It was pleasing to read this morning that the leader of the opposition Labor Party here in Australia, who, according to polls, should be elected prime minister, will be visiting Seoul and Tokyo, not hanging on Trump's words as Prime Minister Turnbull does at the moment.
...Exposing ourselves to others’ ways of seeing life and its crises, and revealing our own ways to others, may seriously challenge most of us. But I think it’s an important step in developing empathy, capacity and will for collective remedial action. This is action that rejects war and cultivates peace, that nurtures the irritations of resistance and civil disobedience into pearls of civic-minded behaviour caring for all people and planet. Importantly then, a 21st century update on Marx: imaginations of the world, unite! An exciting place for learning, thinking and imagining collectively is the IPAN (Independent and Peaceful Australia Network) National Conference 2017 in Melbourne on 8, 9 & 10 September 2017. Its theme: War, Peace & Independence: Keep Australia out of US Wars. http://www.ipan.org.au/#/To register for the conference www.trybooking.com/286873 Maureen Todhunter is an academic copy editor and member of Just Peace Qld
In reply I drew on the comment I'd made at The Conversation, adding a note at the end about past difficulties in endeavouring to walk down the middle between the left and the right.
James O'Neill, barrister at law and geopolitical analyst has been writing about the urgent necessity for review of Australian strategic policy. I commend to readers to go and read other entries at James's website, including also about Korea. There much wisdom there, also consistent with and more powerful than some things I have been writing. With permission, this is the most recent of his essays, which is here at James's web site also at John Menadue's blog. It is important that arguments for serious review of Australia's strategic direction are posted far and wide.
AMERICAN BLUEPRINTS FOR WAR POSE AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AUSTRALIA
The recent statement by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to the effect that on defence issues Australia and the United States were “joined at the hip” raises the serious question of how far Australia will actually go in support of the United States as it embarks on one foreign policy misadventure after another? A possible change of government in Australia after the next election will not make any appreciable difference. The Labor leadership is always quick to ensure minimum daylight between themselves and the Coalition whenever yet another pledge of fealty to the Americans is made.
There are two useful tests to employ to gauge an answer posed to the above question. The first test is one of history. There have been at least five major conflicts since World War 2 where Australia has followed the Americans when a vital national security issue was either difficult to discern or was invisible.
The Korean War 1950-53 has always been justified to the Australian public as a UN based “Police action,” with American led forces responding to an invasion of South Korea by the North. That explanation was never adequate. It ignored a large number of relevant factors, including a history of American interference in that country since at least the 1880s.
It further ignored American acquiescence in the brutal colonization of Korea by Japan after 1910 in exchange for Japan not interfering in America’s colonization of the Philippines (600,000 Filipinos died resisting that colonization.) With Japan’s defeat in 1945, Korea was divided in two along the 38th Parallel, a line drawn by the US State Department without consulting the Koreans. Contrary to international maritime law, that boundary line then turned north, thus depriving the North Koreans of access to their own maritime exclusive economic zone.
Between 1945 and 1950 the promised national elections were never held. South Korea’s US installed military dictator made repeated forays into the North, killings tens of thousands of North Korean citizens. The “invasion”, more accurately a civil war, has never been resolved. (1) Several opportunities to steer North Korea away from nuclear weapons were squandered and there is now a level of belligerence that poses the risk of a further outbreak of war. Australia’s willingness to become involved has repeatedly manifested itself, although a rational basis for doing so remains elusive.
The second great conflict was Vietnam, again a civil war initially and again a country divided artificially after the defeat of the former colonial occupiers. Another similarity with Korea was again, the Americans refused to allow an election as provided for in the Geneva Accords, no doubt because the “wrong” man would have won.
Australia’s involvement in the war was prefaced by Harold Holt’s infamous “all the way with LBJ” although the internal Vietnam conflict posed no national security threat to Australia, the blatant “red scare” propaganda notwithstanding. In common with so many American invasions, this one was justified on the basis of a blatant falsehood; in this case the alleged attack on an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Afghanistan, the third major conflict we entered at the behest of the Americans was similarly based on a number of lies, which have continued unabated in the nearly 16 years of subsequent occupation. The real causes of that intervention and continuing occupation have been well documented. (2) Trumps most recent speech on the topic (21 August 2017) was similarly an exercise in concealing the real purposes behind the continuing American occupation (3).
