By Peter Huessy, President, Geostrategic Analysis, Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute
(Washington DC) The ROK President just completed a summit with the United States, primarily over the role of the US in providing an extended nuclear deterrent for his country. As a member in good standing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Republic of Korea cannot build and deploy nuclear weapons and thus has to rely, in part, on a joint defense with the United States.
The North Korean communist regime does not like that the US is strengthening its defense of the Republic of Korea, and claims that the recent joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea prove the ongoing hostility toward the North and thus is sufficient justification for Pyongyang to build and deploy nuclear weapons. China also disapproved of the US initiative and put out phony world poll data that supposedly showed that 90% of the world opposed the US and ROK defense measures.
A number of analysts and commentators also chimed in, claiming that nuclear deterrence by the United States won’t help matters, and probably make the North more aggressive, that dialogue and discussion are the right way forward. Or that the US should simply withdraw from the region and if necessary, Seoul could develop its own nuclear weapons to fully deter the North Koreans.
At the heart of much of these analysis is a complete misunderstanding of why North Korea has nuclear weapons. There is no hostile US policy toward Pyongyang. In fact, since the end of the Korean War in 1953, now extending 70 years, the US has never used military force to strike any North Korean forces. So, the common complaint by North Korea that they have no choice but to build nuclear weapons to deter the United States is utter fantasy.
That is not to say military force has not been used by Pyongyang. North Korea has repeatedly attacked ROK forces across the DMZ, committed terrorist attacks against both Japan and South Korea, while aligning itself with terrorist groups around the world, including establishing a military technology cooperative agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, including missile matters. In 1983, the North Korean government terror bombed a Rangoon meeting of the South Korean cabinet with the leaders of Burma, killing 21 people, including one of my professors at Yonsei University who had risen to be the national security adviser to the President of the country.
But most important is the “man behind the curtain” that no one wants to see and that is China and the CCP. It was the Chinese leaders who in secret in 1981 decided to help transfer nuclear weapons technology to Norh Korea, while North Korea helped countries such as Pakistan with ballistic missile technology all the while also helping Pakistan, Libya and Iran with developing nuclear weapons technology. The creation of the A.Q. Khan network in Pakistan, what might be described as a “Nukes ‘R Us” department store, became the focal point for one stop nuclear shopping for rogue states.
What was China’s strategy? The deployment of nuclear weapons in North Korea was designed to unsettle and then split the US-ROK alliance and call into question the value of the US partnership. China and its friends in the West were perfectly happy to blame the North’s nuclear proliferation on the “hostile” policy of the United States, much as the same foreign policy crowd serially blamed the United States for a too-strong support for Israel rather than the Palestinian Authority.
China wants the US military presence in the Western Pacific diminished, even eliminated, and its deliberate policy of nuclear proliferation was the tool with which to achieve its objectives. Once the US military presence in the Pacific is negligible, China believes it will have a free hand with which to take over Taiwan, even as it continues to prepare for possible military aggression through transforming the western Pacific and the South China Sea into a Chinese lake dotted with newly created military bases.
The Chinese strategy is nothing more than an updated version of Imperial Japan’s “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” that was the foundation of Japan’s conquests in World War II and announced August 1, 1940, by Japan’s Foreign Minister. Like Japan, China has long sought to camouflage its intentions by emphasizing China’s growing economic and military power as nothing more than a benign “peaceful rise.”
As for the oft described North Korean behavior as “provocative”, that is a misnomer as well. The DPRK is not trying to provoke the US or ROK into attacking the North. Rather they are seeking to cause friction between the two allies by playing into the hands of those blaming the US for emphasizing military force, to make it appear the North is in favor of dialogue and discussion but not the United States.
That now may be changing. Although the US and its allies today appear to recognize the China objective to achieve global hegemonic dominance by 2048, tough western rhetoric is considerably ahead of both policy and action. And while the threat from the DPRK is certainly recognized, the sanctions regime in place is not changing DPRK behavior.
For example, the head of the National Security Agency told a National Defense University dinner in early 2009 that China was stealing some $400-600 billion annually is US industrial intellectual property, yet now 14 years later, two thousand FBI and Justice Department investigations of such theft were abruptly terminated last year.
And Confucian Institutes—often centers of Chinese espionage and state-sponsored dezinformatsiya (from the nam
e of the KGB black propaganda department), were granted waivers by the US Department of Defense to continue operations in the United States. Even worse, China continues to sell fentanyl to Mexican drug cartels which is then subsequently smuggled into the United States in what the CCP calls a “reverse opium war”, which is killing over 70,000 Americans annually.
That is a hostile policy. Represented by the DPRK and CCP guys hiding behind the pretend nuclear curtain of “peaceful rise.”
By Peter Huessy, President, Geostrategic Analysis, Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute
