Re: Tim Shorrock on Korea

[Charles Jannuzi <b_rieux@xxxxxxxxx>]

Shorrock is always well-informed and what he
writes is informative, but reading his stuff at
Nation and at the even more bizarre Asia Times
Online, I get the feeling that the tradeoff is
between complexity and evisceration: they let him
have enough space to present some analysis of
complex issues, so long as he doesn't present a
thesis that would be too strong against dominant
western views about things like private equity
(e.g. Carlyle Group) buying up distressed
economies or about 'rogue' states such as North
Korea (its rogue status being assured by being a
former client of the S. U., by being in E. Asia,
by it being non-Christian, by it being statist
socialist, etc.).

A few comments on N. Korea, since it does
interest me, has interested me for quite a while,
and is somewhat closer to me here in Fukui, Japan
than the US is.

1. Who are the 'rogue' nuclear states of the
world? Certainly Israel, Pakistan, India, China,
Russia, the UK, France, and the US. Not North
Korea. What country has used nukes on civilian
populations? The US. What country exploded a nuke
in space? The US.

2. What 'rogue' state nuclearized the military
standoff on the Korean peninsula? It was the US,
which up until the early 90s, stationed tactical
nuclear weapons in S. Korea (and transshipped
through 'nuclear-free' Japan--and even stationed
them here, too). I shouldn't be surprised if the
US, when it was drawing up its 'axis of evil'
list, also decided to move some nukes back into
S. Korea.

3. Who reneged on the deals set up under Clinton?
Well, before the Bush caudillo took US hypocricy
to new levels, the Clinton administration had.
But in effect:

--the US has used food and humanitarian aid to
try and get leverage (and that includes aid not
just from the US but from countries that it more
or less controls, such as Japan)
--it hasn't come through with support for
construction of light water reactors for power
generation in N. Korea (now it talks of coal
powered plants, but it's just all talk)
--the US continues to stall on any sort of
declaration of non-agression and normalized
economic and diplomatic relations with N. Korea,
and forces countries like Japan to toe the US
line


You can be sure that the current pseudo-crisis
with N. Korea is one usually made in heaven for
the US national security state and its
overwhelming need to try and crisis-manage the
entire world. It is just now that it comes as the
Bush caudillo is getting the troops ready for
another go at Iraq, it is not very convenient. So
this opens a little gap for the owlish types (war
later not now) to use N. Korea to question Bush's
priorities. But this is by no means any sort of
progressive front that the left should have
anything to do with.

Charles Jannuzi
Fukui, Japan



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