in a situation of "bad" behaviour by the DPRK.
No
such move will work unless Beijing signs on to it, and the only way to
ensure this would be to ensure that the cost of PRC non-participation in
international efforts to ensure "good" behaviour by Pyongyang be made
clear and significant by the U.S. and its allies, and of course get
enforced whenever needed rather than ignored as has too often been the
case in the past.
The key to the ushering in of unification is not
Seoul or Washington as much as it is Beijing. The perception in
Pyongyang that it enjoys immunity from retaliation for its armed
provocations needs to be countered by visible and disproportional action
against the Kim family regime in such instances. Any reaction to the
reaction needs to be met with a fresh volley of retaliation. Those
arguing that such moves will lead to a full-scope nuclear war are wrong,
if only for some time to come the Kim Jong Un regime will be unable to
mount a credible nuclear response. Once it is able to do so, the world
and East Asia in particular will be entering uncharted territory. Hence
the need for action during the window available before the activation of
nuclear weapons systems by the DPRK.
The regime in Pyongyang is
rational and does not have the suicide bomber gene in its intellectual
makeup. However, deterrence will be credible only if there is a unified
command facing the DPRK, in which the U.S., Japan and other
participating powers ensure that Seoul be given a place of honour, with
key slots in the unified command going to its officers and the overall
political guidance of the Unified Command being vested in the Blue
House.
If the stick be substantial, so must the carrot be of
generous proportions. This would include incentives for elements in the
Pyongyang regime to invest in the RoK so as to acquire a physical stake
in unification. Travel curbs should end, as those who are the most
hostile are precisely the individuals who need to test their perception
of reality with the ground situation in the "enemy other."
Financial
curbs on outward and inward investment between the two halves of Korea
should be liberalised, such that a network of "facts on the ground" gets
created with a centripetal effect. Limited sticks, small carrots and
quarantines have repeatedly failed and yet established foreign policy
elites keep returning to such nostrums for fear of testing out the
unknown.
The world has around four more years before the two
halves holding a noble people either get unified or a situation gets
created in which the international community will need to decapitate the
regime in Pyongyang for the survival of stability in Asia. Now that an
innovative business leader is taking over the reins of government of the
world's most productive country, it is time to (1) open doors to the
north, (2) set in place the means for deadly force should peace prove
unworkable, (3) use such means to inflict severe harm, with the
certainty of much more than any possible reaction can be, including the
pinpoint use of all possible means of force at the command of the allies
of the RoK and (4) indicate that time is running out for a regime that
needs to realize that the survival of its elements can only continue in a
situation where there is a mutually honourable settlement that is based
on the unity of the Korean people, and which would in its governance
structure include personnel from both sides till such time as such
distinctions become an irrelevance.
The world has four years to
prevent a war with possibly nuclear consequences that ought to have
ended in 1951, had President Truman trusted his military leadership to
finish a job that was only half complete when the 1953 armistice was
declared, and which has continued in that state to the present.
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