Professor Madhav Das Nalapat
The term, "Christ-Buddha path to Korean unity" refers to the need for
the North Korean leadership to show the wisdom of Lord Buddha and for
the South Korean side to exhibit the compassion of Jesus Christ. The
window for a peaceful unification of an ancient country will close
within four years, as by that time, the North Korean Leadership (NKL)
would have succeeded in weaponising its nuclear devices and delivery
systems sufficient to devastate both Japan and South Korea, a risk
impossible to consider, much less accept. Given the immunity that
crossing such a nuclear threshold would give the NKL, it would be
reasonable to infer that it would seek concessions from the South Korean
Leadership (SKL) through baiting it with provocative actions that would
impact the business environment in South Korea and therefore the
wellbeing of the population of that democratic corner of the globe.
Whether it be the NKL or cancer, delay is not an option if the prognosis
over a time period below five years is dire. There are, of course,
examples of countries that failed to move against their strategic
"cancers" in time and paid a price many magnitudes higher than what
timely action would have caused. The refusal of France to clear the
Rhineland of German troops during March 1936 was the trigger which gave
Chancellor Adolf Hitler the confidence that he could occupy large
swathes of territory across his borders without provoking a conflict
with France or the United Kingdom. Allowing North Korea to
operationalize a nuclear attack system capable of inflicting
simultaneous and unacceptable harm on Japan and South Korea would be a
"Rhineland moment" in East Asia, given that the Kim Jong Un regime is in
its own way as much controlled by a single individual not certifiable
as wholly rational as Germany was during 1933-45. Because (i) some of
the finest scientific talent in the country was literally destroyed
through the Holocaust and its initial symptoms (such as the removal of
Jews from positions in academia, business and government) and (ii) the
National Socialist German Workers Party Fuehrer did not understand the
significance of the atom as a weapon of war, thereby causing a slowdown
of research into the possibility as compared to the US, the 1939-45 war
ended without the multiplication of mass casualties that would have
resulted from NSDAP Germany's operationalizing its nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately for stability in East Asia, Kim Jong Un is fully cognizant
of the fact that only nuclear capability stands between him and the
fate of Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, two despots who were defeated
and killed after giving up their Weapons of Mass Destruction stockpiles
to the very powers that ended their careers and subsequently their
lives.
Given the history of regimes that voluntarily
surrendered their WMD stockpiles, there will need to be a global effort
to ensure that the North Korean Leadership (NKL) is confident that their
own top echelon will not meet the fate of their counterparts in Iraq
and Libya. A precondition for such confidence will need to be a United
Nations Security Council resolution that has been endorsed by each of
the five UNSC Permanent Members, especially the United States. Hence the
need for Washington to show a degree of compassion that brings to
memory the inexhaustible capacity for forgiveness of Christ, who forgave
even Peter despite the latter repudiating him thrice before the dawn.
While Korean unity is a matter for the people of that (presently
divided) country, it can come about only in the context of the
underwriting of the conditions set for union by the major powers, so as
to obviate the worry about another Iraq or Libya moment, where elements
of the global community turn on the NKL even after the union of the two
sides. Hundreds of thousands have died and millions of the innocent are
suffering because of the unwillingness of the United States during
the1950s Korean war to use enough of the means at its command to
complete the task of unification rather than leaving the same
incomplete. Militarily, it is doubtful that China would have been able
to continue its support for Kim Il Sung were the allied forces to have
launched air attacks on Beijing, Shanghai and other population clusters
during the conflict, as asked for by some of the allied commanders in
the course of the campaign. And without such backing, as also assistance
from the Soviet Union, it would not have been possible for Kim Il Sung
to retain control over what is now the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (DPRK).Unfortunately, more than a few of the strategic thinkers
and planners in the US (as also most of its NATO partners) are neither
willing to use a sufficient volume of accessible kinetic force to ensure
an equilibrium result ( i.e. an outcome, the consequences of which
remain stable over time) or to adopt the contrary tactic of persuasion
through concessions that are of the quality and range needed to get a
stable result. Since its inception, the DPRK has been confronted with
military foes that decline to use more than an attenuated quantum of
their strength against the NKL, with the consequence that the only
effect has been to slow down but not reverse the progression of the DPRK
and its leadership towards the possession of WMD of unacceptably high
levels of lethality. Certainly there have been efforts at persuading the
NKL to halt its steps towards unacceptable levels of lethality, but
none of these has been of sufficient depth or credibility to ensure a
genuine change of course.
