As Americans and the World come to grips with Trump’s confrontational policies with North Korea, it’s easy to forget that U.S. relations with this country reached a nadir of nonsense under Barack Obama.
Rand Corporation, a military-intelligence think tank founded during the Cold War, relentlessly promoted the views of Bruce W. Bennet, a defense researcher who wrote a lot on Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old who rules, from its capital Pyongyang, the Democractic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK), the formal and preferred name of the country known world-wide as North Korea.
Here’s how Obama originated the current troubles for which Trump alone is being blamed.
Bennett’s regime change proposals were, and are, the culmination of policies hatched by Obama’s administration to weaken Kim’s hold on power and hasten what they considered DPRK's inevitable collapse. Obviously they failed, yet elements of the plan still abound.
Let’s start with some basic background. The hostile U.S. relationship with the DPRK dates back to the Korean War, when U.S. bombers turned the country into cinders in a destructive campaign of carpet-bombing that killed millions of people. In 1953, an armistice ended the fighting, leaving the country divided and in a perpetual state of war. A peace treaty was never signed. Sometime in the late 1980s, with the border still tense and the U.S. showing no signs of withdrawing its military forces from the South, the DPRK decided to embark on a nuclear program to defend itself from wars of regime change and guarantee its sovereignty.
To head off that development, in 1994 President Bill Clinton negotiated an agreement with DPRK's founding leader, Kim Il-sung, that sought to allay his government’s fears by ending U.S.’s hostile policies. Under the “Agreed Framework,” the DPRK shut down its one test reactor—its only source for plutonium—in return for U.S. shipments of oil for its power grid and two new light-water reactors to be built by an international consortium. Most importantly, both sides agreed to end mutual hostility by fully normalizing their economic and political relations.
The agreement, which froze DPRK's nuclear program for 12 years, held for several years. But in 2002, the Bush administration falsely accused the DPRK of building a secret uranium program as a second route to a bomb and tore up the framework.
In response, DPRK, which was by now led by Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un’s father, restarted its nuclear program, and by 2006 had exploded its first nuclear device.
In response, DPRK, which was by now led by Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un’s father, restarted its nuclear program, and by 2006 had exploded its first nuclear device.
Surprisingly, Bush reopened negotiations only three weeks later, and by 2007, under the rubric of the Six Party Talks, the DPRK agreed again to freeze its program. That accord was still pending when Obama was elected in 2009. He had run for president pledging to talk to Iran and DPRK, but quickly changed course on the latter.
According to Leon Sigal, a former State Department official, Obama and his top adviser on Asia, Jeff Bader, decided in 2009 to side with the new conservative president of South Korea, Lee Myung Bak, who had campaigned against engagement and demanded stronger pressure tactics against the DPRK. Soon, the idea of direct talks and regular was abandoned. Officially, the doctrine for replacing direct engagement with pressure tactics was known as “strategic patience.” Behind it was a mistaken assumption—the same one made by Bennett today—that DPRK was headed for collapse, making even the chance of an agreement a futile exercise.
It’s difficult to overstate how reactionary Obama’s policies became. In contrast to Bush, and even Trump, Obama flatly rejected the idea of negotiating with Pyongyang without a prior commitment to denuclearization. He also expressed no interest in the Pyongyang’s offer to sign a peace agreement. More disturbingly, he was the first president in history to refer to the Korean War, which has been universally recognized as a bloody stalemate, as a “victory.” In doing so, Obama revived a right-wing trope that was first used in the 1950s and resurrected during the Bush years by David Frum and other neocons.
So from the onset, Obama caused U.S.’s policy toward Pyongyang's government to take a sharp right turn.
So from the onset, Obama caused U.S.’s policy toward Pyongyang's government to take a sharp right turn.
The tensions were exacerbated by the covert cyber war Obama launched against DPRK to damage and slow its missile program. During the Obama years, the DPRK tested three more nuclear bombs, and despite the cyber war, rapidly expanded its missile abilities.
As the situation deteriorated, Obama embarked on a series of military exercises with South Korea that increased in size and tempo over the course of his administration. They included unprecedented overflights by B-52 and stealth B1-B bombers as well as training in “decapitation strikes” designed to take out Kim and his leadership. All of this led straight to the crisis Trump inherited and has only made worse.
As the situation deteriorated, Obama embarked on a series of military exercises with South Korea that increased in size and tempo over the course of his administration. They included unprecedented overflights by B-52 and stealth B1-B bombers as well as training in “decapitation strikes” designed to take out Kim and his leadership. All of this led straight to the crisis Trump inherited and has only made worse.
But while Trump critics rightly chafe over his reckless allusions to a nuclear attack on Pyongyang, it’s often forgotten that Obama himself made similar statements towards DPRK' capital, couched in his trademark cool. “We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals,” Obama told CBS News in April 2016. A few months later, Daniel Russel, the president’s senior diplomat on Asia who had earlier viewed The Interview at Sony’s request, actually threatened DPRK's destruction. If Kim gets “an enhanced capacity to conduct a nuclear attack,” Russel told defense reporters, he would “immediately die.”
At the time, these threats hardly caused a ripple in the media, and sparked few complaints from the liberals who now criticize Trump for pushing the U.S. to war or the progressive reporters who criticized Bush for his invasion of Iraq.
