[Marxism] Democracy Now: Bruce Cumings: Latest North Korea Provocations Stem from Missed US Opportunities for Demilitarization

["Michael Friedman" <mikedf@xxxxxxxx>]

Bruce Cumings: Latest North Korea Provocations Stem from Missed US
Opportunities for Demilitarization

Guest:

Bruce Cumings, professor at the University of Chicago. He is the author of
several books on Korea, including Korea?s Place in the Sun: A Modern
History and North Korea: Another Country.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Tension is rising on the Korean peninsula following North
Korea?s underground nuclear test on Monday and a series of subsequent
missile tests.

The United States and South Korea raised their military alert level
Thursday after North Korea said it would abandon the 1953 truce that ended
the Korean War. The US-South Korea Combined Forces Command alert level is
now at three, the highest it has been since North Korea?s only other
nuclear test in 2006.

Earlier in the week, South Korea announced it would join a US-led
initiative to intercept ships suspected of carrying nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons, components or missiles to deliver them. Pyongyang has
warned it would consider South Korea?s membership in the Proliferation
Security Initiative to be an act of war.

AMY GOODMAN: At the United Nations, the US and Japan have circulated a
draft UN Security Council resolution condemning Pyongyang?s nuclear test
and calling for strict enforcement of UN sanctions imposed on North Korea
after its first atomic test in October of 2006. The US-backed draft also
demands that North Korea not conduct any more nuclear tests, cease any
advances in the ballistic missile program and allow the return of
international nuclear inspectors to monitor North Korea?s nuclear
activities.

On Thursday, President Obama?s National Security Adviser James Jones
addressed the North Korea situation during an interview on National Public
Radio.

JAMES JONES: Nothing that the North Koreans did surprised us. We knew that
they were going to do this; they said so, so no reason not to believe it.
But the imminent threat is the proliferation of that kind of technology to
other countries and potentially to terrorist organizations, non-state
actors. And that is, in my view, the most imminent danger.

AMY GOODMAN: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accused North Korea of
acting in a ?provocative and belligerent manner.?

HILLARY CLINTON: North Korea has made a choice. It has chosen to violate
the specific language of the UN Security Council Resolution 1718. It has
ignored the international community. It has abrogated the obligations it
entered into through the six-party talks. And it continues to act in a
provocative and belligerent manner toward its neighbors.

There are consequences to such actions. I want to underscore the
commitments that the United States has and intends always to honor for the
defense of South Korea and Japan. That is part of our alliance obligation,
which we take very seriously.

AMY GOODMAN: We?re joined now by Bruce Cumings. He?s a professor at the
University of Chicago, author of several books on Korea, including Korea?s
Place in the Sun: A Modern History and North Korea: Another Country.

Professor Cumings, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about the significance
of this underground test that?s believed to be bigger than the nuclear
bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, thank you, Amy.

What we have here is another train wreck that, if you?re paying attention
to US-North Korean relations, you can see coming from a mile away. And we
already had this train wreck in 2006. As you just said, the US and South
Korean forces moved up to a level-three defense alert after the North
Korean bomb, the first bomb, was detonated in October 2006.

But if you backtrack to our Independence Day, July 2006, North Korea
tested a long-range missile, several?six or seven?medium-range missiles
that could hit Japan, and they purposely chose July 4th to get the
attention of the Bush administration. This time, they tested the missiles
first and then chose our Memorial Day to test their second bomb on May
25th. They do these things with great calculation. This was?this latest
bomb test was an obvious attempt to get Obama?s attention.

And they?re acting out of the same playbook that worked for them in 2006.
In other words, George W. Bush, who didn?t talk to evil and didn?t reward
bad behavior, turned around within weeks of the first North Korean test in
October of ?06 and started direct bilateral talks with the North Koreans
in Berlin. This led to the February 2007 agreement to freeze and dismantle
the North?s plutonium facility. That was the second time the North had
agreed to freeze and dismantle its entire complex. The first was with Bill
Clinton in 1994. So, unlike Iran, we have two pieces of evidence that
North Korea was willing to give up its plutonium program for eight years.
It was frozen for eight years. And then they agreed again in 2007 to do
this.

So, the media?I should say the mainstream media, not Democracy Now!?they
pay no attention. Along comes North Korea trying to get our attention.
They do a bunch of provocative things. And there?s no question that what
they?re doing is provocative, but it?s nothing new for them. And then
people pay attention, but without the context that?s so essential to
understand this.

The Obama administration, and especially Secretary of State Clinton, are
running on the same tracks as George Bush did in ?07 and ?08. They?re even
talking about the Proliferation Security Initiative, PSI, which is
something that was handcrafted by John Bolton to put pressure on North
Korea. So President Obama needs to pay attention to a situation that he
actually might be able to solve if he paid attention, get back to talks
with North Korea. And if he can solve this problem, as his predecessors
did, at least temporarily, he would put tremendous pressure on Iran also
to give up its enriched uranium program. So I think that?s what?s going
on.

But you really?I mean, you have to read the fine print of even our paper
of record to find any of this out. For example, this morning we learn, of
course, they?ve raised the alert to high levels, but our commanders say
there?s no unusual military activity in North Korea. North Korea doesn?t
want a war. But this train wreck could have been seen coming from a mile
away, or two years away, at least, and the Obama administration is just
not paying attention.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Professor Cumings, if we can take sort of a longer
historical view, one of the things that apparently North Korea has done is
that it?s tearing up the truce agreement that ended the Korean War. But
the Korean War was sixty?almost sixty years ago now. And most Americans
don?t even know that there was really no final peace agreement to that
war. Why has a final agreement between Korea and the United States eluded
our government and their government for so many years?

BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, it?s a very good question. It actually goes back
before the Korean War, because in 1945 the US divided Korea unilaterally.
The Soviets eventually supported that. We put 25,000 combat troops into
Korea, deeply shaped post-war Korean history through a three-year military
government. And here we are sixty-four years later, having stumbled into a
civilizational thicket that we didn?t understand then and don?t understand
now, and we have no exit strategy and the possibility of a new war. So
this is a failed policy.

The Korean War ended with an armistice that the South did not sign,
refused to sign it. And the North Koreans have used that against the South
ever since. But in the last fifteen years, they?ve been calling for a
peace treaty or a peace agreement to finally end the war. And there was a
great deal of negotiation in the mid-?90s under the so-called four-party
talks that Bill Clinton and Kim Young-sam, South Korean president, and Kim
Jong-il involved themselves in, along with the Chinese. They got very
close to an end to the Korean War, some sort of an agreement that would
end it.

But after that, and really for the last decade, the North has threatened
many times to break the armistice. They?ve said many times they?re not
bound by it. This is another?you know, it?s .8 on their
ratchet-up-the-tension scale. But it doesn?t really mean much. It?s a lot
of rhetoric. What it means fundamentally is they?d like to end the Korean
War. And that?s another thing President Obama could get done, if he?d pay
attention and get rid of a lot of Bush holdovers and Clinton holdovers in
his administration.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean by that? Who is being held over? And who do
you think is not constructive in solving the problem with North Korea?

BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, we?ve already?we?ve already discussed the Bolton PSI
initiative. President Obama has brought people into his administration,
some of them confirmed, some not, like Kurt Campbell, people in the 1990s
who weren?t concerned with our specific problems with North Korea that go
back sixty-four years, but were overwhelmingly concerned with
nonproliferation and saw North Korea entirely through the lenses of
nonproliferation. And we?re hearing that again. We heard it at the top of
the hour from General Jones.

Now, just to make a comment on this proliferation threat, the US has North
Korean plutonium samples from their Yongbyon reactor. They?ve had them
since about 1993. If North Korea were to transfer plutonium to some
country or terrorist group and they used it, eventually the US would get
that signature, and they would do what Colin Powell said we would do in
1995, which is to turn North Korea into ?a charcoal briquette.? I mean,
that?s the way we talk to North Korea, even though the mainstream media
doesn?t pay attention to that kind of talk. ?A charcoal briquette.? Well,
we did that already during the Korean War with conventional bombing. So,
this situation is one where neither side really gives quarter, when it
comes down to it. Nonproliferation is a worthy goal, but if we don?t solve
the North Korean problem, the Non-Proliferation Treaty really is just a
piece of paper. It?s already in shreds.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the role of China, Japan and the other major
powers in the area? How are they reacting to this?once again, this rise in
tensions?

BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, Russia doesn?t really count. Neither does Japan,
although Japan makes things very difficult by focusing on eight or nine
people that the North Koreans allegedly abducted and can?t produce for the
Japanese. The Japanese seem to think eight people are more important than
finding a solution to North Korea?s atomic bomb.

South Korea has become a huge obstacle to dealing with the North. And the
North absolutely hates the current president, which is a new situation and
again a very unfortunate one.

This is really now, and has been really since 2006, a situation where the
major players are the United States, North Korea and China. China wants to
preserve a friendly regime on its border. It?s not going to take actions
that will lead to severe stress on North Korea. On the other hand, it
certainly doesn?t want North Korea testing nuclear weapons, when its great
fear is that Japan will go nuclear. And Japan could go nuclear overnight.
They have huge stockpiles of plutonium. It would just take a decision to
do so. I think Japan is quite far from going in that direction, but that?s
China?s great fear. And it could then cascade through South Korea and
Taiwan getting nuclear weapons. So this is a very dangerous proliferation
threat.

But the context, going back to the Korean War, for North Korea is that we
have targeted North Korea with nuclear weapons since 1950. We are the only
power to put nuclear weapons into the Korean Peninsula from 1958 to ?91.
And when you look back at Don Rumsfeld?s antics in 2003, when he thought
he had won the Iraq war around May or June of 2003, he was asking Congress
for new bunker-busting nuclear weapons to go after Kim Jong-il and the
North Korean leadership. There?s an article in the New York Times where
someone in the Pentagon?I think it was Rumsfeld, but it was anonymous?was
quoted saying, ?If I?m Kim Jong-il, I?m running around wondering, you
know, what?s likely to hit me next.? Is this any way to run a foreign
policy, to threaten to decapitate the leadership of a country that we?re
technically at war with? So?with nuclear weapons? So this is the real
situation. And if I or you were in North Korea, uppermost in our mind
would be American nuclear weapons.

I think the ultimate way to solve this is to actually implement the
Non-Proliferation Treaty by the major nuclear powers drawing down their
nuclear weapons eventually and hopefully to zero. In the meantime, it?s
just an unequal treaty, where we get to have nuclear weapons, but other
countries don?t.

AMY GOODMAN: Bruce Cumings, the two American journalists who are now being
held in North Korea for nearly two months, supposedly the North Korean
government says they?ll put them on trial in June, Laura Ling and Euna
Lee, who work for Al Gore?s network, Current, why are they being held? Do
you know their story?

BRUCE CUMINGS: As far as I can tell, they stumbled across the North Korean
border inadvertently, giving the North Koreans a nice catch, like Iran.
There?s been much less attention to these two than there was to the woman
reporter who was recently released by Tehran. But there will be a lot of
attention next week when they come to trial in Pyongyang on June 4th. I
think?one never knows, but I would guess that the North Koreans will
declare them guilty and then kick them out of the country.

But it could be?there?s been a lot of talk that Al Gore might actually go
to North Korea. Within the Clinton?excuse me, Freudian slip?within the
Obama administration, as I understand it, there has been talk of an even
higher-level emissary than Stephen Bosworth, who is the emissary they
appointed to deal with North Korea. So it could be that next week you?ll
see a breakthrough, on at least the journalists.

I think, though, it?s important to remember that from the North Korean
standpoint, after they blew off their missiles and busted off their first
bomb, Bush turned around and talked to them and made an agreement with
them, and they may well think this is the way to get Washington?s
attention and get another agreement.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you very much, Bruce Cumings, for being with
us, professor at the University of Chicago?

BRUCE CUMINGS: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: ?author of a number of books on Korea: Korea?s Place in the
Sun: A Modern History and North Korea: Another Country.



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