Iraq in 2003 was a similar lie-based invasion and occupation, the disastrous consequences of which continue to this day. Australia’s presence there is so tenuous that there is no Status of Forces Agreement signed and all Australian military personnel carry diplomatic passports (4).
The fifth illustration is Australian participation in the US led “coalition” currently attacking Syria. Notwithstanding the nonsensical claims of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop invoking Article 51 of the UN Charter, the American and Australian presence in Syria is in blatant breach of international law. It is worse than just being illegal. Australia is a party to the commission of war crimes, most notably at present in the current assault on Raqqa with an horrendous civilian death toll that even the UN was drawn to criticize (5).
With this history we should not be surprised that more wars are looming in which Australia will assuredly be involved unless there is a radical change in foreign policy. [my emphasis added] This brings us to the second test that can be applied: what do the protagonists themselves say about their intentions?
To assist in predicting future wars, the Americans have helpfully produced a document that might reasonably be described as a blueprint for future wars. These documents have valuable predictive power, as we have seen demonstrated with the PNAC document, Rebuilding America’s Defences (1997).
This 90-page document served as a blueprint for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It promoted policies to “preserve and extend” the US’s position of “global leadership” by “maintaining the preeminence of American military forces” that would better enable them to fight and win “multiple simultaneous major theater wars” which themselves provide a framework within which to “spread American principles of liberty and democracy.” That last phrase was used without a hint of irony.
We then had General Wesley Clark’s revelations that he was shown a document at the Pentagon in September 2001 that was a blueprint for war with “seven countries in five years.” (6) In the light of subsequent events, the list is instructive: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, and Sudan.
Of the seven, only Lebanon and Iran have escaped direct US military intervention. Lebanon has suffered invasion and occupation by Israel before being driven out by Hezbollah. The US armed, financed and politically supported Israeli aggression, while Australia has always been slow to find fault with Israeli foreign policy and is one of a literal handful of countries that vote with Israel in the UN General Assembly on resolutions critical of Israel.
Iran has been the victim of hybrid warfare through sanctions, massive propaganda assault, US sponsored terrorist activity through their proxy group the MEK, and drug warfare through the US controlled heroin production and distribution from Afghanistan (7).
The plan, written in 2012, foresees the economic and social collapse of Europe caused by massive immigration from Africa and the Middle East. It also predicts that Ukraine will become a NATO member. This was written two years before the US financed coup in February 2014.
There have been a range of events that have occurred since 2012, all of which were “anticipated” in the document. The whole document is worth reading, but some highlights illustrate the wider point.
The Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) transferring nuclear technology to North Korea, but blaming the Russians. (The CIA runs the SBU).
Blaming Pakistan for “WMD proliferation, being a direct threat to the Homeland, supporting terrorist organisations, and causing regional tensions with India.” All of these points appeared in Trump’s 21 August speech).
A cold war with China and a proxy military conflict using India’s military. This is currently being played out on the Bhutan-China border.
Azerbaijan is named as a future war zone. Azerbaijan not only shares borders with Iran and Russia (two prime targets for the Americans) but it is also a key link in the North South Transportation Corridor that is a key component of the Eurasian geopolitical transformation that is underway. That transformation, spurred by China’s massive One Belt One Road program, is in turn a fundamental threat to US hegemony.
A plan to trigger war between Russia and China. This is one of the major strategic miscalculations in the document. As a direct result of US policy in Europe and Asia, Russia and China have been driven into a closer strategic embrace than at any other time in their long history. Together they have the capacity to destroy US hegemony.
According to the 2012 plan, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen will continue indefinitely and can be used as launch pads for wars in Azerbaijan, China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan.
The arrogance implicit in these plans is astonishing. They are also exceedingly dangerous. Can it seriously be argued that Australia’s national interest is served by being a party to any of these plans? Does Australia really want a war with any of the named targets, several of whom are nuclear armed?
