U.S. policies provoke new Korea crisis

June 21—The arrogant and aggressive policies of U.S. imperialism have led to another prospect of military confrontation, this time on the Korean peninsula.

The media focus is all on whether or not the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—the northern half of the divided peninsula—is about to test-launch a missile. Called the Taepodong 2, it is reported to have a range of 3,700 miles. This is presented as a major threat to the United States. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said a missile launch would be a “provocative act.”

In South Korea, however, the authorities are skeptical of U.S. claims. A South Korean official said “his government is not particularly alarmed by the situation and ‘doesn’t understand why there is such fuss in other countries on this.’ He also said it is too early to tell if the North Koreans are trying to launch a satellite or test a missile.” (Washington Post, June 21)

The U.S. still has over 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea despite widespread, militant opposition to them. Its claims that the troops are there to protect the south from the north are rejected by the majority of southerners.

However, Washington is leaning heavily on the political establishment in the south. A planned visit by former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung to Pyongyang to meet with DPRK leader Kim Jong Il as part of ongoing discussions on north-south cooperation was postponed after Kim Dae-jung had a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Alex an der Vershbow. (Shanghai Daily, June 21)

Ignored in the avalanche of news accounts about a possible missile launch is the fact that the DPRK is ringed by hostile U.S. forces and has been for over half a century. It has tried many times to get Wash ington to negotiate a peace treaty that would formally end the 1950-53 war, when Washington sent nearly 2 million troops to the other side of the globe in an effort to destroy the socialist revolution there.

Since George W. Bush included the DPRK in his invented “axis of evil,” the cloud of another possible U.S. assault has hung over any negotiations. That cloud contains more than bellicose words.

U.S. ships, planes menace region

At this moment, three U.S. Navy carrier battle groups—including three aircraft carriers, 22,000 troops, dozens of fighter planes and several heavy bombers—are assembled in the western Pacific off Guam for the first time since the Vietnam War. They are supposedly engaged in long-planned exercises with ships of other nations, but their presence can only be seen as a threat to Asian countries.

Right off the coast of North Korea are the USS Curtis Wilbur and the USS Fitzgerald, both guided-missile destroyers. They are supposedly there to detect and track the flight of any missile, but as their designation of “destroyer” says, they also have fearsome offensive capability.

On June 16, the DPRK accused the U.S. of conducting spy flights over its coastal area for the third time that week and said there had been more than 170 such flights in the month of May.

Ever since Ronald Reagan proposed a “missile defense” system that became known as Star Wars, the U.S. has been spending billions of dollars—the total has now reached $97 billion, according to stratfor.com—on a system that supposedly will be able to detect and intercept incoming missiles. The two ships now positioned off Korea are part of that system. Many military experts think the whole thing is an extremely expensive and possibly embarrassing boondoggle that might not work—it hasn’t been tested—but whose purpose is intimidation.

Even if it doesn’t shoot down anything, however, the military-industrial complex will still be laughing all the way to the bank with the billions in tax money stolen from social programs and this country’s crumbling infrastructure.

The DPRK is not intimidated. It has a very long history of political stability and unity behind leaders who have not buckled, even under the nuclear threat that hangs over their country every day. When the current tensions flared up in mid-May, the DPRK was celebrating the 40th anniversary of the day its current leader, Kim Jong Il, first began his work with the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea in 1966. This continuity of leadership has made it impossible for U.S. strategists to play off one group against another, as they do in so many other countries they want to oppress.

Strains in Washington,
not Pyongyang

Some strains over its Korea policy are beginning to show up in the Bush administration, however, which is beset with crises of its own making all over the world.

David Straub, who retired in 2004 as head of the State Department’s office of Korean affairs, has gone public with criticisms of Bush and Condoleezza Rice in what was described as “a rare public attack on the administration by a foreign service officer.”(Reuters, June 21) Even rarer is disagreement over U.S. policy toward Korea, especially from within a very right-wing administration.

“One fundamental failure of Bush’s approach was the tendency to raise tensions and make South Korea nervous by stating that ‘all options’ were on the table, a phrase underscoring U.S. intentions to use force against North Korea if necessary, he said.” Straub was speaking to a meeting in Washington of the Korea Club, a grouping of former officials, scholars and journalists.

It was these kinds of threats, plus the imposition of new economic sanctions by the U.S., that led the DPRK to walk out of six-party talks last November that were supposed to facilitate a resolution of the tensions. Since then, it has been calling for direct negotiations with the U.S., something Washington has refused so far.

The line from Washington, repeated in the media, is that the DPRK is isolated.

However, as U.S. military threats were reaching a crescendo, the People’s Daily on June 21 announced, without comment, that Liang Guanglie, chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army and member of China’s Central Military Commission, had met with a delegation from the DPRK’s People’s Army, and that cooperation between the two armed forces and nations would be expanded. The Korean delegation made the visit at the invitation of the Chinese National Defense Ministry, which has the responsibility of defending the 1.3 billion Chinese people.

Liang said, according to the article, that “China and the DPRK have enjoyed a long tradition of profound friendship” and that “close, friendly and long-term cooperation between the two armed forces has made great contribution to the revolution and construction of the two countries.”

Meanwhile, Bush was being booed by the people of Vienna, where he was meeting the Austrian president. Who’s really isolated?