Nuclear crisis made in USA
Bush threats forced North Korea to arm in self-defense
By
Fred Goldstein
Published Oct 12, 2006 9:28 PM
The Bush administration
and the so-called “great powers” are hypocritically trying to create
panic over the announcement by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
on Oct. 8 that it had successfully detonated a nuclear weapon. U.S. officials
have declared it a “threat to international security.”
In fact, it is the U.S. imperialist
government and its ally, Japan, that have created the crisis situation and are
the main threats to peace in Asia.
The
DPRK, in a statement from its Foreign Ministry on Oct. 3, had announced publicly
that it intended to carry out the test. It says it was forced into nuclear
testing because the Bush administration “seriously threatened the
DPRK’s sovereignty and right to existence.” It condemned threatened
sanctions as an “attempt to isolate and stifle it and bring down the
socialist system chosen by its people
themselves.”
“The U.S.
extreme threat of a nuclear war and pressure compel the DPRK to conduct a
nuclear test, an essential process for bolstering nuclear deterrent, as a
corresponding measure for defense,” the statement
continued.
To the Korean people, the
U.S. threat is real. Washington divided their country after World War II and has
kept it divided until today through a large U.S. military presence. For decades,
Washington propped up one dictatorial South Korean government after another.
The U.S. led a brutal war against the
North from 1950 to 1953, dropping 800 tons of bombs a day in saturation raids.
It used napalm—jellied gasoline that clings to skin and causes a horrible
death. Every town, village and city was left in rubble.
Four million Koreans died. Innumerable
atrocities were carried out by U.S. troops. And Washington used nuclear threats
throughout the armistice negotiations.
What can end the
crisis
The crisis on the Korean
peninsula and in the region could be ended if the U.S. government would do three
basic things: recognize the sovereignty of the DPRK; establish normal diplomatic
and economic relations between the two countries; and guarantee the DPRK’s
security against a U.S. attack.
The
North Korean government has been asking for this for over 50 years, since the
end of the Korean War.
In addition, the
DPRK has made innumerable proposals for the denuclearization of the peninsula
and the surrounding region.
Above all,
this kind of stability should be embodied in the signing of a peace treaty
formally ending the state of war between the U.S. and the DPRK. Washington has
resisted such demands for over 50
years.
The big business media and the
government are treating the DPRK leaders as if they are paranoid and irrational.
But the facts show a different story.
Bush administration
threats
In his State of the Union
address in January 2002, President George W. Bush branded the DPRK as part of an
“axis of evil,” along with Iraq and Iran. In that same period, Bush
ordered the Pentagon to develop “flexible” plans for the use of
nuclear weapons as part of the Nuclear Posture Review. Sections of it were
leaked showing that the DPRK was on the Pentagon’s list of seven targeted
countries.
The National Security
Strategy of September 2002 put forward the doctrine of “preemptive
war” and “regime change,” linking it to Bush’s
“axis of evil” assertion. Six months later Washington launched a
preemptive, unprovoked war to bring about regime change in Iraq and overthrow
the Saddam Hussein government.
All these
threats were being made by a superpower with 10,000 nuclear warheads, a
$10-trillion economy, a population of 300 million and highly developed weapons
systems spread throughout Asia, especially in the vicinity of North Korea. In
contrast, the DPRK has a population of 25 million, an economy of $16 billion,
and has been undermined economically by half a century of U.S-imposed
sanctions.
DPRK ringed by U.S.
military
Furthermore, the DPRK is
surrounded by U.S. nuclear bombers, nuclear-armed submarines, cruise missiles,
aircraft carriers and destroyer fleets. Some 30,000 U.S. troops are based in
South Korea, as well as a U.S. military high command that has final authority
over several hundred thousand South Korean troops. Their mission is war against
the North.