Another thing that excited Kim's anger and mistrust, was a movie called "The Interview", which is a simple-minded propaganda against DPRK and Kim Jong-un, produced by Sony and condoned by Obama.
To tell this story, I need to talk about the Rand Corporation, which first became famous in 1971, when Daniel Ellsberg, a Rand analyst, leaked the Pentagon Papers that exposed the secret history of the Vietnam War.
The incredible tale of official lies that unfolded in pages of the New York Times and other papers helped end the war four years later and triggered the beginning of the end of Richard Nixon. After shaking off that incident, Rand emerged as one of the premiere research centers for the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence.
As a result of 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Rand returned full force to refining the practice of counterinsurgency, or COIN, the “soft power” side of empire-building that got its start in Vietnam and aims at winning “hearts and minds” of countries that the United States invades or subverts. Bennett’s policy proposals to divide members of the DPRK “elite” from their government with offers of political support and financial assistance come right out of the COIN playbook.
The link between Rand and Sony was made shortly after the first public viewing of the film "The Interview" by Rand CEO Michael Rich, a lifelong employee of the think tank. Under his leadership, Rand developed close ties with U.S. intelligence. In November 2014, for example, Rich presided over a “rare dialogue” with the National Security Agency that took place at Sony’s headquarters in Century City and included then NSA director Michael Rogers as well as Michael Leiter, the former director of the CIA’s National Counterterrorism Center.
In June 2014, after the first clips of the movie were shown, Rich emailed Bennett, informing him he had recommended that Rand “trustee Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Entertainment, get in touch with you for some quick assistance.” Lynton, too, had high-level connections. As the hacked Sony emails collected by Wikileaks would later reveal, he had attended dinners at Martha’s Vineyard with President Obama, and as a Rand board member, had contacts throughout government. From June on, Bennett, through Lynton, became a critical adviser to the film and acted as a liaison between the studio and the Obama administration.
The makers of The Interview were especially interested in advice on crafting the ending of the film. The scene of Kim’s head exploding pleased Bennett, as he wrote in one of his emails. “I have been clear that the assassination of Kim Jong-Un is the most likely path to a collapse of the North Korean government,” he wrote.
Bennett continued: ‘Thus while toning down the ending may reduce the North Korean response, I believe that a story that talks about the removal of the Kim family regime and the creation of a new government by the North Korean people (well, at least the elites) will start some real thinking in South Korea and, I believe, in the North once the DVD leaks into the North (which it almost certainly will). So from a personal perspective, I would personally prefer to leave the ending alone.”
Bennett firmly believed the film could spark the U.S.-led coup he had dreamed about for so long. “There are many ways that United States and even Sony Pictures could affect North Korean internal politics,” he wrote on the Rand website. “Slipping DVDs of at least parts of The Interview into the North, including a narration describing what their ‘god’ Kim is really like is one way.” (In fact, a version of this stunt was attempted right after the film came out by two of the more fanatical regime-changers in Washington, the neocon writer Jamie Kirchik and right-wing human rights hustler Thor Halvorssen.)
To make sure the film was on the "right track", Sony arranged to show the ending to officials at the State Department. Lynton emailed Daniel Russel, who was the assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, that the studio was “concerned for the safety of Americans and American and North Korean relations.” He and other U.S. officials gave their blessing to the film’s violent ending. After word of Russel’s involvement leaked out, the State Department denied any role, only to be contradicted by Russel himself. In a 2016 speech in Los Angeles, he said, “I’m the U.S. government official who told Sony there was no problem ‘greenlighting’ the movie The Interview.”
Despite the official go-ahead, Sony agreed at first to only release The Interviewon DVD. Then, when Sony temporarily pulled the film in December 2014, Obama became its champion, declaring that “we cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States.” That led to the remarkable sight of Hollywood actors and directors from the liberal left, led by the likes of George Clooney and Michael Moore, defending the film as an act of free speech and urging Americans to defy Kim’s “censorship” and go see it in a theater.
By this time, Sony had been hacked by a group that called itself the “Guardians of Peace.” The FBI later claimed this group was secretly working for North Korea. The Obama administration agreed, and said its top intelligence officials had concluded that North Korea was “centrally involved.” This finding was questioned by many cyber-security experts (especially Gregory Elich’s critique in Counterpunch and Kim Zetter’s analysis in Wired). They concluded that the FBI’s “evidence” found in servers in Thailand, Singapore and elsewhere was thin and speculative, and found signs that the real hackers (who had an uncanny insider knowledge of Hollywood) could still be at large and might have been former Sony employees.
But the U.S. government had no doubts at all. In January 2015, Obama called the DPRK’s alleged hack an “act of war” and used it as an excuse to launch one of the most aggressive American actions on behalf of a private corporation in U.S. history. His executive order imposed sanctions against three DPRK agencies and nearly a dozen “critical North Korean operatives” in retaliation for the hack. The Treasury Department said the sanctions were in direct response to Pyongyang’s “numerous provocations, particularly the recent cyber-attack targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment.” The action marked a major escalation, returning “the U.S. to a posture of open hostility with its oldest remaining Cold War adversary,” the Wall Street Journal noted.
