[A-List] US imperialism: Korea

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

US: Korea crisis fuels isolationism
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, January 16 2003

WASHINGTON - That the hawks in the administration of US President George W
Bush along with their cheerleaders in the media and Washington think-tanks
are unilateralist has become conventional wisdom. But they are also
isolationist, because they not only distrust and despise most multilateral
institutions, they also resist any "entanglements", including alliances,
that could constrain Washington's freedom to pursue its national interests,
as it defines them.

These tendencies have been clearest in Washington's attitude toward the
International Criminal Court (ICC), its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) Treaty and construction of a missile defense system, as well
as its insistence that it reserves to itself the ultimate decision of
whether to invade Iraq. Foreign-policy expert Charles Kupchan argues that
these two tendencies "are in reality opposite sides of the same coin" and
have co-existed in US diplomacy for more than two centuries.

"They share common ideological origins in America's fear of entanglements
that may compromise its liberty and sovereignty," wrote Kupchan in his
recent book, The End of the American Era. In practical terms they mean "the
country should do its best to shun international engagement, but if it does
engage, it should do so in a way that preserves national sovereignty", he
added.

These tendencies are becoming increasingly apparent in the hawks' reactions
to the ongoing crisis over North Korea. They are furious with Washington's
two most important Asian allies, South Korea and Japan, for refusing to line
up behind the administration's initial demands to cut off contact and aid to
Pyongyang until it completely and verifiably dismantles its nuclear
facilities.

That they are now losing out to the administration's realist faction, led by
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is moving to renew negotiations with
Pyongyang over the terms for a verifiable agreement that may include US aid
and a non-aggression pledge, only adds to their fury.

The Weekly Standard, whose views generally mirror those held by the civilian
hawks in the Pentagon, even denounced the notion of a non-aggression pledge
as "reminiscent of appeasement", a reference to Britain's acquiescence in
Nazi Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938.

They recognize, of course, the practical impossibility of destroying the
nuclear reactors with US military action without risking the destruction of
the South Korean capital, Seoul, and the lives of the 37,000 US troops who
have acted as a "tripwire" against any North Korean invasion since the end
of the Korean War. But they do not see that as an excuse for letting Tokyo
and Seoul, as well as Pyongyang and China, the North's main external source
of fuel and food, off the hook.

Their frustration has expressed itself mainly in surprisingly radical
suggestions that Washington should withdraw its troops from South Korea and
even encourage Japan to go nuclear, even though either move would radically
alter, if not destroy, Washington's oldest Asian alliances.

Troop withdrawal was first floated last month by the editorial writers of
the Wall Street Journal, a neo-conservative mouthpiece close to Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the chairman of the Defense Policy
Board, Richard Perle. It followed the victory of South Korean
President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, who defeated the US-favored candidate on a
tide of anti-American protests over Bush's hard line against Pyongyang and a
US military court's acquittal of soldiers who accidentally killed two South
Korean schoolgirls.

"Perhaps in his call of congratulations, President Bush should inform Mr Roh
that the US does not stay where it isn't wanted. American troops are there
to protect Koreans, and if they no longer feel that is necessary, we will
bring them home," said the Journal.

As the crisis intensified, the hawks became more resentful of Seoul's
refusal to adopt Washington's hard line. "I've been saying for a week or two
now that we should pull our troops out of South Korea," noted New York Times
columnist William Safire, a prominent neo-conservative, who suggested that
the very presence of US troops acted as a constraint on US military options.

"If we have to attack or take out a nuclear plutonium-producing facility,"
he asked on Meet the Press, the United States' most widely watched
public-affairs television program, "why should we have 37,000 US troops
vulnerable right there?"

And Kenneth Adelman, a protege of both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
Perle who serves with the latter on the Defense Policy Board, recommended
withdrawing at least half of the US troops from Korea, in a recent comment
on National Public Radio.

Such a move would have two benefits, he argued: it would "challenge the
South Koreans on whether our military presence is, indeed unwanted", and,
more significant, it would "show the world what Americans instinctively know
... the default position of US foreign policy is isolationist, not
expansionist".

According to Adelman, a US withdrawal would also "shake up" the region, by
forcing neighboring states to take more responsibility for North Korea. That
echoed an earlier suggestion by yet another hawk, Washington Post columnist
Charles Krauthammer, that the administration encourage Japan to develop its
own nuclear weapons as a source of leverage over China.

In addition to the notion of withdrawing US troops, the hawks have used the
North Korea crisis to press the case for major increases in the US military
budget, which is already larger than those of the 15 next-biggest
arms-spenders combined. They argue that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
timed the crisis precisely to coincide with the huge US military buildup
around Iraq, knowing - Rumsfeld's insistence to the contrary - that
Washington did not have the forces available to launch a credible attack on
North Korea.

"The North Korean crisis shows the need to spend more on defense and get
back to a true 'two war' standard - the ability to fight two conflicts at
the same time," wrote yet another prominent hawk, Max Boot, a former Journal
editorial writer, now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"We can't press North Korea too hard if we know we can't back up bellicose
talk," he went on, suggesting that Washington add US$100 billion to the
current budget of just under $400 billion.

While Powell appears for now to have persuaded Bush against adopting either
policy recommendation, his failure to gain an agreement leading to the
dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs will almost certainly bolster
the hawks' arguments for reducing security ties in Northeast Asia and
boosting the military budget.