The Entire Korean Peninsula as an American Satrapy?

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Kim Petersen

An establishment think tank manipulates the narrative

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walk together as they meet in the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Paju, South Korea, on Friday, April 27, 2018. Kim Jong Un on Friday became the first North Korean leader to enter South Korea since the peninsula was divided almost seven decades ago as a result of US meddling.


Foreign Affairs (FA) magazine, published by the right-wing Council on Foreign Relations, has recently published some articles on taking advantage of economic challenges faced by North Korea. On 29 July, FA says, “Change is underway on the Korean Peninsula. FA posits that sanctions have worked for the US, as can be gleaned from the article’s title: “A Grand Bargain With North Korea: Pyongyang’s Economic Distress Offers a Chance for Peace.” The title is also disingenuous in the extreme since former US secretary-of-state Colin Powell made it clear: “We won’t do nonaggression pacts or treaties, things of that nature.”

FA posits a re-prioritization in North Korean governance whereby the military will now play second fiddle to the economy. This, says FA, “sets the stage for efforts to resuscitate North Korea’s dying economy.”

Why is North Korea’s economy in the predicament that it is? FA, presumably attributes the economic difficulties to military overspending. But FA’s analysis downplays the deleterious effects of sanctions spearheaded by the United States against North Korea. It does admit to this further down in the article, and it also points to the adversity imposed by “COVID-19 restrictions … and a relentless series of natural disasters.” However, why would anyone sanction a country beset by natural disasters and disease? And North Korea, despite whatever skepticism, does not list itself as having any COVID-19 cases.

FA notes, “Kim’s criticisms of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises and his country’s firing of cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles have also been more notable for their level of self-restraint than for escalating tensions on the peninsula.”

However, North Korea has already demonstrated that it has a nuclear weapon and that it has long-range delivery capability. It is obvious that if any actor were to attack North Korea that the aggressor would be punished. Any reading of this exposes a hypocrisy, on the one hand North Korea is considered “notable for their level of self-restraint” and not “escalating tensions on the peninsula.” On the other hand, the US and South Korea conducted joint military exercises in late August. Is this self-restraint or is it provocation? Was not the seizure, announced by the US Justice Department in July, of a tanker that transports oil to North Korea a provocation?

Free public housing in North Korea. Does this look like the "projects" we see in the US?

FA points at food shortages in North Korea. However, it is important to remember that during US intrusion into the Korean civil war, the US wiped out the economic and agricultural basis of North Korea and killed millions of North Koreans. Following its aggression of North Korea, North Koreans have been forced to endure hardship to remain independent of their attacker. Absent this historical background, one might be fooled by FA’s attempt to create an image of American benevolence when it writes: “Kim [Jong-un] is treading carefully on the military front so as not to foreclose the opportunity for dialogue with the United States, which could serve as a guarantor of his country’s future economic security.”

North Korea does not need an economic guarantor, it needs the US to stop sabotaging North Korea’s economic efforts.

FA preposterously dreams:

For U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Pyongyang’s shift represents an opportunity. They should aim to resolve North Korea’s underlying security concerns—particularly its economic security—in return for progress on denuclearization, the reduction of Pyongyang’s dependence on China, and North Korea’s eventual integration into the U.S.-led liberal international order with the close support of South Korea.

FA posits North Korea handing over its defense and integrating into the “U.S.-led liberal international order” with the close support of South Korea while at the same time poking a stick in the eye of China. North Koreans are extremely aware of their history and how the US separated the Korean people, conducted a scorched earth campaign in the northern part of the peninsula, and they are well aware that China came to fight alongside them to defeat the US. It is risible that anyone would posit that North Korea would relinquish its independence, its juche, and ally, to be led by its aggressor.

FA argues, “Achieving superior joint military and diplomatic power is what will enable the allies to deter Kim’s threats, allowing for a new approach to North Korea that can pave the way to a lasting peace.”