Shortly after these actions were taken, the New York Times published a revelation that raised serious questions about the hack, reporting that the NSA had broken into the DPRK’s computer systems as early as 2010 and “penetrated directly into the North with the help of South Korea and other American allies.” If that was true, the NSA might have watched the alleged hackers and allowed them to do their work. Here’s what the Times concluded: “The extensive American penetration of the North Korean system… raises questions about why the United States was not able to alert Sony as the attacks took shape last fall, even though the North had warned, as early as June, that the release of the movie…would be ‘an act of war.’”
By this time, however, the film had done its damage by convincing Kim’s government that the Obama administration did indeed want its destruction. More missile and nuclear tests followed, and by the end of the Obama administration relations were far worse than they were when Bush left office in 2009. In other words, the film had the opposite of its intended effect, prompting a clampdown by Kim and suppressing whatever internal dissent existed.
Today, Kim Jong-un remains firmly in control of DPRK, and the Trump administration—despite Trump’s tweets on Sunday equating engagement with “appeasement"—appears to be slowly moving toward negotiations of some kind with his government. Bruce Bennett continues to fantasize about bringing the leader down. Kim, he argued in a recent post, craves his weapons not for self-defense but because “nukes are one way to show his subjects he's a god.” Kim is “a weak leader consumed by paranoia,” he wrote in a separate piece.
At the same time, there is abundant evidence that the combination regime-change/cyber war project adopted by the Obama administration is still in force. A few weeks ago, CIA Director Mike Pompeo told a crowd at the Aspen Forum that he’s been ordered to find ways to “separate” Kim from his "missiles and nuclear weapons”—a “strong hint,” the New York Times reported, "that the United States was considering seeking a regime change in North Korea.” And on August 29, in a departing interview with Fox News, ousted White House adviser Sebastian Gorka let it slip that the cyber attacks on DPRK probably continue. “On the more covert side of things, you have seen a lot of missile tests fail,” he said. “Most tests actually fail. Sometimes there may be reasons beyond just incompetence by North Korea.“
The Democrats haven’t let up, either. Last month, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal told NBC News that the Obama administration should have responded more aggressively to DPRK’s alleged hack of Sony in 2014. And there was an intriguing exchange recently between one of Obama’s top national security officials and South Korea’s new president, Moon Jae-in. On August 4, Moon spoke out against Korean right-wingers who send anti-DPRK propaganda over the border in large balloons—one of the tactics frequently suggested by Bennett and carried out by neocons Kirchick and Halvorssen. These actions, he warned, unnecessarily aggravate the North, and particularly during times of severe tension, “could prompt accidental clashes.”
That sparked an angry tweet from Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s former U.N. ambassador and perhaps the most famous proponent of “humanitarian intervention” against enemy states like DPRK. “So mistaken,” Power tweeted in response to Moon. “Information is what Kim Jong-un fears most.”
Like so many Americans who have served time as diplomats or generals in Korea since 1945, Power apparently believes that only the United States knows what’s best for Korea (as for everywhere else), both North and South. Her attitude appears to be the dominant one in Washington, where the latest crisis has only increased the fervor for a U.S.-led overthrow of DPRK among the national security elite. Last Friday, two days before Kim’s latest nuclear test, Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, took to his paper to argue that "regime change is the only way to definitively end the North Korean nuclear threat.” He added: "As former State Department human rights chief Tom Malinowski has argued, 'Political change in Pyongyang and the reunification of Korea, as hard as it may be to imagine, is actually much more likely than the denuclearization of the present regime.’"
In other words, the diplomacy that Vladimir Putin advises shouldn’t even be tried, only war.
The Malinowski reference is key: he is the former Washington director of Human Rights Watch, which despite good work on a few issues has been at the forefront of the risky humanitarian intervention policies (such as a no-fly zone in Syria) so favored by Power and the liberal ignorant neocons of the Obama administration. As Malinowski concluded in the Politico article quoted by Diehl, "The central aim of our [regime change] strategy should be to foster conditions that enable this natural, internal process to move faster, while preparing ourselves, our allies and the North Korean people for the challenges we will face when change comes.” That’s exactly Bennett’s point.
The Malinowski reference is key: he is the former Washington director of Human Rights Watch, which despite good work on a few issues has been at the forefront of the risky humanitarian intervention policies (such as a no-fly zone in Syria) so favored by Power and the liberal ignorant neocons of the Obama administration. As Malinowski concluded in the Politico article quoted by Diehl, "The central aim of our [regime change] strategy should be to foster conditions that enable this natural, internal process to move faster, while preparing ourselves, our allies and the North Korean people for the challenges we will face when change comes.” That’s exactly Bennett’s point.
But people like Bennett and Malinowski should "be careful what they wish for," two former high-ranking national security officials, Richard Sokolsky and Aaron David Miller, recently argued in 38North, a source of news and analysis on DPRK.
Most dangerous is the likelihood that a “decapitation” campaign as envisioned by Bennett and others would spark a wider war. Trying to topple Kim Jong-un might very probably precipitate a real crisis even worse than the current one, as we have seen in Irak, Lybia, and currently, in Syria and Venezuela.
Most dangerous is the likelihood that a “decapitation” campaign as envisioned by Bennett and others would spark a wider war. Trying to topple Kim Jong-un might very probably precipitate a real crisis even worse than the current one, as we have seen in Irak, Lybia, and currently, in Syria and Venezuela.
