What the US Is Up to in North Korea

April 16th, 2013

Peter Nolan

How Will Kim Climb Back To Safety?

by
Eric Margolis

Recently
by Eric Margolis: War
in Korea

Korea, wrote
the famed German expert on geopolitics Baron Haushofer a century
ago, was one of the world’s five most strategic areas. So it remains
today, as China, Russia, Japan and the United States vie for influence
on the peninsula and the waters around it.

The latest
crisis over Korea began in March with an annual major military exercise
by the US and South Korea designed to simulate an invasion of North
Korea. The flight of US B-52 and B-2 heavy bombers 30 km from North
Korea’s border was a clear warning to North Korea to cease its nuclear
program.

Instead of
the usual fulminations against the US and South Korea, the new North
Korean dynastic regime of Kim Jung-un issue a blizzard of war threats
that included nuclear strikes against the US – something that Pyongyang
is quite unable to do. But the storm of hot air raised the danger
of an accidental military clash that could quickly escalate to all-out
war in which tactical nuclear weapons might well be used.

Until this
past week, the Korea crisis has been more or less run by the US
Pentagon. Amazingly, South Korea’s tough 600,000-man armed forces
are under the command of a US four-star general 60 years after the
end of the Korean War, backed up by 28,500 US troops that include
a full heavy infantry division,

North Korea
calls itself the “true Korea,” denouncing the South as
“puppets of the US imperialists.” Interestingly, some
studies show that many South Koreans share this view and are proud
of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program though they want no part
of its socialism and self-reliant policy know as “juche.”

Now, the US
has finally deployed its diplomatic muscle by sending the new Secretary
of State John Kerry to Beijing to try to arm-twist China into clamping
down on its errant bad boy, North Korea. The result was a joint
communiqué calling on the US and China to jointly pursue
the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

China has long
advocated this policy, so nothing new here. But the North American
media hailed it as a breakthrough in the crisis. In fact, China
is not happy with North Korea’s nuclear program, but Beijing considers
an independent, stable North Korea essential for the security of
its highly sensitive northeast region of Machuria.

Chinese strategists
fear the collapse of the Kim dynasty in North Korea would lead to
the US-dominated South Korea absorbing the north and even implanting
US bases within range of Manchuria and the maritime approaches to
Beijing. In 1950, China responded to the advance of US forces onto
its Manchurian border, the Yalu River, by intervening in the Korean
War with over 1.5 million soldiers.

The collapse
of North Korea would also move South Korean and US military power
200 km closer to Russia’s key Far Eastern population and military
complex at Vladivostok.

Accordingly,
China’s strategy to date has been to talk moderation and issue occasional
blasts at North Korea to appease the outside world and its major
American trading partner while quietly ensuring that North Korea
remains viable. China supplies all of North Korea’s oil, part of
its food, and large amounts of industrial and military spare parts.

North Korea’s
Kim Jung-un appears to have climbed too far out on a limb by issuing
dire threats that include nuclear war. His problem is to climb back
without losing too much face or appearing to be forced by the United
States.

Prestige
is a key factor in dictatorship. An obvious defeat can lead to the
dictator’s fall. That’s why Hitler refused to retreat from the deathtrap
at Stalingrad, rightly fearing such a loss of prestige and his mystique
of military genius would encourage his domestic foes to move against
him.

So Kim will
likely need Beijing’s help in ending the crisis, and Beijing will
be both happy to do so and end up in a position to demand useful
concessions from Washington.

Beijing has
been claiming that the US whipped up the current Korea crisis to
justify deploying new military forces to Asia and emplacing more
anti-missile systems in Alaska and a new one in Guam – all part
of President Barack Obama’s much heralded “pivot to Asia.”

April
16, 2013

Eric
Margolis [send
him mail] is the author of War
at the Top of the World and the new book, American
Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the
West and the Muslim World. See his
website.

The
Best of Eric Margolis

Source Article from http://lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis336.html