How will the US achieve this? To threaten North Korea with “superior joint military and diplomatic power”? Peace from the barrel of a gun and deadly sanctions? North Korea succeeded in achieving nuclear capability to punish any military attack against it. In the meantime, North Korean chairman Kim Jong-un can achieve economic development by joining the Chinese-initiated BRI and further opening up to Russia.

FA pushes increased militarization of South Korea, by having South Korea ease access to US military forces in the country. FA complains that South Korean domestic political pressure is a barrier to freer military training in the country.

FA portrays the US-South Korean summit in May where the US committed to providing South Korea with COVID-19 vaccines as sending “a powerful signal to South Koreans that the United States is placing a high priority on the relationship.”

The Diplomat asked, “Why isn’t South Korea Buying Chinese Vaccines?” It noted, “Like many Asian countries, Seoul is having troubling sourcing vaccines. But unlike its neighbors, South Korea has so far refused to turn to a ready supplier: China.” The article states, “Part of the problem is that the South Korean government is still eagerly and persistently seeking vaccine supplies from the United States.” China’s Global Times reported, “After the World Health Organization (WHO) officially approved two Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines, South Korea became the first country to fully exempt travelers vaccinated with shots of Sinopharm and Sinovac from its original mandatory two-week quarantine” on 1 July. It seems a prudent move to maintain good relations with South Korea’s largest trading partner, China.

FA has further scorn for China. It accused China of “bullying” South Korea over its apoplexy regarding the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in 2016 — a system which can be used against China.

The US places military armaments a continent away from US shores — a hop, skip, and jump from China — and FA accuses China of bullying? How would the US feel if such a missile-interceptor system were placed in Cuba by China?

FA promoted an end-of-war declaration that “would not be linked in any way to a peace treaty.” Other steps are demanded before consideration of a peace treaty between the parties. One is a non-starter: the verified destruction of nuclear weapons by North Korea. Of course, only by North Korea, the US will keep its nuclear weapons. As a test of the US’s word, imagine the American reaction if North Korea agreed to denuclearize, as long as the US also destroys its nuclear weapons, as is required by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s article 6, which the US signed on to.

*****

In a September article, “The Last Chance to Stop North Korea?: U.S. Aid Could Help Revive Nuclear Diplomacy,” FA seems to have had its druthers about the late July article that envisioned coercing North Korea through “superior joint military and diplomatic power” and now supports humanitarian aid as the way to denuclearization.

The subtitle should give pause to most informed readers. First, consider what is meant by “nuclear diplomacy” in this context. It means that a country (especially the northern half of a country) that was devastated by an American scorched earth campaign, one that used bioweapons and chemical weapons — and even threatened attack with nuclear weapons, should disarm itself of a deterrent while the aggressor maintains its nuclear arsenal. Furthermore, just what is US aid? The Democratic Republic of Korea does not need US aid; it needs an end to US-led international sanctions against the country.

Despite noting US participation with South Korea for military exercises, FA writes that “the Biden administration should not take comfort in the relative lack of [North Korean] provocations” recently.

This wording seems particularly one-sided. Are the South Korean and US military maneuvers (including training previously of a decapitation unit) not provocative? Is the stationing of US troops in South Korea not provocative? Consider what the reaction would be if North Korea held military exercises off the American coast?

FA attempts to evoke fear of the North Korean menace:

“… these [North Korean] tests aren’t the only troubling signs. … the reprocessing of plutonium and enriched uranium for an arsenal of bombs now estimated to number between 20 and 40. … The direction is clear: North Korea wants to have a modern force that can engage in nuclear warfighting, that can threaten the United States with missiles that can carry multiple warheads and are impervious to ballistic missile defenses, and that can survive and retaliate credibly against a U.S. preemptive attack.” [italics added]

This appears to be just a risible posturing. How is it that North Korea would threaten the United States? Through the mere development of its military capability? Such logic would apply to every country that seeks to upgrade its military. Are all these countries then threatening the US? Moreover, would it be responsible for a government to allow its defensive capability to lag behind that of a belligerent parked next door? A belligerent that eschews a peace treaty. A belligerent that refuses to adhere to a no-first use of nuclear weapons as North Korea does?