The history of the past seventy years demonstrates the folly of Australia’s blind fealty to US imperialism. A serious rethink is urgently needed before it is too late and we are dragged into yet another war, the results of which would be terminal in every sense of the word.
*Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst. He may be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au
References
Cumings The Korean War. The Modern Library 2010
O’Neill The Ongoing Disaster of Australia’s Policy in Afghanistan johnmenadue.com 16 May 2017
O’Neill Trump and Afghanistan: a Hidden Agenda journal-neo.org 25 August 2017.
Tanter Australia in America’s Iraq 3.0 Nautilus Institute 2014
We need to move beyond a rage against Australian Prime Minister Turnbull’s folly on Korea, calmly assess the provocations by Trump and Kim, respect the rights of south Korea and understand how destructive US global strategies have become.
A number of commentators have characterised DPRK strategy as pursued by acting, out of necessity, “ferocious, weak and crazy”.
In the 1990s they used their nuclear program as an economic bargaining chip. All that changed after 9/11 when G W Bush lumped the DPRK, Iran, Iraq and Libya together as the Axis of Evil.
North Korean leaders watched the fate of others identified in this axis by Bush. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, his regime was destroyed... and in the end Iraq more controlled by Iran than anyone else. In Libya Gadaffi submitted, undid his nuclear program and was still chewed up. Iran has done all asked of it and is now subject again to war threats.
Blind Freddy, or a Blind Kim, can see that the only security for the DPRK must therefore be to hasten to achieve a credible nuclear deterrent. They are at that threshold.
North Korea has never threatened first strike with a nuclear weapon. It has however lived with persistent first strike threat for a long time.
China once supported the notion of unification of Korea but now cannot tolerate the prospect of a US dominated South Korea taking command of the North.
In South Korea since May a reforming president who might make a Whitlam envious has been embarked on domestic reform as well as pursuit of sanity in intra Korean affairs. And has had Trump’s agreement that the ROK is to take the lead and there must be no war. Speaking thus also to Trump for an hour in the past week.
It is appalling that an Australian Prime Minister could so misread the ANZUS Treaty as to claim that we are automatically at war with North Korea if the US is at war. This is not 1939; Turnbull is not Menzies. Are we to think all bankers have such naive understanding of the world? Who advises Turnbull?
In 1965 the Menzies Government had the almost-decency to squeeze from the government in Saigon a request for troops we would send to Vietnam at US request. But in the post modern, why is Turnbull (why are so many) blind to the existence and the entitlements of South Korea to its own self-determination: as a country in the region, member of the G20, GDP same as ours, population double ours. Where do our heads live? Solely in a Murdoch-trumpian media world?
There are annually-scheduled major US-ROK exercises, with history of practising decapitation of the DPRK, planned for next week …when now also the DPRK leader may make a demonstration of nuclear status, firing a nuclear capable rocket or rockets targeted at points just outside the territorial waters of Guam. In the past week nuclear-armed US B1-B bomber have once again cruised over the ROK and very close to North Korean airspace. Who is entitled to demonstrate what?
The ROK is trying to speed up transfer of command over its own troops from the US in wartime, legacy of decades of dictatorship and the unfinished war.
This recent article in a South Korean media outlet shows something of what the ROK president is trying to do in domestic reform. A progressive perspective we cannot imagine in Australia, lifting wages, getting more employees off casual to permanent, challenging commercial conglomerates, focus on human rights including migrants. Etc. Difficult.
Especially difficult with a big essential ally acting so badly and with the example of Venezuela for any challenges to hegemony. We should be alert and sensitive to actualities in a regional country and not acting like the fifth cockatoo on the branch.
The world has been led up a stupid path with fear of North Korea. More credibly the US is bent upon undermining every other nuclear power’s second-strike capability, ending all balance of power. While on the real front, away from unusable nuclear weapons, the US tears up one country after another.
A thoughtful piece in the New York Timeshas set out in detail how the US intervention has given Iraq as a gift to Iran, with Iran now consolidating its road to the Mediterranean via Syria. How good or bad that may be for the wider world is another matter, the point first is that intervention in Iraq, at one time the single greatest error of strategic judgment in Australia’s history, shuffles forward to assume the same status for the US, putting Vietnam in the shade, the latter now a problem that has kinda solved itself in a way the Middle East can’t.