Koreans can only hope that the very few voices of reason and diplomacy prevail and that a diplomatic solution can be found to the years of hostility between Washington and Pyongyang. That may be the only way the divided country can avoid the Lybia and Iraq-like calamity promoted by Bennett, Clinton and the "regime-changers" of Washington.
Vladimir Putin, who knows the world better than any other chief of state, rightly warned: "It is essential to resolve the region's problems through direct dialogue involving all sides without advancing any preconditions (for such talks). Provocations, pressure, and bellicose and offensive rhetoric is the road to nowhere".
Actually, it is the road to World War III.
Dialogue, not espionage or provocation, is the only way out of the mess Obama put the United States and all of us, in the event of a nuclear war.
By the way, don't get the title of this blog wrong. When I call Kim Jon-un mad, I don't mean dementia. I mean anger with the US.
For Kim Jong-un is not mad. Quite the contrary. He is a rational man.
He has pulled off a wholly rational feat. By producing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of delivering them to U.S. territory, Pyongyang has obtained near-assurance that the U.S. will not attack it, in (yet another) attempt at regime change.
Wait, you’ll say. He already had that insurance. Every talking head on cable news says a U.S. strike would inevitably mean an attack on Seoul, which would kill tens of thousands immediately. South Koreans would blame the invasion on the U.S. So it’s just not tenable. Even if limited to conventional forces, the threat of invasion already constituted adequate deterrence. There’s no way the U.S. would trigger an attack on a city of 10 million people who are supposed to view the U.S. as their benevolent protector. So the North Koreans didn’t need to upset the world by acquiring nukes.
But think about it from Jong-un’s point of view.
Born in 1984, Jong-un was 7 when the U.S. first bombed Iraq, supposedly to force its troops out of Kuwait (although Saddam Hussein had already agreed to withdraw). Then the U.S. imposed sanctions on the country that killed half a million children.
He was 11 when the U.S. intervened in Yugoslavia, bombing Serbs to create the dysfunctional client state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
He was 15 (probably in school in Switzerland) when the U.S. bombed Serbia and created the dysfunctional client state of Kosovo.
He was 17 when the U.S. bombed and brought regime change to Afghanistan. Seventeen years later, Afghanistan remains in a state of civil war, still hosting U.S. troops to quell opposition.
He was 19 when the U.S. brought down Saddam and destroyed Iraq, producing all the subsequent misery and chaos.
He was 27 when the U.S. brought down Gaddafi, destroyed Libya, forced the Yemeni president from power causing chaos, and began supporting armed opposition forces in Syria.
He was 30 when the U.S. State Department spent $5 billion to topple the Ukrainian government through a violent coup.
He knows his country’s history, and how the U.S. invasion from September 1950 leveled it and killed one-third of its people, while Douglas MacArthur considered using nuclear weapons on the peninsula.
He knows how U.S. puppet Synghman Rhee, president of the U.S.-proclaimed “Republic of Korea,” having repeatedly threatened to invade the North, executed 100,000 South Koreans after the outbreak of war on the grounds that they were communist sympathizers who would aid the enemy.
He loves Elizabeth Taylor movies but hates U.S. imperialism. There’s nothing crazy about that.
Kim Jong-un was 10 years old when the U.S. and DPRK signed the Agreed Framework, by which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear power plants, replacing them with (more nuclear proliferation resistant) light water reactors financed by the U.S. and South Korea, and the gradual normalization of U.S.-Pyongyang relations. He was 16 when U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang and met with his father Kim Jong Il. (In that same year, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung met with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang during the period of “Sunshine Diplomacy” eventually sabotaged by the Bush/Cheney administration.) He was 20 when the agreement broke down (undermined by Dick Cheney and his neocons in 2004).
He was 17 when his older half-brother Jong-nam was busted at Narita Airport, for stupidly trying to enter Japan with his family on forged Dominican passports, to visit Tokyo’s Disneyland. That stunt ruled Jong-nam (murdered as you know in Malaysia in February 2017) out for the succession, whereas the next son, Jong-chul, was deemed “effeminate.” (At a Clapton concert in Singapore in 2006 he was seen with pierced ears.) Jong-un probably didn’t expect to be the next monarch until he was in his mid-20s.
He was 24 when the New York Philharmonic Orchestra visited Pyongyang to a warm welcome. (Washington refused a DPRK offer for a reciprocal visit.) Selected as successor, he became the new absolute leader of DPRK at age 27, a young, vigorous, well-educated man (Physics degree from Kim Il-song University) groomed for the post and with a strong sense of dynastic responsibility. That means returning the DPRK to the relative economic prosperity of the 1970s and 80s, when average per capita energy consumption in the north exceeded that of the south.
Kim has make economic development primary, and the long-standing “military first” (Songun) policy is giving way to a policy more empowering civilian Korean Workers Party leaders.
The DPRK economy, according to The Economist, “is probably growing at between 1% and 5% a year.” A new class of traders and businessmen (donju) has emerged. The complex social status system (Songbun) that divides society into 51 sub-categories of “loyal,” “wavering,” and “hostile” (and distributing privileges accordingly) has been falling apart with the rise of market forces.