The FA article then complains that the improved military capability “would make it more difficult for the United States to preemptively strike a missile before its launch. These are all capabilities that make North Korea’s nuclear deterrent more survivable and impervious to a U.S. first strike.” A contradiction arises; now the writer has positioned the US as a preemptive threat. So, in essence, the writer defies all logic by preposterously postulating that a country enhancing its survivability and deterrence against a preemptive external attack makes it the threat.

But FA has a solution on “how to stop North Korea before it crosses this threshold”: “getting diplomacy back on track through humanitarian assistance that includes American COVID-19 vaccines and food aid, both of which the country needs.”

Providing US aid would serve American hegemonic aims in that it “would reduce Chinese influence in Pyongyang.” Seems to be rather self-serving aid. Sanction a nation, intercept North Korean shipping at sea, then take advantage of any economic deterioration to pose as a generous benefactor by proffering aid.

To its credit, the September FA article does not suggest a militaristic or sanctions-based approach; instead it suggests a humanitarian approach, but a purportedly humanitarian approach that secures American geo-strategic aims.

*****

Does one dare trust the word of the United States? Look no further than what happened to Muammar Gaddafi and Libya when it abandoned its nuclear weapon program, what happened when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq allowed inspections for weapons or mass destruction, or when Syria’s Bashar al-Assad surrendered Syria’s chemical weapons.

As A.B. Abrams expressed with crystal clarity in his excellent book, Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power, North Koreans are well aware of how American imperialism works, of its military depravity, and its proclivity for disinformation. North Koreans have demonstrated resistance, resilience, and self-reliance. It has served them well since the armistice was signed on 27 July 1953. North Korea is an economically sanctioned country, yes, but it is not an economically stunted country. North Korea has achieved so much. It provides tuition-free education right through university, universal health care, preschools, and housing and jobs for all its citizens. It is a country that despite the destruction it suffered from US-led UN warring has achieved military deterrence and social development that Americans can only dream of. It is an independent country neither rich, but neither poor.

Kim Petersen is a peace activist and geopolitical analyst. He's a former editor with Dissident Voice.


SELECT COMMENT

John Lowrie

On the 24/25th June ,1950, the North Koreans sick to the teeth of the attacks across its ''borders'' and the massacre of patriotic forces in the South by Korean officers who had served in the murderous Japanese army, counter-attacked. Most of these officers had graduated from former Military College of Japan e.g. Chief of Staff, General Yi Ung Jun, who had pledged loyalty to the god-emperor of Japan in his blood. Such officers with US support waged a terror campaign in the South. South Korean reports from the early 2000's indicate a death toll by 1950 of between 600,000 and 1.2 million. In early 1950 Walter Sullivan of the New York Times wrote that large parts of South Korea ''are darkened today by a cloud of terror that is probably unparalleled in the world.'' President Rhee, a US puppet who hardly spoke fluent Korea, wanted to provoke a North Korean counterattack so as to gain American support for the invasion of the North. Thus the South Korean army prior to 1950 launched multiple attacks on the North, some lasting several months e.g on the border city of Hajdu! Of course, the Southern army soon disintegrated with their officers running away with Rhee in the lead on his private train. Only US intervention saved the fascists and they and the Yankees are still there!

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of  The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience. 

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SCOTT MORRISON’S GIANT NUCLEAR ELECTION PLOY

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by Allan Behm
Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability
All image captions, pull quotes, appendices, etc. by the editors not the authors. 


 

It's clear that for the Americans and the Brits, China, no matter how peaceful, is to be attacked just for being a great power.  Its very existence is now the West's rationale for her destruction. 
 