But now today the Washington Post reports that Trump, with resistance from most of his security advisors, wants conflict with Iran. There is doubtless a psychological problem for Trump in that the president is obliged every 90 days to report to congress on whether Iran is complying with the 2016 nuclear deal. Apart from its substantial control of Iraq, a country of almost 40 million people, Iran itself has a population of 80 million (one Germany) and territory equal to one Germany plus one France plus two x UK. And, um, it has porous borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.... oh and also with Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey. Who can count the numbers of wars in this wide expanse, children? Who can imagine the current and potential number of non-state violent actors. I can list the two interventions in which the US has been successful since the Second World War:
Panama, population small too and just a US-installed president to abduct.
Those links will provide detail of the phenomenal order of battle of US forces for such small targets. Rather than divide the population of Grenada into the population (and territory) of Iran, consider that this whole US order of battle absolutely hasn't been able to win in Iraq or Afghanistan. Oh, I've not mentioned North Korea. Population one Australia, adjoining South Korea, population 2 x Australia, South Korea's GDP = Australia's GDP. The old Chinese image for the problem of the US strategic posture in the 1970s still fits: "ten fleas under ten thumbs." The difference between the 1970s and 2017 is that now many more nations and non-national actors see the emperor's lack of clothes. Trump and Kim Jong-il both have to act frenzied to sustain their domestic support.
Australian and other English language media have been – to say the least – excited about the Korean peninsula recently. There are several elements to this. The most exciting (apart from splashy/crashy missile tests) was the annual parade in the DPRK capital Pyongyang on 15 April, birth date of founding leader Kim Il-sung, grandfather of the present leader Kim Jong-un. Here I have embedded a video presentation from the New York Times. This gives quick mention of weapons on display, for more go to Stratfor.
(That video will probably be followed by another, with US President Trump speaking of how Chinese President Xi and his people "have been really interesting to be with." I take that comment at face value and as important. Trump learns such a lot from watching TV and hearing people around him, rather than going over formal briefing. The meetings with Xi were long and would (I think) have involved consecutive translations rather than simultatious translations. In that environment you have time to absorb, time to observe, time to consider what you say. Time to really learn about others. I am sure this meeting will have had a bigger impact than many others, for example with the King of Jordan or the British Prime Minister, let alone the skating, blabbing environment of phone calls, e.g. with the President of Turkey and Prime Minister of Australia.)
This is to be seen in the context of the overall Order of Battle of US forces. If you plan to work your way through that we will see you Thursday week after next. Good luck.
Recall in going through that stuff that President-elect Trump wanted a military parade at his inauguration. In retrospect, instead of people saying "oh no!" there might have been virtue in putting the whole order of battle (or at least the land and air based) on parade in Washington DC as the whole kaboodle of President, executive and legislature might still be standing there, with hands on breast to try to cope with hunger.
The DPRK's defence budget is estimated to be about USD10 billion. In February 2017 Trump called for the US defence budget to be increased by USD 70, to bring it to around USD600 billion. Lots of data here. (Bear in mind regarding that Trump budget bid (accompanied by proposals for dramatic cuts elsewhere) that the President may recommend but the Congress writes the budget.)
There is useful world defence historical and comparative data here. Note that the Russian defence budget of USD70 billion matches the Trump increase bid. Note also the relatively modest (for such a significant new world power) size of the Chinese defence budget.
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But to come back to the beginning, the DPRK's military parade, a couple of basic observations:
[1] despite the hysterical expectations of the DPRK going to war, the gathering of the military crown jewels to parade down the main street is rather more a sign that there is no expectation in the DPRK of real war now.
[2] the hysterical reporting misses the fact of the two months of joint US-ROK exercises, just completed. And this background report too. The various actions by the DPRK during this period must have been gold to those conducting the exercises.. real actions from the other side to be monitored in the south. As also the DPRK would have carefully monitored the electronic reactions on the southern side.
What is playing out, said Robert Litwak of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who tracks this potentially deadly interplay, is “the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion.”
... and that bit of plagiarism was then picked up and repeated by a spray of other media.