Fourteen months into his tenure, Kim Jong-un invited Dennis Rodman, a member of the U.S. Basketball Hall of Fame, to Pyongyang for the first of what have now been five visits. He is a huge basketball fan, an aficionado of U.S. popular culture, a child of rock ‘n roll. He is also rationally aware of the threat the U.S. poses to his country (among many countries). So his strategy has been to sprint towards nukes while he can. Perhaps he thought that since the Trump administration was (and is) in such disarray, no violent response (such as an attack on the Yongbyon nuclear complex) was likely. But it was risky; the U.S. president is, after all, unstable and ignorant. He has asked his advisors repeatedly, why can’t we use nukes since we have them?
The fact is, if Kim Jong-un plays his cards right, he will get international recognition for the DPRK as a nuclear power—the same degree of recognition afforded other non-NPT signatories like India, Pakistan and Israel. The U.S. will have to defer to Chinese and Russian sobriety and abandon hollow threatening rhetoric. It will have to back down, as it did in the Korean War, when it realized it could not conquer the North and reunify Korea on Washington’s terms and had to accept the continued existence of the DPRK.
In return for tension-reducing measures by the U.S. and the South, and the establishment of diplomatic and trade ties, Pyongyang will suspend its nuclear weapons program, content with and proud of what it has accomplished. It is the only way.
Just knowing that the enemy is capable of contemplating one’s people’s extinction surely motivates some leaders to seek the ultimate weapon. The dear young Marshall pulled it off. He replicated what Mao did in China between 1964 and 1967. He got the bomb, which had been introduced to the world over Hiroshima on August. 6, 1945, and used again three days later over Nagasaki. And never used anywhere since in the years since, in which the U.S. has been joined by the USSR, UK, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan as members of the nuclear club. He has no reason to use it, unless the U.S. gives him one.
Negotiations on the basis of mutual respect and historical consciousness are the only solution.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council’s 15-0 vote to impose a new set of sanctions on North Korea somewhat disguises the critical role played by the Russia-China strategic partnership, the “RC” at the core of the BRICS group.
The new sanctions are pretty harsh. They include a 30% reduction on crude and refined oil exports to the DPRK; a ban on exports of natural gas; a ban on all North Korean textile exports (which have brought in US$760 million on average over the past three years); and a worldwide ban on new work permits for DPRK citizens (there are over 90,000 currently working abroad.)
But this is far from what US President Donald Trump’s administration was aiming at, according to the draft Security Council resolution leaked last week. That included an asset freeze and travel ban on Kim Jong-un and other designated DPRK officials, and covered additional “WMD-related items,” Iraqi sanctions-style. It also authorized UN member states to interdict and inspect North Korean vessels in international waters (which amounts to a declaration of war); and, last but not least, a total oil embargo.
“RC” made it clear it would veto the resolution under these terms. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the US’ diminishing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Moscow would only accept language related to “political and diplomatic tools to seek peaceful ways of resolution.” On the oil embargo, President Vladimir Putin said, “cutting off the oil supply to North Korea may harm people in hospitals or other ordinary citizens.”
“RC” priorities are clear: “stability” in Pyongyang; no regime change; no drastic alteration of the geopolitical chessboard; no massive refugee crisis.
That does not preclude Beijing from applying pressure on Pyongyang. Branch offices of the Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China in the northeastern border city of Yanji have banned DPRK citizens from opening new accounts. Current accounts are not frozen yet, but deposits and remittances have been suspended.
To get to the heart of the matter, though, we need to examine what happened last week at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok – which happens to be only a little over 300 km away from the DPRK’s Punggye-ri missile test site.
In sharp contrast to the Trump administration and the Beltway’s bellicose rhetoric, what “RC” proposes are essentially 5+1 talks (North Korea, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, plus the US) on neutral territory, as confirmed by Russian diplomats. In Vladivostok, Putin went out of his way to defuse military hysteria and warn that stepping beyond sanctions would be an “invitation to the graveyard.” Instead, he proposed business deals.
Largely unreported by Western corporate media, what happened in Vladivostok is really ground-breaking. Moscow and Seoul agreed on a trilateral trade platform, crucially involving Pyongyang, to ultimately invest in connectivity between the whole Korean peninsula and the Russian Far East.
South Korean Prime Minister Moon Jae-in proposed to Moscow to build no less than “nine bridges” of cooperation: “Nine bridges mean the bridges of gas, railways, the Northern Sea Route, shipbuilding, the creation of working groups, agriculture and other types of cooperation.”
Seoul wants a rail network that will physically connect it with the vast Eurasian land bridge, which makes perfect business sense for the fifth largest export economy in the world. Handicapped by North Korea’s isolation, South Korea is in effect cut off from Eurasia by land. The answer is the Trans-Korean Railway.
Moscow is very much for it, with Putin noting how “we could deliver Russian pipeline gas to Korea and integrate the power lines and railway systems of Russia, the Republic of Korea and North Korea. The implementation of these initiatives will be not only economically beneficial, but will also help build up trust and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”
Moscow’s strategy, like Beijing’s, is connectivity: the only way to integrate Pyongyang is to keep it involved in economic cooperation via the Trans-Korean-Trans-Siberian connection, pipelines and the development of North Korean ports.
The DPRK’s delegation in Vladivostok seemed to agree. But not yet. According to North Korea’s Minister for External Economic Affairs, Kim Yong Jae: “We are not opposed to the trilateral cooperation [with Russia and South Korea], but this is not an appropriate situation for this to be implemented.” That implies that for the DPRK the priority is the 5+1 negotiation table.