US nuclear sub

The US is now supposed to start sharing nuclear sub technology with the Aussies, but will it?


nuclear sub

I. INTRODUCTION

Allan Behm states that: “Australia’s decision to join with the United States and the United Kingdom to build Australian long-range nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) has little to do with the defence of Australia. The aim is to make possible an Australian contribution to US battle plans against China which that country will view as profoundly threatening with implications also for war planning by Russia, North Korea and other nuclear-armed states.”


Allan Behm is Head, International and Security Affairs Program, The Australia Institute, Canberra, Australia. Allan spent 30 years in the Australian Public Service, as a member of the Australian diplomatic service, the Prime Minister’s Department, the Department of Defence and the Attorney General’s Department. He specialised in international relations, defence strategy, counter-terrorism and law enforcement policy, and more recently, climate change.


This essay is published simultaneously with other commentaries on APLN’s Pulse on the AUKUS proposal here.


The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Nautilus Institute. Readers should note that Nautilus seeks a diversity of views and opinions on significant topics in order to identify common ground. This report is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.

II. NAPSNET POLICY FORUM BY ALLAN BEHM

SCOTT MORRISON’S GIANT NUCLEAR ELECTION PLOY

SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

Australia’s decision to join with the United States and the United Kingdom to build Australian long-range nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) has little to do with the defence of Australia. The aim is to make possible an Australian contribution to US battle plans against China which that country will view as profoundly threatening with implications also for war planning by Russia, North Korea and other nuclear-armed states.

Even leaving aside the fiscal profligacy and defence opportunity costs for Australia of the literal blank cheque issued by the Morrison government, the nuclear submarine decision takes Australia into the heart of naval warfighting in East Asia and Southeast Asia.

Further, the Australian nuclear submarine decision will have knock-on effects in Japan and the Republic of Korea, leading them not only to move their already highly capable submarine fleets to nuclear power, but also thereby heighten the likelihood they will then equip those submarines with nuclear weapons.

For several decades the US has been concerned to negate two military advances the Chinese regard as essential protection against literally existential threats. The Australian submarines will be designed primarily to contribute to negating both of those military advances.

No one in the West has yet explained —and the public is not demanding—what possible reason could there be for the nonstop drumbeat toward war with China, Russia and other nations regarded now as "official enemies" by the empire. The greatest crime in history is being planned with practically zero opposition.

Firstly, over the past decade China has constructed the basis for a submarine-based nuclear deterrence force that could survive the effects of an expected US attack against Chinese land-based nuclear missile sites. If Chinese nuclear missile-launching submarines can safely get out of their homeports and reach the depths of the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea they may have a small chance of remaining undetected by highly superior US anti-submarine warfare platforms – including US and now, possible Australian hunter-killer submarines. If those Chinese SSBNs are found and destroyed, especially after US attacks on Chinese ground-launched missile silos, and US and Japanese ballistic missile defence destroying most of the missiles that are launched by China, then, in the Chinese view, China in fact has no survivable nuclear-deterrence force. Whatever the validity deterrence by a balance of vulnerability – or of terror – may have, without a survivable second strike, China has no effective nuclear deterrence against the United States.

China’s four operational nuclear missile submarines are mainly based in the north of the South China Sea on the island of Hainan. China’s militarisation of its concrete islands in the SCS is in large part motivated by a desire to provide extended defence in-depth for those SSBNs.

The fundamental requirement for that capability—apart from questions of missile range, crew training and naval submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and nuclear submarine doctrinal development—is that the submarines are able to reach the deeps of the western Pacific undetected by U.S. and Japanese anti-submarine warfare (ASW) sensor networks. Only there do they have any chance of fulfilling their intended role as a second strike nuclear deterrent force immune to U.S. attack. One key part of US ASW capabilities, in addition to the Fish Hook underwater surveillance network from Japan to the boundary of the South China Sea, are its attack submarines hunting Chinese ballistic missile submarines. Australia’s submarines could play a modest but frontline role, especially in the waters to the west of Borneo, the Philippines and Japan.