Indeed, most have literally been "too
little, too late", or concessions made that could have been decisive in
earlier circumstances, but which are ineffective because of the
(delayed) time that they were made.
The prescription of a "Christ-Buddha" path towards Korean reconciliation and unity is based on
(a)
the "Buddha" element comprises of the reality of the NKL being wholly
rational in its responses to the external environment, whatever may be
the errors in its domestic policies. Clearly, the Kim family understands
the perceptions and likely responses of the international community
towards specific actions even while it does not take seriously the needs
of the population living within the DPRK. That being the case, it would
be unrealistic to assume that any change in the internal circumstances
of the DPRK consequent to the imposition of wide spectrum sanctions by
the RoK and its allies would effect a shift in NKL behaviour. Indeed,
the policy of imposing a quarantine on the DPRK has sheltered the regime
by depriving its population of contact with the external environment on
a scale sufficient to overcome faith in the disinformation peddled by
the NKL to its own people. If the "Sunshine Policy" had a fault, it was
that it operated as if it were the sunshine found not in the bright
daylight but the faded aura of twilight. What was needed (at the time of
its initiation by Kim Dae-Jung in 1998, and which continued in a
somewhat haphazard fashion until 2008; Haphazard because there were
patches of “darkness" in the form of actions directed against the DPRK)
was a policy of Bright Sunlight rather the intermittent "twilight" level
of sunlight associated with the "sunshine" policy. While there were
periods of "sunlight", these were often followed by an opposite
approach, in a manner that gave rise to differing interpretations about
causation. The waning and waxing of the influence of different political
factions on the actions of the Republic of Korea (RoK) government were
seen by Pyongyang as the cause of several of these policy shifts, and
the NKL calculated that these were alterations over which it had little
sway. Hence the "sunshine policy" was not regarded by Pyongyang as being
"bright" enough or steady enough to warrant a fundamental shift in
approach towards the ROK. Taken as an entirety, the responses of the Kim
family regime to changing external pressure and stimuli were fully
rational, and hence the confidence that the North Korean Leadership
(NKL) may be expected to accept a set of policies that included the
protection of the individual interests and futures of its key human
components. Such a verifiable assurance would be a non-negotiable
component of a future DPRK-RoK agreement on Korean unity.
(b)
The "Christ" element references the imperative of forgiveness by the
South Korean Leadership (SKL) of the deeds of the North Korean
Leadership (NKL). Although this may seem to be an escape clause for the
NKL, in reality the justification vests in the compassion so well
merited by the Korean people, who have uninterruptedly from 1945 to the
present undergone substantial tranches of trauma as a consequence of the
division of a single people into two separate and mutually hostile
entities. The option which would reduce to levels acceptable to
populations resident in a democracy as evolved as the RoK would be that
of peaceful unification through a facilitatory agreement between the two
sides. There will be - and are - voices both within the RoK as well as
in other countries allied to Seoul which call for accountability through
punishment (proportional or otherwise) for the deeds of the NKL. In the
absence of a negotiated and peaceful settlement of differences, such an
insistence on accountability would entail not simply a cost limited to
the NKL but would carry the risk of significant collateral damage to
millions of innocent lives across the region, including within the RoK
and Japan. This is because such a stance would make conflict inevitable.