As recently as June of this
year, the U.S. Air Force held tests of its Minuteman III missiles near the
Korean peninsula. Three U.S. Navy carrier battle groups—including 22,000
troops, dozens of fighter planes and several heavy bombers—were assembled
in the western Pacific off Guam in the largest naval mobilization since the
Vietnam War. The USS Curtis Wilbur and USS Fitzgerald, both guided-missile
destroyers, sit off the coast of North Korea. The U.S. sent spy planes on 170
missions during this period.
U.S. hawks block
normalization
Far from causing the
present crisis, the DPRK has tried repeatedly to avoid having to develop a
nuclear deterrent. Each time the U.S. government or militaristic factions within
it have found ways to thwart any
agreement.
A year ago, in September
2005, the North Korean government signed an agreement at six-party talks with
the U.S., China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. In the agreement the DPRK
pledged to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear
programs.” In return the U.S. and North Korea agreed “to respect
each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to
normalize their relations.”
Four
days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions
against North Korea designed to cut off the country’s access to the
international banking system, branding it a “criminal state” for
alleged money laundering and so-called “trafficking in weapons of mass
destruction.” (Newsweek, Oct.
10)
In 2004, negotiators from the State
Department had worked out an agreement with the DPRK “outlining steps to
resolve the standoff over the country’s nuclear weapons. But it lacked the
tough language on disarmament that North Korea had rejected and [Vice President
Dick] Cheney knew Mr. Bush wanted.”
“With Colin L. Powell, then
secretary of state, and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, at a black-tie dinner
where they could not easily be reached on secure telephones, Mr. Cheney
‘declared this thing a loser,’ said a former senior
official.”
Bush sent new
instructions to the negotiators—through the National Security Council,
rather than the State Department—“that essentially killed the
deal.” (New York Times, Oct. 10)
Hostile
to North-South dialog
In 1999 a new
prime minister, Kim Dae-jung, was elected in South Korea. Kim declared a
“sunshine policy” of building friendly relations with the North. In
2000, Kim Dae-jung had an historic summit meeting in Pyongyang with Kim Jong Il, the
North Korean leader. When Bush took office in 2001, he refused to meet with Kim
Dae-jung, signaling U.S. government opposition to any relaxation of tensions on
the peninsula and anything that could be favorable to North
Korea.
The Clinton administration had
also tried to undermine the DPRK. In 1993, after the collapse of the USSR, as
part of the retargeting of U.S. nuclear weapons, Clinton let North Korea know it
was being targeted by some of them. Clinton authorized Operation Team Spirit in
March 1993, mobilizing bombers, cruise missiles and naval vessels against the
DPRK. He went to the demilitarized zone separating North and South and
threatened the DPRK with war in early
1994.
When the government in Pyongyang,
North Korea, threatened to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT), Clinton prepared for war, including the use of nuclear weapons. South
Korean Prime Minister Kim Young-sam argued with Clinton for half an hour over
the phone to stop the war. Faced with the prospect of a nuclear attack, Kim Il
Sung, then president of the DPRK, invited former President Jimmy Carter for
talks. At their conclusion, Carter announced an agreement, later called the
Framework Agreement, negotiated in
Geneva.
Under this agreement, the DPRK,
which was trying to develop nuclear energy to supply electric power since it has
no oil or gas, agreed to shut down its nuclear reactor and stop development of
two others in exchange for two light-water reactors. The U.S. was supposed to
organize the production of these reactors by 2003 and supply fuel oil in the
meantime.
It was also supposed to lift
sanctions, recognize the sovereignty of the DPRK, work towards normal political
and economic relations, and guarantee against nuclear attack. The U.S.
immediately backtracked on everything but supplies of fuel oil, and those
deliveries came late.
Washington sought
sanctions against the DPRK in the UN, put it on the “terrorist
list,” refused to guarantee against an attack and did not move an inch to
normalize relations. It delayed production of the light-water reactors so they
would be finished at the earliest by 2010.
The DPRK was in extraordinary economic
difficulties following the collapse of the USSR and was forced to delay its
economic recovery under threat of
war.