For this reason alone, China will view Australia’s decision as a wilful contribution to an existential nuclear threat to China.

The same strategic logic applies to the Russian strategic missile submarines operating from Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula.   Russia has recently rebuilt this force with the latest Borei class submarines operating in the “strategic bastion” of the Sea of Okhotsk and beyond into the Pacific and Arctic oceans.  US nuclear attack submarines track these submarines, guided by the US-Japanese-Korean network of underwater acoustic sensors and with surface and aerial anti-submarine forces.

A fourth-generation Russian sub, designed to carry 16 Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles as their basic armament. The Yasen-class submarines carry Kalibr-PL and Oniks cruise missiles as their strike weapons.

Secondly, Australian long-range attack submarines likely will be deployed in Southeast and East Asian waters to protect US aircraft carrier task forces moving into position close to China for attacks on Chinese coastal facilities, as well as against Russian or North Korean land-based forces. US and coalition SSNs will hunt and try to destroy Chinese submarines lying in wait for the US carriers; or stand as one of the point guards that move in advance of US aircraft carrier battlegroups as they move around.

China has devoted a great deal of money and energy to developing the naval, air and missile capabilities to deny US carrier battle groups the access they had in the past to Chinese waters and its immediate coastal zone inside the island chain from Japan to the Philippines.

US carrier battle groups aided by Australian submarines do not in themselves constitute an existential threat to China, but they do open a vulnerability that the US would certainly not accept for itself.

A late-generation Russian Yasen-class nuclear sub. These boats carry missiles unmatched by any other navy.


Moreover, given the acknowledged risks of escalation to the use of nuclear weapons in what may begin as a conventional war on the  Korean peninsula, especially together with a Taiwan crisis, Australian submarines attached to US carrier battle groups may be sailing into a nuclear war.

Australian nuclear submarines may not be allocated offensive missions against Chinese , Russian or eventually, North Korean ballistic missile-firing submarines.  But the roles that they likely will be allocated in American naval operations in the Western Pacific, especially in aircraft battlegroups deployed against Russia, China, or North Korea, will enable US anti-submarine operations against the nuclear forces of these states.

Other lone-wolf long-distance missions for Australian nuclear submarines can be envisioned such as inserting special forces onto land, blockading straits, but none of these can justify the crushing direct cost and massive opportunity cost to the rest of Australia’s armed forces already short of essential capacity to defend Australia’s territory against actual maritime attack.

The AUKUS project for Australian nuclear submarines carries a third nuclear risk. Much has been written about the implications of damage to French amour propre, not to say export income, but the US decision to allow Australia highly preferential access to sensitive submarine technologies only allowed out of the US once before when the US gave such access to Britain in the 1950s.

For Japan and the Republic of Korea, both US allies of considerably greater military and political significance to the US than Australia, the nuclear submarine technology export to Australia will have two consequences.

french nuclear sub

French nuclear sub in maneuvers. France had the technology all along but that was not what Australia negotiated.


Japan and South Korea both have advanced indigenously developed and constructed submarine fleets, for which they will demand equal treatment from the US, further stimulating the dynamic underwater arms race in East Asia.

But more importantly this break-out will occur at a time when powerful political elements in both countries are pressing the case for indigenous nuclear weapons. The preferred nuclear-launch platform in both countries would be from submarines.

Anxiety in both countries about China-US tensions sits alongside not-so-latent long-standing  doubts about the reliability of US promises of nuclear protection. Grievances flowing from the Australian submarine deal may well feed the domestic cases for Japanese and South Korean nuclear weapons. 

The timing of Mr Morrison’s announcements also merits some consideration. In our view, this project is a political stunt aimed to distract from Covid failures, please coalition constituencies, and split the Labor Party and render the Greens shrill and sidelined. In reality, it is likely that after a passage of years of staged announcements and pseudo-planning there will be little to show for it, and the enormously expensive, strategically ill-considered, and force-structure distorting project will quietly die.