Hence the need to accept that more than accountability, what is needed
is to ensure that more innocent lives not be ruined deliberately or
otherwise by the actions of either side. In this context, there is need
to mention that several hundred thousand residents of the DPRK have been
adversely affected by the punitive measures implemented by the RoK and
its allies on the DPRK, even while the NKL (which is the actual
perpetrator of the deeds in retaliation for which coercive measures have
been employed) seems not to have suffered any diminution in its
standard of living.
Assuming that Korean unity comes about
as a consequence of negotiation in a climate of peace, China would need
to be a key element in such talks. While both the "sticks" as well as
the "carrots" used by the RoK and its allies in relation to the DPRK are
usually of a nature less than consequential, in the case of the Peoples
Republic of China (PRC), the substantive i.e. non-verbal "sticks" have
been of very low-wattage, while the "carrots" have been significant even
for such early-phase deeds as ensuring that the DPRK comes to the
negotiating table. Once there, it has almost always been the case that
Beijing believes that its work has been done, when the reality is that
such a step needs to be only the start of actions by the PRC that would
have the effect of ensuring compliance by the DPRK of the demands of
other elements of the international community. In the absence of such
additional (or follow up) measures by China, talks with the DPRK
resemble a rubber band denoting compliance that gets stretched by the
talks and its immediate aftermath, but soon afterwards reverts to its
original position. The RoK and its allies, including Tokyo and
Washington, need to devise and implement a menu of actions designed to
provide an impetus to the PRC to commit itself to the full range of
measures needed to ensure that the North Korean Leadership (NKL) come to
the conference table with the intention of a settlement that is
satisfactory to both sides, the ideal form of which would be a formula
for unification of the divided peninsula. In other words, while there
must be a reward for peace and its promotion, there needs to be a more
than proportionate cost inflicted on those entities that weaken the
impetus for peace by giving assistance to groups and interests standing
in the way of a non-confrontational settlement of intra-Korean issues.
In the case of China, while the "carrots" have multiplied with each
(cripplingly incomplete) gesture of support to peace efforts, except for
a few verbal sallies or symbolic gestures such as giving recognition to
dissidents, the sticks have disappeared since the Nixon's outreach to
the PRC in 1972, a policy deepened under President Jimmy Carter and his
Russo-phobic, Moscow-centric National Security Advisor, Zbigniew
Brezezinski. In this background, the outreach to Moscow by President
Donald J. Trump is welcome, in that neutrality by the Russian Federation
in the event of a military solution by the RoK and its allies to the
issue of Korean unification would greatly increase the speed of success
of such an initiative.
The question has sometimes been
asked as to why the North Korean case presents a more immediate
challenge than does that of Pakistan, a country that is as much a Proxy
Nuclear Weapons State (PNWS) as the DPRK. Both were given the means to
develop their nuclear and missile systems to a level that would present a
grave threat to Japan (in the case of the DPRK) and India (in the case
of Pakistan. To a third country objectively less than friendly to India
or Japan, such a situation would have the advantage of both Tokyo as
well as Delhi regarding Pyongyang and Islamabad respectively as a much
graver threat than the country which is responsible for both these
countries becoming nuclear weapons states. That country would also
benefit as a consequence of the expenditure of effort and expense by
Tokyo and Delhi against their respective Proxy Nuclear Weapons State
challengers, leaving that much less oxygen to power responses to the
country responsible for both North Korea as well as Pakistan having both
nuclear weapons as well as delivery systems despite a technological and
industrial base far below that needed to evolve into such a state on
their own. Of the two, the DPRK represents the greater immediate
challenge, because of the hermit-like nature of the NKL led by Kim Jong
Un, whose financial, social and other linkages with the world outside
the boundaries of the territory controlled by them is of a very low
intensity. In contrast, whether it be (often undeclared)foreign bank
accounts, homes or relatives, the higher ranks of the Pakistan army
(which controls the country's nuclear and missile systems) have
extensive interaction with the rest of the globe, including (and indeed
principally) the United States. This gives a much greater probability of
predictability to the actions of these globally-linked individuals than
is the case with the higher echelons of the (largely delinked from
global contacts) DPRK bureaucracy. Indeed, it is the relative opacity
and unpredictability of the North Korean Leadership (NKL) that enhances
the risk of an unplanned initiation of a sequence of actions that could
terminate in the use of nuclear weapons.