Furthermore, in 1998, the U.S.
military conducted exercises simulating an attack on the North with 30 nuclear
bombs. U.S. warplanes based at Seymour Johnson Air Base in North Carolina,
carrying concrete dummy bombs in place of B61 nuclear bombs, dropped them at a
base in Florida as part of operational plans drawn up by the National Command
Authority. (Gregory Elich, “Strange Liberators,” Llumina Press,
2006)
Strategy of demonizing
DPRK
The strategy of demonizing
North Korea and constantly threatening it serves a dual purpose. It keeps
military tensions in the region at a fever pitch and provides the basis for
maintaining more and more military hardware in Asia. Bush has promoted a
high-tech, highly expensive and highly profitable (to the military-industrial
complex) missile defense
system.
Administration denials
notwithstanding, it is the policy and ambition of the U.S. ruling class and its
military to destroy the socialist government of North Korea. It has been the
policy ever since the Korean Revolution after World War II, led by Kim Il Sung.
The bosses and the landlords were thrown out and the society was taken over and
run for the workers and peasants. That was the first “crime” of the
DPRK.
The second “crime” was
the outcome of the Korean War. In spite of enormous casualties, the
revolutionary armies of the North, with the assistance of the Chinese Red Army,
inflicted the first military defeat on U.S. imperialism by stopping it from
taking over all of Korea.
One of the
long-standing goals of Washington has been to break up any solidarity between
the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It is difficult for
progressives and revolutionaries to watch the PRC lending itself to the
anti-DPRK schemes of Washington and Tokyo. Hopefully, the current narrow, unjust
and self-defeating policy of supporting sanctions on the DPRK will be
reversed.
The implacable U.S.
imperialist hostility towards the Korean revolution and the socialist government
of the DPRK comes from its ambitions to conquer Asia and turn the Pacific Ocean
into a U.S. lake. This policy has been a stated goal for over a century.
Challenge to anti-war
movement
The anti-war movement in
the U.S. now recognizes that the Bush administration is an aggressor in Iraq and
is planning aggression against Iran. It is beginning to recognize the
reactionary role of the U.S.-client state in Tel Aviv as the cat’s paw of
the Pentagon in the Middle East. It recognizes that Washington has designs to
overthrow the Cuban government and the Venezuelan
government.
It is time to elevate the
cause of the DPRK in the movement and fight against Washington’s
demonization, its sanctions and threats.
It is U.S. militarism that is the
threat to peace, not the defensive measures taken by the government of the DPRK.
North Korea has done everything possible to avoid having to resort to a nuclear
deterrent. But it has experienced a solid wall of hostility, threats, military
maneuvers, vilification, and attempts at isolation and economic
sabotage.
It has seen “preventive
war” against Iraq. It has witnessed the destruction of the government of
Yugoslavia after a massive U.S. bombing campaign. The DPRK does not want more
nuclear weapons in the area. On the contrary, it has offered many proposals to
get rid of them. It has called for signing a peace treaty. It has called for a
non-aggression pact. It wants peace, while Washington wants war and
counter-revolution in Korea and all of
Asia.
Right now a dangerous bloc exists
between Washington and Tokyo. Japan annexed Korea in 1910 and ruled it as a
colony until 1945. The Japanese imperialist ruling class wants to use this
crisis as a springboard to build up its military. It is using the Bush
administration’s full court press for sanctions and the strangulation of
the DPRK as its cover.
The workers and
oppressed in this country can only suffer from an increase in militarism around
the Korean peninsula. Either they will be dragged into war or forced to pay the
price of increased military spending—or both.
Those who are exploited by the bosses,
whose wages are going down, whose benefits are being cut, have nothing to gain
by supporting the war drive of the billionaires’ government in Washington,
the military-industrial complex and Big Oil, who are behind the present crisis.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email:
[email protected]
Subscribe
[email protected]
Support independent news
DONATE