But despite alarming prospects right now that Trump could do something truly stupid, it seems that, arising from the careering cavorting cruise of the USS Carl Vinson and escorts, we are watching something between the Gulf of Tonkin incident manufactured to escalate the Vietnam War and a scarcely remembered wonderful British cold war satire The Mouse that Roared. This little clip could be describing the court proceedings in Pyongyang or the White House.
It is as obvious that you must move your carriers around all the time as it is obvious that they are vulnerable to prompt destruction in a major war... and also obvious that when you move a carrier it produces new policy, either because you wanted to produce new policy or because you hadn't thought about that. And so it is that the Nimitz is also setting sail from Washington State for the western Pacific today. This reflects Obama, not Trump.
It may be that Russia sought to interfere with the US presidential elections in 2016.
It is very plain that the US has interfered in ROK presidential elections in 2017, confecting crisis, bringing pressure to urge people to vote on the conservative side, avoid candidates who give priority to talking with Pyongyang. In this I can see the engines of established hard line American policy, but I cannot see the sustained hard line solving the problems. Apart from establishing itself as an economic power, member of the G20, south Korea has continued with bumps and determination, to build a civil society, abandoning history of military dictatorship. This means the usual uncertainties of democracy, but also possibilities of peace on the peninsula not available with continued military pressure.
A resolution of the Korean problem can only be secured in discussions between Seoul and Pyongyang and mutual dismantling of military assets. A concept of the US doing what Seoul and Pyongyang want. A resolution of the Korean problem will produce many new positive opportunities in this region in which Russia, China, Korea and Japan sit. Projected dominant power by the US does not fit with that.
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Let's conclude with a clip from Dr Strangelove ... but remember this is only a fiction of course.
Stanley Kubrick wrote, produced and directed this film shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
There is a lot of fact missing from this discussion. The aircraft carrier heading for Korean waters left Korean waters several weeks ago. It was there at the beginning of annual US-ROK exercises which have involved more and more massive forces in recent years which are perceived reasonably in Pyongyang as rehearsals of a decapitation plan for action against the north.
Also, amid all the shouting, note that this week, the Reunification Ministry, the Defence Ministry and the armed forces in South Korea have issued statements urging people to calm down, that what is done in the peninsula will be decided by South Korea, that their policy is peaceful, and there will be no war.
Also, if one steps away from the glare of US reporting as echoed by Australian media and commentators and politicians, note that this week the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister responsible for Korean and nuclear issues has been in Seoul to debrief on Xi-Trump and has taken the opportunity to meet all candidates for the 9 May presidential elections. Note also that Seoul newspapers are giving nice coverage to a friendly visit by two Russian warships to the ROK naval headquarters.
It seems remarkable that a country at the centre of such tension could be so sensible. Any reflection on DPRK behaviour has to involve empathy and awareness that no other country has been under such sustained nuclear threat for so long.
As with Beijing-Taipei relations the future of Korea will be decided by Seoul and Pyongyang.
This leaves us with Trump as comparable to a loutish parent getting belligerent at a school sports event. It’s not that he thinks Koreans in particular are children, he acts the same way towards everyone. We are curiously dependent on two generals, Mattis and McMaster, at Defense and National Security Agency. As well as perhaps Kushner to keep Trump away from the button. Read McMaster’s “Dereliction of Duty” for his views on high decision making. Read Yonhap Newsagency online to discover South Korean news.
Thanks for mentioning Russia, an essential part of outcomes in North Asia.
McMaster’s book is an essential, and rare, text on the conduct of war by civilians.
“McMaster’s book is an essential, and rare, text on the conduct of war by civilians.” … or, critically, now, an insight into a main man’s view of that. War is always conducted by civilians except by military governments. It remains important, as Clausewitz argued, that statesmen know that war, as a policy instrument, once adopted, tends to drive out policy and pursue its own ends. It seems to me that the hypertrophic development of American much more than DPRK forces has largely driven out policy. There is no comfort in the fact that the US is now over-armed and under-brained or in the notion that soldier smarts (McMaster/Mattis) will keep policy in order.