Still, the crucial point is that both Seoul and Pyongyang went to Vladivostok, and talked to Moscow. Arguably the key question – the armistice that did not end the Korean War – has to be broached by Putin and the Koreans, without the Americans.
While the sanctions game ebb and flows, the larger strategyof "RC" is clear - a drive aimed at Eurasian connectivity. The question is now to convince Trump to leave them alone and Kim Jon un to play along despite the sanctions.
Vladimir Putin, who knows the world better than any other chief of state, rightly warned: "It is essential to resolve the region's problems through direct dialogue involving all sides without advancing any preconditions (for such talks). Provocations, pressure, and bellicose and offensive rhetoric is the road to nowhere".
Actually, it is the road to World War III.
Dialogue, not espionage or provocation, is the only way out of the mess Obama put the United States and all of us, in the event of a nuclear war.
For Kim Jong-un is not mad. Quite the contrary. He is a rational man.
He has pulled off a wholly rational feat. By producing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of delivering them to U.S. territory, Pyongyang has obtained near-assurance that the U.S. will not attack it, in (yet another) attempt at regime change.
Wait, you’ll say. He already had that insurance. Every talking head on cable news says a U.S. strike would inevitably mean an attack on Seoul, which would kill tens of thousands immediately. South Koreans would blame the invasion on the U.S. So it’s just not tenable. Even if limited to conventional forces, the threat of invasion already constituted adequate deterrence. There’s no way the U.S. would trigger an attack on a city of 10 million people who are supposed to view the U.S. as their benevolent protector. So the North Koreans didn’t need to upset the world by acquiring nukes.
But think about it from Jong-un’s point of view.
Born in 1984, Jong-un was 7 when the U.S. first bombed Iraq, supposedly to force its troops out of Kuwait (although Saddam Hussein had already agreed to withdraw). Then the U.S. imposed sanctions on the country that killed half a million children.
He was 11 when the U.S. intervened in Yugoslavia, bombing Serbs to create the dysfunctional client state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
He was 15 (probably in school in Switzerland) when the U.S. bombed Serbia and created the dysfunctional client state of Kosovo.
He was 17 when the U.S. bombed and brought regime change to Afghanistan. Seventeen years later, Afghanistan remains in a state of civil war, still hosting U.S. troops to quell opposition.
He was 19 when the U.S. brought down Saddam and destroyed Iraq, producing all the subsequent misery and chaos.
He was 27 when the U.S. brought down Gaddafi, destroyed Libya, forced the Yemeni president from power causing chaos, and began supporting armed opposition forces in Syria.
He was 30 when the U.S. State Department spent $5 billion to topple the Ukrainian government through a violent coup.
He knows his country’s history, and how the U.S. invasion from September 1950 leveled it and killed one-third of its people, while Douglas MacArthur considered using nuclear weapons on the peninsula.
He knows how U.S. puppet Synghman Rhee, president of the U.S.-proclaimed “Republic of Korea,” having repeatedly threatened to invade the North, executed 100,000 South Koreans after the outbreak of war on the grounds that they were communist sympathizers who would aid the enemy.
He loves Elizabeth Taylor movies but hates U.S. imperialism. There’s nothing crazy about that.
Kim Jong-un was 10 years old when the U.S. and DPRK signed the Agreed Framework, by which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear power plants, replacing them with (more nuclear proliferation resistant) light water reactors financed by the U.S. and South Korea, and the gradual normalization of U.S.-Pyongyang relations. He was 16 when U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang and met with his father Kim Jong Il. (In that same year, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung met with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang during the period of “Sunshine Diplomacy” eventually sabotaged by the Bush/Cheney administration.) He was 20 when the agreement broke down (undermined by Dick Cheney and his neocons in 2004).
He was 17 when his older half-brother Jong-nam was busted at Narita Airport, for stupidly trying to enter Japan with his family on forged Dominican passports, to visit Tokyo’s Disneyland. That stunt ruled Jong-nam (murdered as you know in Malaysia in February 2017) out for the succession, whereas the next son, Jong-chul, was deemed “effeminate.” (At a Clapton concert in Singapore in 2006 he was seen with pierced ears.) Jong-un probably didn’t expect to be the next monarch until he was in his mid-20s.
He was 24 when the New York Philharmonic Orchestra visited Pyongyang to a warm welcome. (Washington refused a DPRK offer for a reciprocal visit.) Selected as successor, he became the new absolute leader of DPRK at age 27, a young, vigorous, well-educated man (Physics degree from Kim Il-song University) groomed for the post and with a strong sense of dynastic responsibility. That means returning the DPRK to the relative economic prosperity of the 1970s and 80s, when average per capita energy consumption in the north exceeded that of the south.
Kim has make economic development primary, and the long-standing “military first” (Songun) policy is giving way to a policy more empowering civilian Korean Workers Party leaders.
The DPRK economy, according to The Economist, “is probably growing at between 1% and 5% a year.” A new class of traders and businessmen (donju) has emerged. The complex social status system (Songbun) that divides society into 51 sub-categories of “loyal,” “wavering,” and “hostile” (and distributing privileges accordingly) has been falling apart with the rise of market forces.