This is not to
say that the problems posed by the Pakistan army's possession of nuclear
weapons and delivery systems are on a scale susceptible to being
ignored. Although both India as well as the United States have
individually sought to influence the behaviour patterns of the military
in Pakistan in such a way as to be potentially non-lethal to other
states (principally Afghanistan and India), such an effort would have a
much higher chance of success were Delhi and Washington to coordinate
their actions in the matter. In particular, Delhi and Washington need to
work towards encouraging the professionalization of the Pakistan
military, by making it subordinate to the civilian leadership of the
country. Both the world's largest democracies also need to work towards
ensuring that all ethnic and religious groups in Pakistan be treated
equally, and that the hegemony of a particular group over the rest be
ended. In the case of the DPRK and its policies, this is being dealt
with by a coalition with Japan, the RoC and the US at its core, although
even here, the level of consultation and joint activity between the
three capitals is still far less than what is needed to ensure a
significant degree of success in altering the longstanding behaviour
patterns of the NKL. In the geopolitical universe of threats in which
Japan and the RoK find themselves, it is a given that an anti-missile
system (perhaps on the lines of Israel's Iron Dome) needs to become
operational. However, the governments involved explaining the rationale
for such indispensable defensive steps has been less in evidence, with
the consequence of arise in public perception of the introduction of
THAAD by stealth. The consequence has followed that it has been easier
for "men in the shadows" to generate opposition within civil society in
both Japan as well as the RoK for such a missile defense system, through
creating the perception that THAAD would bring war closer, when in fact
the deployment of this system would make the initiation of a conflict
by the other side much less likely. Which indeed is the primary reason
why the "other side" strongly disapproves of such a deployment, thereby
indicating that its lead operational plans prominently include the
option of a first strike using missile systems, including potentially
those equipped with nuclear warheads.
Given the chemistry
of the North Korean Leadership (NKL), it would be an inexcusable
dereliction of responsibility by the current regimes in Washington,
Seoul and Tokyo to allow Pyongyang to graduate to the stage where
Pakistan is now situated as a consequence of past inaction by Washington
and Delhi, that of having nuclear weapons (rather than simply devices)
as well as delivery systems capable of inflicting unimaginable harm on
potential adversaries. Once the DPRK reaches the stage of weaponising
its nuclear warheads and mastering technology sufficient to convey the
same to "enemy" shores, any incentive for unification would get
considerably weakened. Hence the window for serious and sustained
discussions on the subject is the present, with both the carrot and the
stick (in capitals) visible to the North Korean Leadership (NKL). The
"stick" would be the putting in place of a military alliance which would
include Vietnam, Taiwan and India that would be designed to ensure that
regimes in sympathy with Pyongyang factor in the risks of outright
involvement. An operational plan needs to be prepared that would take
out the Higher Command structure of the DPRK within 72 hours of
initiation. The heavier the initial blow, the lower will be the overall
damage caused by the conflict, and planners need to factor in this
desideratum. The "carrot" would include a complete and lifetime amnesty
for the North Korean Leadership, as well as recognition through
adjustments in protocol of a high (albeit honorary) status within the
unified state. The time has come to test both the "Wisdom of the Buddha"
on the part of the NKL and the "Compassion of Christ" on the part of
the SKL through the initiation of discussions based on new postulates
that are underscored by the centrality of the need to avoid further
damage to the public weal as a consequence of the continuation of the
unnatural division of a noble people.'
The above is a prepared presentation for the Global Peace Convention 2017. Changes in actual delivery may not be reflected.