But, to use Prime Minister Morrison’s phrase, “let us be clear,” in terms of Australian security, it is a gigantic nuclear election stunt that in the long run may increase the risk of nuclear war while drawing Chinese return fire on our vulnerable export sectors, including iron ore.

“To be clear” again, it is utterly mendacious of Prime Minister Scott Morrison to say that these forces have nothing to do with nuclear weapons because Australian submarines won’t be so armed, assuming it does not cross that barrier in the future if the submarines ever come to pass.  As noted above, they may play a crucial role in US nuclear strike and defence operations.

A Chinese nuclear sub: derided as "shoddily built" by Western observers, they have shown themselves to be impressve machines. Some have gotten within firing range of US aircraft carriers without being detected. And of course the Russian navy is liable to have their back in any major confrontation.

This capability has everything to do with nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear war.   The nett detrimental effects on strategic instability caused by supplementing US forces devoted to strategic nuclear missions in the region may be substantial, especially in the perceptions of American nuclear adversaries who may well target Australia already, and must be properly analysed and debated before any decisions are made to proceed.

III.  NAUTILUS INVITES YOUR RESPONSE

The Nautilus Asia Peace and Security Network invites your responses to this report. Please send responses to: nautilus@nautilus.org. Responses will be considered for redistribution to the network only if they include the author’s name, affiliation, and explicit consent

The NAPSNet Policy Forum provides expert analysis of contemporary peace and security issues in Northeast Asia. As always, we invite your responses to this report and hope you will take the opportunity to participate in discussion of the analysis.



Allan Behm is an operative and strategist deeply embedded in the maze of the US/Australian "security" establishment. He specialises in political and security risk evaluation, policy analysis and development, and negotiating the policy/politics interface. He naturally tends to see the world through the prism utilised by his counterparts in London and Washington.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of  The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience. 


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South Korea showing signs of discomfort with US occupation: South Korean presidential candidate calls the U.S. military an occupying force

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Eventually Japan may go that way, too, as it recovers its full sovereignty. And Australia perhaps a bit later. It's the direction history is taking as Pax Americana grudgingly yields to a multilateral world without a universal hegemon.

The South Korean presidential candidate calls the U.S. military an occupying force: "We have not been clean since the founding of the nation".

2021/07/27 20:21:34 HKT

  The governor of South Korea's Gyeonggi Province and a member of the ruling party's Common Democratic Party, Lee Jae-Ming, openly criticized the US soldiers in Korea as "occupiers," causing huge controversy.

Photos like this, testifying to Korea's puppet status, may soon be history.


   South Korea's "Joongang Ilbo" reported on July 5 that Lee Jae-ming once said, "The Republic of Korea is different from other countries. The government did not liquidate the pro-Japanese forces during the establishment process, allowing the pro-Japanese forces to cooperate with the American occupation forces and maintain the original Rule system".

  Lee Jae-Ming also made relevant remarks at the Lee Rok History and Literature Museum in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, saying that "we have not been clean enough since the founding of the country." This is in line with the previous conception that the President of the Liberation Association Jin Yuanxiong called the U.S. military the "occupying army" and the Soviet army the "liberation army" when he gave a speech to high school students. Regarding this, Governor Lee insisted that "the U.S. military also called itself an occupying army" and asked critics to "learn history first."

  It is reported that South Korea will hold a presidential election on March 9, 2022. On July 1, Lee Jae-Ming announced his candidacy for the 20th president of South Korea. He said that if he succeeds in being elected president, he will implement a strong economic stimulus policy, commit to promoting people's livelihood reform, and develop diplomacy based on national interests based on independent defense forces to achieve peace and co-existence. He emphasized that inequality and polarization have caused a crisis in South Korea, and that "growth can only be achieved by ensuring fairness and justice."

