(stephan)
Pyongyang street scene, 2007.
I returned home from a peace delegation to the Korean Peninsula, only to hear my country’s President threaten it with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Trump’s latest blustering, a reckless escalation of an already dangerous situation, came in response to another intercontinental ballistic missile tests by North Korea. But it was not the only response.
The United States and South Korea also launched their own ballistic missiles as a show of force. South Korean President Moon Jae-in reversed his decision to halt deployment of the U.S. weapon system known as THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), greenlighting the addition of four launchers to complete the system that has been opposed by both North Korea and China. And at the United Nations, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to impose strict new sanctions on Pyongyang that may cost this poor nation $1 billion a year.
The North Korean nuclear program is certainly alarming, as are the regime’s myriad human rights violations. But the question is how best to de-escalate the conflict so that it doesn’t explode into an all-out nuclear war.
The North Korean regime feels encircled. It knows that the most powerful nation in the world, the United States, wants to overthrow it. There’s Trump’s belligerent rhetoric. There’s the ever-tightening screws of sanctions. There are an astounding eighty-three U.S. military bases on South Korean soil and U.S. warships often patrolling the coast.
The North Korean regime feels encircled. It knows that the most powerful nation in the world, the United States, wants to overthrow it.
Meanwhile, U.S.-South Korean military exercises have been getting larger and more provocative, including dropping bombs on North Korea. The U.S. military plans to permanently station an armed drone called Gray Eagle on the Korean Peninsula and has been practicing long-range strikes with strategic bombers, sending them to the region for exercises and deploying them in Guam and on the peninsula.
The United States has also long held a “pre-emptive first strike” policy towards North Korea. This frightening threat of an unprovoked U.S. nuclear attack gives North Korea good reason to want its own nuclear arsenal.
In believing that nuclear weapons are key to their nation’s survival, North Korea’s leadership is also surely considering the fate of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Both leaders gave up their nuclear programs only to see their countries subsequently invaded. Seen this way, the North Korean leadership is not acting irrationally.
On July 29, the day after the test, North Korean President Kim Jong-un declared that the threat of sanctions or military action “only strengthens our resolve and further justifies our possession of nuclear weapons.” North Korea is believed to have nuclear weapons with about the same destructive force as the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, which killed more than 75,000 people in a city of about 350,000.
Given the proximity of North Korea to the South’s capital, Seoul, a city of 25 million people, any outbreak of hostilities would be devastating. It is estimated that a North Korean attack with just conventional weapons would kill 64,000 South Koreans in the first three hours.
A war on the Korean Peninsula would likely draw in other nuclear armed states and major powers, including China, Russia, and Japan. This region also has the largest militaries and economies in the world, the world’s busiest commercial ports, and half the world’s population.
Trump has few options. His Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has warned that a pre-emptive strike on the North’s nuclear and missile capabilities could be catastrophic. Trump had hoped that Chinese President Xi Jinping could successfully rein in Kim Jong-un, but the Chinese are more concerned about the chaos that would follow the collapse of North Korea’s government. They are also furious about the deployment of THAAD in South Korea, convinced that its radar can penetrate deep into Chinese territory.
But the Chinese do have another proposal, known as “a freeze for a freeze.” This means a freeze on North Korean missile and nuclear tests in exchange for a halt on U.S.-South Korean war games.
These massive war games have been taking place every year in March, with smaller ones scheduled for late August. A halt would alleviate tensions and pave the way for negotiations. So would halting the deployment of the destabilizing THAAD system so disliked by South Korean villagers, North Koreans, and the Chinese.
Given the specter of nuclear war, the rational alternative policy is one of de-escalation and engagement. President Moon Jae-in has called for dialogue with the North and a peace treaty to permanently end the Korean War. North Korean diplomats have themselves raised the possibility of a freeze for a freeze.
Sixty percent of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, support direct negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang. Both President Moon and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have called for negotiations. Tillerson recently said, “We would like to sit down and have a dialogue with them.” These words strike a very different tone from Trump’s recent rantings.
Sixty percent of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, support direct negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.
There’s an urgent need to hit the reset button on U.S.-North Korean policy, before one of the players hits a much more catastrophic button. Diplomacy has worked to defuse the nuclear conflict in Iran. It can work in North Korea as well. The world cannot risk a nuclear confrontation.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace. Her latest book is Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection.