[PEN-L:6583] Progressive Response: NATO, Korea, Kosovo

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The Progressive Response   7 May 1999   Vol. 3, No. 17
Editor: Tom Barry
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Table of Contents

I. Updates and Out-Takes

*** NATO SUMMIT UNSPUN ***
by Daniel Plesch, British American Security Information Council (BASIC)

*** U.S.-NORTH KOREA RELATIONS ***
by John Feffer, American Friends Service Committee


II. Comments

*** EXCELLENT ANALYSIS BUT MISSING FACTORS ***

*** AHISTORICAL JUNK ***

*** A NIT TO PICK: AMBIGUOUS DEMAND ***
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I. Updates and Out-Takes

*** NATO SUMMIT UNSPUN ***

(Ed. Note: Prior to the NATO Summit, the FPIF project produced a policy
brief analyzing the continuing role of NATO. Written by Tomas Valasek of
the Center for Defense Information, "NATO at Fifty" can be accessed at
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol4/v4n11nato.html. The
following analysis of NATO after the summit and immersed in the Kosovo
bombing campaign comes from Daniel Plesch, director of the British American
Security Information Council (BASIC), who made a presentation at a Capitol
Hill forum sponsored by the project in conjunction with several
congressional representatives (Kucinich, McKinney, Conyers, and Stark) on
April 29. See the FPIF's Kosovo Crisis Page at
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/media/releases/crisis_eu99.html for
more on the Kosovo crisis and the congressional briefings cosponsored by
the project.)

*** NATO Summit Unspun ***

My organization has been involved in advocating, lobbying, coaxing, and
cajoling political leaders and the alliance itself for the best part of a
decade now in how to avoid and prevent situations like the one we are in
now. These horrors are tragically not the last in this part of the world
and certainly we know that these issues are presented to us as immensely
complicated problems. If you permit me, I will sketch out a rather simple
description, which will lead from that into how NATO leaders were handling
these issues at last week's summit.

If you can take leave of imagination with me and think of the Balkans as
some of our own troubled inner cities, and if you think of trying to manage
law and order in Washington, DC, or somewhere else, the only tool available
to you is the SWAT team of a private security force, which is about the
equivalent of the NATO military. Not under the town council--if you will,
the United Nations--but a private security force that does not come when
you call 911 unless you've got a credit card to go with it. In this case,
neighborhoods would be burning--and all over DC, without neighborhood
programs, without community policing, without the whole infrastructure. We
have learned in our cities that relying on the SWAT teams and police
cruisers is not the way forward. If you look at models in Boston or other
places in this country, we can see that it is the complex, much derided
social work model that provides security. That helps to dispense with the
SWAT team approach and permits for other tools in the tool box. The
political actions of our leaders in this country in particular speak to the
current situation at hand. What this country does, many others follow. My
own country, the United Kingdom, and other countries in Europe, have so far
followed the U.S. in ensuring that when policy makers, politicians,
parliamentarians wish to take action to prevent and manage conflict,
virtually the only tool available to us is military force.

In Kosovo today we are using air power, which is largely ineffective. We
are told that Serbian military forces are arriving in Kosovo in larger
quantities than we are destroying, even with the best efforts of Allied
aircraft. And the other possibility on the table are ground forces, which
are virtually unusable as a political tool. So we have limited our options
in the first place to the NATO alliance, a private security organization
involved in the international community, and then limited our military
force options. That was the position we put ourselves in at the Rambouillet
talks. And it is the position that the administration led the Alliance and
European security to with all deliberate speed. Kosovo, if you recall, was
to be, as Richard Holbrook put it, the prototype within NATO for military
actions outside of NATO's borders without UN authority. There was great
pride that Russian participation could be dispensed with, and nobody even
mentioned the two words "United Nations" for almost six months in public.

Well, we have tried?and it has been a disaster. Ground war as proposed is a
fantasy akin to the air war--the fantasy being that we might be able to be
involved without the war spreading. Proponents of a ground war need to
answer the question of how we could contain the ground war, how they would
limit Milosevic's options to broaden it. Those people who want to drive
tanks through Hungary should explain how they would intend to do it without
creating a similar situation we have here for the 300,000 Hungarians living
in northern Serbia.

And if as in Bosnia we decide to unleash the Croat army against the Serbs,
which is one of the main options. Indeed an arms program for Croatia was
one of the less publicized decisions of the summit. If we decide to allow
the Croats to do our fighting for us, then we risk massive, long-term
escalation of the conflict. Privately NATO officials believe that either we
take the opportunity over the next few weeks to negotiate our way out of
this, and those options have been discussed here in the media and by the
congressmen who are to take part in some of these peace discussions in
Vienna, or the race is on between a peace deal and a ground war driven by
pride and machismo. That is why, of course, we still continue the air war.
Nobody wants to fail. That same logic will lead us to start using a wider
range of artillery in our actions in a week or so and from that into a
ground war, which [I learned from] talking to officials at the margins of
the NATO summit meetings. Despite the possible escalation, there has been a
deafening silence from NATO about the fate of the remaining Kosovars in
Kosovo right now.

Nothing has been said by the Alliance for one or two weeks now about the
hundreds of thousands of displaced people. That will change. When that
changes, on the propaganda front, I will regard it as a signal for a major
escalation of the conflict, because it will be used to escalate the public
mood to support an escalation of the conflict. The strategic shift in
policy that could have been made at any time in the last eight years away
from the SWAT-team, heavily-armed-only approach to international security
towards resourcing other aspects of security, is beginning to be supported
more strongly by the Europeans.

And at the summit there was a welcome endorsement by the United States of
the European plan for long-term economic stabilization of the region. Some
of this analysis is on our web site, which is mentioned in the packet you
have. Very broadly we advocate a long overdue economic and security plan.
Such a plan was used very successfully in Eastern Europe after the Cold
War. States must put aside their longstanding political differences and
take the necessary human rights, election law, and other legal measures
between themselves. Then the European Union should put a lot of money into
subsidizing the building of a modern infrastructure in the countries of the
Balkans, including Yugoslavia, including Serbia. This proposal is very
seriously put forward by the German government and others and has full
European Union backing. And there is enlightened self-interest in this very
clearly.

Now those plans of the Europeans got lukewarm support here. But as the
legislation comes before you to support this war, I would urge you to look
very seriously at supporting non-military strategies, which are beginning
to come out of the Alliance and the Europeans. I could spend my time
talking more negatively about the summit, but let me outline the strategy
and some views on the immediate future. I would just like to close with a
number of elements that need close attention and support.

The first is that we should support anti-fascist dissidents, as we
supported anticommunist dissidents during the Cold War. Secondly, we should
indict Milosevic as a war criminal, and the United States must join the
international criminal court. Thirdly, the moment the United States puts
$10 million into support of all operations on a regular basis of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, move the decimal point
to $100 million or $1 billion. Believe me, the OSCE could use that money
incredibly usefully in the region in a minute to professionalize the sort
of functions that we saw in Kosovo. Very few people realized that the
mission that drove around in orange jeeps was temporary help. The reason
that monitoring in a permanent capacity in Europe and elsewhere was not
done was because policy makers and geostrategists dismiss it as social work
that should not be funded. That was inexcusable in 1990 and a tragedy today.

Finally, to ensure that the ideas contained in the concept to open up a
whole new range of arms control and reduction measures in Europe are fully
fleshed out and the administration is made to bring detailed proposals to
the table, we must make sure that the rhetoric of war is not simply used to
re-arm former communist militaries in countries from Eastern Europe to the
Caucuses to the Chinese border and to train militaries underneath the
rubric of arming them with the cause of democracy. Programs such as these
are carried out with no congressional supervision under the provision that
military training programs don't have to be authorized by the Congress.
This strategy will bring about a series of problems akin to those we've
already seen across the region.


Sources for More Information on NATO

British American Security Information Council (BASIC)
Email: basic@xxxxxxx
Website: http://www.basicint.org

Center for Defense Information (CDI)
Email: tvalasek@xxxxxxx
Website: http://www.cdi.org
Contact: Tomas Valasek

NATO at 50 (FPIF, March 1999)
by Tomas Valasek, Center for Defense Information
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol4/v4n11nato.html

U.S.-Russia Security Relations (FPIF, September 1998)
By Laura Payne, Center for Defense Information
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol3/v3n26fsu.html

Hidden Costs of NATO Expansion (FPIF, May 1997)
by Kathryn Schultz and Tomas Valasek, Center for Defense Information
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol/v2n35nat.html

"NATO Expansion: Full Speed Ahead -- But Where To?" CDI Defense Monitor,
February 1998: http://www.cdi.org/dm/1998/issue2/

CDI Weekly Defense Monitor articles on NATO:
http://www.cdi.org/issues/europe/nato.html#week

Collection of NATO articles on Global Beat web site:
http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/nato.html

Risk Reduction Strategy for NATO, BASIC, January 1999:
http://www.basicint.org/natorr.htm

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty NATO articles:
http://www.rferl.org/nca/special/madrid-nato/index.html

NATO
http://www.nato.int

NATO at Fifty (maintained by the USIA)
http://www.nato50.gov/

U.S. Mission to NATO
http://www.nato.int/usa/

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
http://www.osceprag.cz/

OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission
http://www.osceprag.cz/e/kosovo.htm

European Union (EU)
http://europa.eu.int/index-en.htm

EU Common Security and Foreign Policy
http://europa.eu.int/pol/cfsp/index_en.htm

Western European Union (WEU)
http://www.weu.int/eng/

NATO page by the Center for Defense Information
http://www.cdi.org/issues/europe/nato.html

Atlantic Council of the United States
http://www.acus.org/

New Atlantic Initiative
http://www.aei.org/nai/aboutnai.htm
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*** U.S.-NORTH KOREA RELATIONS ***
by John Feffer

(Ed. Note: The misdirected and counterproductive character of U.S. defense
policy, highlighted by U.S. leadership in the NATO bombing campaign, is
also evident in Northeast Asia. In a new FPIF policy brief, excerpted here
and soon to be available in its entirety on the FPIF website, John Feffer
examines U.S. relations with North Korea and makes recommendations for a
more constructive U.S. foreign policy.)

North Korea is the United States' longest-standing adversary. The U.S.
helped to divide the Korean peninsula at the end of World War II, then
waged war against North Korea in the 1950s. It has maintained economic
sanctions against Pyongyang for nearly fifty years. In this post-cold war
era, North Korea remains a useful demon. The Pentagon has inflated the
North Korean threat in order to rationalize its desire for a missile
defense system, to justify a capacity to fight two wars simultaneously, and
to explain the need to maintain 37,000 troops in South Korea (and 100,000
troops in Asia overall).

Relations between the two countries worsened in the early 1990s when North
Korea expanded its nuclear program and the U.S. considered bombing the
suspected weapons development facilities. In 1994, after Jimmy Carter sat
down with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, the two sides eventually
negotiated their way back from the brink of war. The resulting Agreed
Framework required that North Korea freeze its nuclear program in exchange
for shipments of heavy fuel oil from the U.S. and two light-water nuclear
reactors to be built by an international consortium funded largely by Japan
and South Korea. As part of this agreement, the U.S. and North Korea
pledged to move toward full normalization of relations. The Agreed
Framework averted war but did not create a lasting peace.

Even as it simultaneously wages war in Iraq and Yugoslavia, the Clinton
administration could attempt to bring peace to the Korean peninsula. To do
so, it must take the dramatic first step of normalizing relations with
North Korea. This would form the centerpiece of a comprehensive package
addressing North Korea's economic and security concerns.

On the U.S. end, normalizing relations would begin with a substantial
amount of humanitarian aid to address North Korean famine and agricultural
problems. Though no one knows how many have died from hunger so far,
nutritional surveys have shown a frightening degree of malnutrition among
children. International agencies monitoring food distribution have
determined that little if any of the aid has been diverted from those in need.

The United States must also begin lifting economic sanctions to honor a
promise implicit in the Agreed Framework. For years, Washington refused to
consider removing sanctions in deference to Seoul. Kim Dae Jung, however,
now favors the lifting of sanctions. Sanctions, alone, do not isolate North
Korea, but other countries (as well as banks and companies) would more
readily consider loans to and investments in North Korea were sanctions
removed.

North Korea, too, has a part to play in this comprehensive package. It must
agree to controls on the exporting and testing of its missiles. In the same
way that the Agreed Framework drew a line between the production of nuclear
energy and the building of nuclear weapons, a package deal must restrict
North Korea's missile tests while permitting further development of
satellite technology. As for missile exports, North Korea has already
demonstrated that it is willing to bargain for cash. Most recently, North
Korea offered to stop exports in exchange for $1 billion annually from the
United States for three years. This is an opening bid that can clearly be
negotiated, especially as there is evidence of a recent decline in North
Korean missile exports.

For North Korea to feel safe giving up its missile development program, the
U.S. must work with the other countries in the region to reduce militaries
and strengthen confidence-building measures--including consultations among
defense officials, notification of military maneuvers in the Sea of Japan,
and the exchange of information about defense expenditures. The U.S. is by
far the dominant military presence in the region with 100,000 troops and
billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry. Therefore it must take the
first steps toward demilitarization, including canceling plans for a
missile defense system.