  Yonhap News Agency stated that Lee Jae-Ming was originally a labor rights lawyer. He entered South Korean politics in 2007 and was elected mayor of Seongnam City in 2010. He participated in the 2017 South Korean presidential election, competed with Moon Jae-in for the seat of the Common Democratic Party, and formed an antagonistic relationship with members of the party who supported Moon Jae-in, but was ultimately defeated. In 2018, Lee Jae-Ming resigned from the post of mayor of Seongnam and was elected governor of Gyeonggi Province.


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Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un vow to bring China-North Korea ties to ‘new level,’ marking 60th anniversary of mutual defense treaty

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RT.com
Unity against the marauding imperial sociopath is the best defence for any sovereign nation.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Pyongyang, North Korea, 2019. © KCNA/KNS/AFP

Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have pledged to strengthen their friendly relations as they exchanged messages on the 60th anniversary of a bilateral landmark defense treaty.

The close ties between the nations have been “gaining momentum” in recent years, having “comprehensively developed onto a higher stage in all fields, including politics, economy, military and culture,” Kim said, according to North Korean state news agency KCNA.

The bilateral treaty has played a pivotal role in ensuring peace and stability in Asia against “hostile forces” in the region, the North Korean leader said, noting that the two neighbors share a “fixed stand… to ceaselessly develop the friendly and cooperative relations” with each other. 

Striking a similar tone, Xi credited the 1961 treaty with boosting regional and global peace. He added that Beijing and Pyongyang have “firmly supported each other and worked hand in hand” to strengthen ties throughout the years.

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Xi said he is ready to work with Kim to “take bilateral friendly cooperation to a new level and deliver more benefits to the two countries and two peoples.”

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Would plunge into greater disappointment’: Kim Yo-jong warns US not to get hopes up for return to dialogue with North Korea

Under the 1961 agreement, China and North Korea must automatically defend each other when one of them is attacked.

China is North Korea’s biggest trading partner and principal ally on the world stage and has previously called for the easing of international sanctions on Pyongyang. Xi and Kim met in person several times in 2018 and 2019.


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New Revelations on Germ Warfare: It’s Time for a Reckoning with Our History from the Korean War

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Help us break the corporate media monopoly before it kills us all. The global oligarchy depends on its disinformation machine to maintain its power. Now the malicious fog of Western propaganda has created an ocean of confusion in which even independent minds can drown. Please push back against this colossal apparatus of deception. Consider a donation today!





The New York Times, which for years has maintained that U.S. airmen’s statements about use of biological weapons during the Korean War were “false confessions” obtained by Chinese and North Korean torture, never acknowledged the following submission sent to its opinion section in November 2020. I am publishing the article instead at CounterPunch, which is not afraid of uncomfortable truths.


Screenshot from CIA pamphlet, “Baptism by Fire: CIA Analysis of the Korean War”.


 

It’s been 70 years since the beginning of the Korean War. For young adults in their twenties today, that’s ancient history. It is as distant to them as the 1905 Russo-Japanese War was to me when I was 20 years old! But in both China and North Korea, the memory of the Korean War and charges of war crimes against America from that war remain a vivid part of the national consciousness, stoked at various times by the regimes in charge.

The North Korean and Chinese allegations of American use of biological weapons during the Korean War made headlines at the time, and the controversy over U.S. Air Force officers admitting under enemy interrogation details of germ warfare attacks rocked the U.S. defense establishment. In 1998, scholars connected to the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) at the Wilson Center published documents that they claimed showed the germ warfare charges were a hoax, “a grand piece of political theater,” as Milton Leitenberg, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, notably put it.

From CIA document release, “Baptism by Fire,” File #1952-03-06a.pdf


But in 2010, the CIA declassified hundreds of communications intelligence, or COMINT, daily reports from the Korean War. U.S. historians have mostly ignored this release. Over the past few years, I have undertaken an examination of these documents and found more than two dozen that were pertinent to the biological warfare charges. As I demonstrated in a September 2020 essay on the topic at Medium.com, these documents vividly portray the reactions and responses of North Korean and Chinese military units responding to biological weapons attack.