Fourteen months into his tenure, Kim Jong-un invited Dennis Rodman, a member of the U.S. Basketball Hall of Fame, to Pyongyang for the first of what have now been five visits. He is a huge basketball fan, an aficionado of U.S. popular culture, a child of rock ‘n roll. He is also rationally aware of the threat the U.S. poses to his country (among many countries). So his strategy has been to sprint towards nukes while he can. Perhaps he thought that since the Trump administration was (and is) in such disarray, no violent response (such as an attack on the Yongbyon nuclear complex) was likely. But it was risky; the U.S. president is, after all, unstable and ignorant. He has asked his advisors repeatedly, why can’t we use nukes since we have them?
The fact is, if Kim Jong-un plays his cards right, he will get international recognition for the DPRK as a nuclear power—the same degree of recognition afforded other non-NPT signatories like India, Pakistan and Israel. The U.S. will have to defer to Chinese and Russian sobriety and abandon hollow threatening rhetoric. It will have to back down, as it did in the Korean War, when it realized it could not conquer the North and reunify Korea on Washington’s terms and had to accept the continued existence of the DPRK.
In return for tension-reducing measures by the U.S. and the South, and the establishment of diplomatic and trade ties, Pyongyang will suspend its nuclear weapons program, content with and proud of what it has accomplished. It is the only way.
Just knowing that the enemy is capable of contemplating one’s people’s extinction surely motivates some leaders to seek the ultimate weapon. The dear young Marshall pulled it off. He replicated what Mao did in China between 1964 and 1967. He got the bomb, which had been introduced to the world over Hiroshima on August. 6, 1945, and used again three days later over Nagasaki. And never used anywhere since in the years since, in which the U.S. has been joined by the USSR, UK, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan as members of the nuclear club. He has no reason to use it, unless the U.S. gives him one.
Negotiations on the basis of mutual respect and historical consciousness are the only solution.
The new sanctions are pretty harsh. They include a 30% reduction on crude and refined oil exports to the DPRK; a ban on exports of natural gas; a ban on all North Korean textile exports (which have brought in US$760 million on average over the past three years); and a worldwide ban on new work permits for DPRK citizens (there are over 90,000 currently working abroad.)
But this is far from what US President Donald Trump’s administration was aiming at, according to the draft Security Council resolution leaked last week. That included an asset freeze and travel ban on Kim Jong-un and other designated DPRK officials, and covered additional “WMD-related items,” Iraqi sanctions-style. It also authorized UN member states to interdict and inspect North Korean vessels in international waters (which amounts to a declaration of war); and, last but not least, a total oil embargo.
“RC” made it clear it would veto the resolution under these terms. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the US’ diminishing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Moscow would only accept language related to “political and diplomatic tools to seek peaceful ways of resolution.” On the oil embargo, President Vladimir Putin said, “cutting off the oil supply to North Korea may harm people in hospitals or other ordinary citizens.”
“RC” priorities are clear: “stability” in Pyongyang; no regime change; no drastic alteration of the geopolitical chessboard; no massive refugee crisis.
That does not preclude Beijing from applying pressure on Pyongyang. Branch offices of the Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China in the northeastern border city of Yanji have banned DPRK citizens from opening new accounts. Current accounts are not frozen yet, but deposits and remittances have been suspended.
To get to the heart of the matter, though, we need to examine what happened last week at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok – which happens to be only a little over 300 km away from the DPRK’s Punggye-ri missile test site.
In sharp contrast to the Trump administration and the Beltway’s bellicose rhetoric, what “RC” proposes are essentially 5+1 talks (North Korea, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, plus the US) on neutral territory, as confirmed by Russian diplomats. In Vladivostok, Putin went out of his way to defuse military hysteria and warn that stepping beyond sanctions would be an “invitation to the graveyard.” Instead, he proposed business deals.
Largely unreported by Western corporate media, what happened in Vladivostok is really ground-breaking. Moscow and Seoul agreed on a trilateral trade platform, crucially involving Pyongyang, to ultimately invest in connectivity between the whole Korean peninsula and the Russian Far East.
South Korean Prime Minister Moon Jae-in proposed to Moscow to build no less than “nine bridges” of cooperation: “Nine bridges mean the bridges of gas, railways, the Northern Sea Route, shipbuilding, the creation of working groups, agriculture and other types of cooperation.”
Seoul wants a rail network that will physically connect it with the vast Eurasian land bridge, which makes perfect business sense for the fifth largest export economy in the world. Handicapped by North Korea’s isolation, South Korea is in effect cut off from Eurasia by land. The answer is the Trans-Korean Railway.
Moscow is very much for it, with Putin noting how “we could deliver Russian pipeline gas to Korea and integrate the power lines and railway systems of Russia, the Republic of Korea and North Korea. The implementation of these initiatives will be not only economically beneficial, but will also help build up trust and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”
Moscow’s strategy, like Beijing’s, is connectivity: the only way to integrate Pyongyang is to keep it involved in economic cooperation via the Trans-Korean-Trans-Siberian connection, pipelines and the development of North Korean ports.
The DPRK’s delegation in Vladivostok seemed to agree. But not yet. According to North Korea’s Minister for External Economic Affairs, Kim Yong Jae: “We are not opposed to the trilateral cooperation [with Russia and South Korea], but this is not an appropriate situation for this to be implemented.” That implies that for the DPRK the priority is the 5+1 negotiation table.
