Mark Fahey
Public mural, North Korea.
Police wearing Darth Vader helmets and carrying shotguns mounted with tear gas launchers lined up ready for battle. Fifty yards away, tens of thousands of students and workers placed iron bars next to Molotov cocktails on the street preparing for battle. Both sides charged, with the police clubbing and firing barrages of tear gas.
It was 1991 in Seoul, and I was there on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor, covering widespread protests against the authoritarian South Korean government. Demonstrators were protesting increasing poverty and the continued U.S. troop presence in their country. Many Koreans saw those troops as an occupying force.
Twenty-seven years later, these same issues persist.
During Monday’s U.S.-North Korean summit, President Donald Trump referred to the presence of nearly 30,000 U.S. troops in Korea, calling for their withdrawal at some undetermined time.
“I want to bring our soldiers back home,” he said. “But that’s not part of the equation right now. I hope it will be eventually.”
According to Christine Ahn, co-founder of the Korea Policy Institute, the role of U.S. troops in the region is to project U.S. power, challenge China, and make sure pro-U.S. regional governments stay in power. “The bases insure U.S. political, military, and economic interests,” she told me. “There’s always the threat of a U.S. military incursion to advance corporate interests.”
The withdrawal of troops is just one of many contentious issues that must be resolved in negotiations between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Although Donald Trump is heralding the “special bond” his meeting created with Kim Jong Un, the summit didn’t resolve the presence of U.S. troops, or any other issues, although the two sides did take a small step forward by simply holding the meeting.
A joint statement issued by the United States and North Korea declared, “President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to North Korea, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
But neither side defined what those commitments mean. Democratic and Republican hawks in Washington are already trying to make sure there’s no meaningful peace accord. And history is on their side. After all, that’s what happened with every previous peace effort.
Over the past thirty years, the United States and North Korea have held numerous talks and agreed to denuclearization several times. But these agreements ultimately failed because Washington hasn’t been interested in guaranteeing North Korea’s security. A very strong faction in Washington doesn’t support any peace agreement and instead seeks to overthrow the North Korean government. The North Koreans want to keep some nuclear weapons as a deterrent against a U.S.-backed attempt at regime change.
Over the past 30 years, the U.S. and North Korea have agreed to denuclearization several times. But these agreements ultimately failed.
In 1994, before North Korea had developed nuclear weapons, President Bill Clinton negotiated an agreement to prevent this from happening in exchange for the United States helping North Korea develop nuclear-generated electric power. North Korea continued to stay within the Nonproliferation Treaty and shut down its Yongbyon reactor as verified by international inspectors. The United States agreed to facilitate building two light water nuclear reactors, which could generate nuclear fuel for power generation but not weapons. The U.S. also agreed to lift economic sanctions and provide heavy fuel oil to operate North Korea’s electric power grid.
But Republican and Democratic hawks in the U.S. Congress thought the President made too many concessions and wanted to sabotage the deal. They refused to fund the fuel oil. The Clinton Administration also slow-walked the lifting of sanctions.
When George W. Bush took office in 2001, hardliners including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Under Secretary of State John Bolton opposed the deal. By 2002, it was dead.
That year, Bush declared North Korea to be part of the “Axis of Evil,” which also included Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, North Korea feared it could be the next target for regime change. North Korea withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty and began a sprint towards developing a nuclear weapon.
In the mid-2000s both Koreas, the United States, China, Japan, and Russia resumed negotiations in what were dubbed the Six Party Talks. In September 2005 the parties agreed that North Korea would “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.” But less than a month later, North Korea withdrew from the agreement after the Bush Administration accused Banco Delta in Macau of money laundering, freezing $25 million in North Korea funds. U.S. hardliners saw this as a pressure tactic; North Korea saw it as another example of U.S. bullying.
“The U.S. policy led to North Korea's withdrawal from the talks,” said Ahn. North Korea held its first atomic test in 2006.
Now Trump faces a similar problem.
Seven Democratic Party hawks, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Dianne Feinstein, indicated they would vote against any agreement unless North Korea eliminates all nuclear and biological weapons, dismantles all ballistic missiles, and allows inspections anywhere in the country.
North Korea is unlikely to accept such demands, and the Democratic leadership position guarantees that no agreement will be reached, noted Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute.
“I am very concerned that partisanship undermines our national security,” he told me. “It’s a toxic approach. They should favor diminished tensions and bringing North Korea into the family of nations.”
Today, North Korea has an estimated fifteen to sixty nuclear bombs. It has short- and long-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Asia and the continental United States. It’s not clear if North Korea has been able to fit nuclear warheads on these missiles.
In my view, the United States should guarantee North Korea’s security by signing a peace treaty ending the Korean War, establishing normal diplomatic relations and accepting a limited number of North Korean nukes with guarantees that no more will be produced. And we should get busy pulling all U.S. troops out of Seoul.
Should we be in a state of war with all tyrants?
Official Washington would ask: How can we trust a brutal dictatorship that oppresses its own people and has failed to live up to past commitments?
“The government of North Korea is tyrannical,” said the Global Security Institute’s Granoff. “But should we be in a state of war with all tyrants?”
Signing agreements with North Korea “won’t make them a progressive state,” said Granoff. But it will help set the conditions for progress. Political change and eventual reunification of North and South Korea can’t be imposed from the outside, he said. “The process must be led by the Korean people themselves.”
Reese Erlich’s syndicated column, Foreign Correspondent, appears regularly in The Progressive. His book The Iran Agenda Today: The Real Story from Inside Iran and What’s Wrong with US Policy will be published in October. Follow him on Twitter, @ReeseErlich; friend him on Facebook and visit his webpage.