On the Korean peninsula, demilitarization must begin with a treaty to bring
a formal end to the Korean War. Four-party negotiations involving North
Korea, South Korea, China, and the United States have been inching toward a
peace treaty that can replace the current, uneasy armistice. To date, the
sticking point has been North Korea's demand that U.S. troops be withdrawn
from South Korea. First, the four-party talks should be expanded to include
Russia and Japan, to capitalize on Moscow's warming relations with
Pyongyang. Second, the U.S. must consider restructuring its military force
to become a true peacekeeping body in preparation for eventual
disengagement from Korea.

Such a package deal is in line with South Korean proposals. It is
critically important for the U.S. government to support Kim Dae Jung's
"sunshine policy." A normalization of U.S.-North Korean relations must also
be coordinated with Japan. Currently, the Japanese government is
considering a deal that would send $4 - $10 billion to North Korea if
foreign relations are formally established. Such an agreement would herald
a new age of regional cooperation, much as the normalization of Japan-South
Korean relations did in 1965.

A package deal with North Korea will require President Clinton to use
substantial political capital to overcome objections in Congress and within
the administration. It will require a decisive swing away from the legacy
of containment and toward a policy of engagement. The rewards, however,
greatly outweigh the risks. By reaching out to North Korea, President
Clinton has a unique opportunity to make his mark on history by ending the
cold war in Asia.

(John Feffer <EAQIAR@xxxxxxx> of the American Friends Service Committee
(AFSC) is the East Asia Quaker International Affairs Representative. Based
in Tokyo, Feffer travels regularly to North and South Korea and China to
encourage dialogue on peace and justice issues.)

Sources for More Information on Korea

American Friends Service Committee, Asia Desk
Email: aandrews@xxxxxxxx
Website: http://www.afsc.org

Asia Pacific Center for Peace and Justice
Email: apcjp@xxxxxxxxxxx

Korean American Peace Institute
Email: kcc@xxxxxxxxxxx

National Council of Churches of Christ (USA)
Email: victor@xxxxxxxxxxx

Nautilus Institute
Email: napsnet@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Website: http://www.nautilus.org

Interaction
http://www.interaction.org/disaster/nkorea.html

Korea Web Weekly
http://www.kimsoft.com/korea.htm

United Nations
http://wwwnotes.reliefweb.int/

Yahoo
http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/World/North_Korea

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II. Comments

*** EXCELLENT ANALYSIS BUT MISSING FACTORS ***

Excellent analysis [Bombs Away by Tom Barry, available at:
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol4/v4n13koso.html]. However,
I suggest two missing factors.

1) Within recommendations no mention of the necessity of protection for the
Kosovo Serbs. Your piece speaks only to the necessity of protecting the
ethnic Albanians. Such an oversight misses the history of ethnic Albanian
cleansing of the Serbs which led up to Milosevic's being brought to power
and subsequent crackdown.

2) No mention of the necessity of disarming the KLA/CKU. Without their
being disarmed there is no way they will cooperate in fact with any
solution short of an independent Kosovo, leading to their openly stated
goal of a Greater Albania. They were the catalyst which brought the
retaliations which in turn brought in NATO. They have thus established a
record of success in manipulation which they would be delinquent to their
cause in not repeating.

With full respect for your excellent analysis,
Skip Folden <sfolden@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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*** AHISTORICAL JUNK ***

The problem with this junk is that it's ahistorical. The United Nations
called upon Milosevic to end ethnic cleansing and reduce his forces to no
more than a few thousand about a year ago. No bombs were flying, no troops
were on the ground, it was the UN talking, the negotiations were
noncoercive, etc. It did not one whit of good -- in the ensuing months,
Milosevic bulked up his troops to 40,000 (in direct defiance of the UN) and
killed in the thousands. What is the incentive this time around?

Holly Burkhalter <hburk@xxxxxxxx>
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*** A NIT TO PICK: AMBIGUOUS DEMAND ***

I liked "Bombs Away" and could find few nits to pick. My main suggestion
for future reference is that I find your position that Serbia should
"withdraw its forces from Kosovo" unduly ambiguous. Does that mean ALL
forces? If so, I can't see how that is a viable negotiating position.

By the way, 1,000 people have now signed our Resolution for Peace in
Kosovo, which can be found at: http://freeinet.org/members/esp/kosovo.html

Keep up the great work!

Wade Hudson, Coordinator
whudson@xxxxxxx
Economic Security Project
San Francisco Progressive Challenge
www.igc.org/esp
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