Regarding the Russians, in 1982, in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs I secured approval for another Australian effort to shift the Korean issues somewhere. With no significant outcome, except that a comment by Mikhail Kapitsa,
then the deputy Soviet foreign minister, has stuck with me. He said, in relation particularly to DPRK relations, that “Where two countries that should be friends are not friends, the fault is with the more powerful.” I have waited to see good examples of this principle in action. China perhaps heads more that way than Russia or the US. Israel the epitome of the contrary.
There is a terrible ignorance here and elsewhere of both the ROK and the DPRK, and of Korean culture. Media and public policy driven by the US military posture and the spectacle of the DPRK wrestling with having been locked in the broom closet of Asia for half a century. From my very brief experience visiting Pyongyang long ago, the main thing I took away was of administrative weakness and bungling, comparable in Australian terms, with, say the Border Force + Centrelink were they both under a Morrison and were he unrestrained.
The idea of defending south Korea from north Korea with a HIGH ALTITUDE system is bizarre. The record of THAAD thus far is weak. It would seem irrelevant to a shower of missiles at low level such as the DPRK has recently demonstrated. THAAD is plainly directed at China. In political terms, rather than military hardware terms, it is another rope around south Korean, holding it to the US and away from prospect of peaceful outcomes on the peninsula.
It seems also reasonable to speculate that the American show of force is an intervention in the south Korean presidential elections, to reduce support for moderate candidates concerned to engage in dialogue with the DPRK and China.
While absorbing all that (thanks, Dennis) I note Trump is sending McMaster to AF to survey what size of further commitment is needed to assist with “pacification” of the regions and to prop up a flailing government. If so, we’ve heard that before.
A specific emphasis on terrain that offers a significant source of revenue to the Taliban, such as artisanal mining hubs, is key to the reprioritization of military objectives. At the same time, the Afghan government needs to incentivize the legal, albeit nascent, extractives industry in Afghanistan.
Good point… and I have to wonder about that now in the context of MOAB. And it does seem relevant to this (otherwise rather alarmingly Trumpist-ill-informed-spontaneous-violence-prone) discussion inasmuch as McMaster is there and without question involved in the MOAB decision. Here are the nearby mineral resources:
McMaster has, in Afghanistan, with MOAB, now demonstrated his sense of escalation… for a second time. But in Afghanistan, unlike Syria, there is now the question of subsequent action by ground forces. There is a huge question whether this massive bomb has been used in a place very remote from human habitation. I can imagine people (including children, Mr President) at great distance incapacitated for life, deaf and brain damage, damage to many organs.
We don’t know where the 14 MOABs are. This is a weapon that bridges from conventional to nuclear in its effects, in a ‘clean’ way. It’s only been used once before, this the first time in war. This use in Afghanistan is the first real test. Which is perhaps the main reason why McMaster has been in Afghanistan. We must follow the steps of the McMaster.
The worst aspect of US military policy is that they have no concept of proportionality. They drop the largest non-nuclear weapon in their arsenal, a non penetrating weapon, onto a bunch of fighters in Afghanistan. I doubt very much that the MOAB was in theatre, one would suggest it was brought in for a strategic purpose and it would appear self evident what that purpose was.
When I was in Afghanistan in 2007 a US B-1B bomber dropped 20 000lb of ordnance on a Taliban machine gun emplacement with the result “unsuccessful”. The US was sending a message.
The MOAB was a message and not necessarily for North Korea alone; we will be your judge, jury and executioner.
I guess it’s McMaster’s job to convey John Nicholson’s assessment of the bomb’s efficacy back to Trump and NSC. Whatever Trump has in his “mind” for DPRK, he must be tossing over a small bunkerbusting nuke. Love to know what China & Russia, let alone RoK & Japan, are telling him.
Chinese President rang Trump during the week to say don’t do it.
Chinese former Vice-Minister dealing with Korea and nuclear spent the week in Seoul having friendly meetings with five presidential candidates. Five presidential candidates appeared in TV debate yesterday and all spoke against any military action.
Two Russian naval ships (destroyer and supply) making a friendly visit to ROK naval HQ this week.
To add a Japanese vessel to an American carrier task force is to say the least odd, unless one is trying to really annoy a lot of Koreans.