Still, the crucial point is that both Seoul and Pyongyang went to Vladivostok, and talked to Moscow. Arguably the key question – the armistice that did not end the Korean War – has to be broached by Putin and the Koreans, without the Americans.
While the sanctions game ebb and flows, the larger strategyof "RC" is clear - a drive aimed at Eurasian connectivity. The question is now to convince Trump to leave them alone and Kim Jon un to play along despite the sanctions.
PALESTINA
The New York Times is letting a little light shine on the boycott Israel campaign with an op-ed it published by Roger Waters two days ago, titled, “Congress Shouldn’t Silence Human Rights Advocates,” just ahead of his concerts in Brooklyn.
The piece is an open endorsement of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) aimed at Israel. Roger makes the argument we have frequently sought to make here, that progressives routinely use the boycott tool, including against North Carolina over the so-called bathroom bill.
Criminalizing boycotts is un-American and anti-democratic. Boycotts have always been accepted as a legitimate form of nonviolent protest in the United States. In 1955 and 1956, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., incited by the protest of Rosa Parks and others, became one of the foremost civil rights struggles against segregation in the South.More recently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association refused to hold championship events in North Carolina after state legislators there passed a law that curbed legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and set discriminatory rules regarding transgender bathroom use in public buildings. Numerous artists, including Bruce Springsteen, refused to perform in the state; major corporations canceled investments in North Carolina. The voice of boycott in support of civil rights was heard and the bill was repealed, albeit as part of a problematic compromise. In these cases, progressives lauded these boycotters as champions of equality.
Roger says that the pro-Israel forces are mustering against his 64-city tour.
Audiences of tens of thousands are coming together at our “Us + Them” shows, which embrace love, compassion, cooperation and coexistence and encourage resistance to authoritarianism and proto-fascism. These appearances have been greeted by a few sporadic protests by right-wing supporters of Israel.These protests would be of no consequence, if they did not occasionally have truly negative consequences. For instance, the city of Miami Beach prevented a group of school children from appearing onstage with me after pressure from the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. I understand that city officials have a democratic right to disagree with my opinions, but I was shocked that they were willing to take it out on kids.
Some local legislators are trying to shut down two shows Roger is having on Long Island later this week.
Officials in Nassau County in Long Island are threatening to take legal action to shut down two shows I have scheduled there next week, using a local anti-B.D.S. law passed in 2016. If the Nassau County attorney proceeds against the operators of the Nassau Coliseum, we will have our day in court and argue on behalf of all those who believe in universal human rights and the First Amendment.
Artist-led boycott, he reminds us, was crucial in the South Africa struggle. Those who are attempting to silence me understand the power of art and culture. They know the role artists played in the civil rights struggle in the United States and against apartheid in South Africa.
Here’s a report on Waters’s show in Newark last Thursday night, stressing how much of his show is aimed at Donald Trump. (“When they performed the Pink Floyd hit ‘Another Brick in the Wall’… Roger Waters and his band were joined by 10 children in prison jumpsuits. The children stood still at first, then sang and danced joyfully as the song’s message turned rebellious. At one point, they took off their jumpsuits to reveal T-shirts saying ‘Resist.’ That was just one of several swipes at the current U.S. president…”)
And by the way, his Times op-ed doesn’t even go into much detail about Palestinian conditions, though Roger has testified about the persecution at the Russell Tribunal. In the Times, he describes BDS as “nonviolent pressure to end [Israel’s] 50-year-old occupation of Palestinian territory and other abuses of Palestinian rights.”
Roger plays Brooklyn tomorrow night and Tuesday, then Nassau Coliseum on Friday and Saturday.
Roger Waters epic speech against Israeli occupation of Palestine
If you are in London this Fall,
go to the Young Vic Theater to see:
My Name is Rachel Corrie
DAILY LIFE UNDER OCCUPATION
DAILY LIFE UNDER OCCUPATION
Israeli soldiers who claimed stones were thrown from the homes of the Da'na family in Hebron went into the are outside the homes and detained members of the family who had just driven up, compelled them to get out of the car, pointed a gun at a woman carrying a baby, and verbally abused a B'Tselem camera volunteer. Other résidents of the compound came out to see what was happening and the soldiers argued with theme.
An old Palestinian woman comes back home in the West Bank to find Israeli settlers throwing her belongings out to take her home from her.
Twenty Israeli settlers (with sleeping bags), accompanied by private armed security and backed by Israeli police forces, entered her house and started clearing it of the family belongings. one Palestinian resident, Khamis al-Gawi was arrested shortly after the Zionists invaders arrived and is still being held at a local police station for trying to stop them. Two internackional activists who were filming the settlers taking over the house were also arrested by the police and their video cameras confiscated.
Twenty Israeli settlers (with sleeping bags), accompanied by private armed security and backed by Israeli police forces, entered her house and started clearing it of the family belongings. one Palestinian resident, Khamis al-Gawi was arrested shortly after the Zionists invaders arrived and is still being held at a local police station for trying to stop them. Two internackional activists who were filming the settlers taking over the house were also arrested by the police and their video cameras confiscated.
BRASIL - DIRETAS, JÁ!
Porta dos Fundos
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