What follows are some samples from the entire batch of reports. The grammar and syntax can seem off at times, as the U.S. military and CIA lacked experienced linguists during this period.

Relying on information from the codebreakers at the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor of today’s National Security Agency, a top-secret March 6 CIA report read, “An unidentified Chinese Communist unit on 26 February reported that ‘yesterday it was discovered that in our bivouac area there was a real flood of bacteria and germs from a plane by the enemy. Please supply us immediately with an issue of DDT that we may combat this menace, stop the spread of this plague, and eliminate all bacteria.’”

Another CIA report stated that on 3 March a “North Korean coastal security unit in eastern Korea reported… that UN bacteriological warfare agents in the surrounding area had prevented the movement of transportation since 21 February. Later in the day the unit reported to Pyongyang that ‘Pupyong (just southwest of Hamhung)… is the contaminated area. According to the correct news, no one can pass through it. If you do not act quickly, the 12th and 13th guard stations will have fallen into starvation conditions.’” [Parenthesis in original]

Then we have the following from a 6 March report: “Two coastal security stations in northeastern Korea reported on 11 March that ‘the bacteria bomb classified as mosquito, fly, and flea were dispersed,’ and ‘an enemy plane dropped ants, fleas, mosquitos, flies and crickets.’” The emphasis on insects reminds us that the Communists alleged at the time that the U.S. was working secretly with the former scientists of Japan’s Unit 731, who experimented extensively with the use of insect vectors in germ warfare. During this period and for years afterward, the U.S. falsely denied that Japan’s scientists had committed war crimes and attacked China with biological weapons during World War II.

According to a 21 March CIA COMINT report, “a North Korean message, probably from the 23rd Brigade in western Korea, reports the alleged dropping of bacteria in the area occupied by the ‘18th Regiment, 4th Division.’”

A 9 May report: ‘They dropped spiders and ants over Songjin city… today,’ a North Korean coastal security station in northeastern Korea reported…. The message continues that the alleged drop area has been isolated and is being investigated by ‘the plague prevention work committee.’”

Not all the reports verified the use of bacterial weapons. In a 25 March intercept from a North Korean battalion in the Hamhung area, a North Korean military sanitation officer, sent to affirm a supposed biological warfare attack “reported that the policeman’s report was false and that the flies ‘were not caused from bacterial weapon but from the fertilizers on the place.’” In other words, not only were the attacks not a hoax, but Communist officials examined such reports from the field on the spot and noted cases where the accusations were mistaken, or found in some cases that no insects carried infectious material.

As Milton Leitenberg stated in a 2016 essay, which otherwise maintained the germ war allegations were untrue, the charges themselves remain 70 years after the fact “an issue of great importance to those concerned with arms control and allegations of the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction.” He was right. This alleged war crime is of high importance, and achieving peace with nuclear-armed China and North Korea depends, in part, on being honest about past transgressions of the United States against those countries.

Both the alleged Soviet documents presented back in 1998 by Mr. Leitenberg and scholar Kathryn Weathersby, and also a later purported memoir by Chinese doctor Wu Zhili, which also alleged falsification of the BW evidence, cannot withstand the failure of those documents, whose provenance has always been obscure, to withstand independent corroboration by external sources of information, not least, from the CIA COMINT documents themselves.

The Leitenberg/Weathersby documents allege that Communist in-fighting over the BW “hoax” led to a cessation of Communist charges of germ warfare by early 1953. But that’s not true. The charges continued throughout 1953 (as this New York Times article described) and for long afterward. Even more telling, the CWIHP documents failed to tell a coherent story, moving around the date of the alleged falsification of BW attack sites from before to then after an international team of investigators arrived to examine the charges. The date is crucial because the time to organize a large-scale deception — one that would involve hundreds of eyewitness reports given to investigators, the collection of bomb fragments, the testing materials and samples from alleged bacterial attack, etc. — would take some time, if it could be successfully done at all.

There were other problems with the CWIHP documents, which only document from two to four sites of simulated biowarfare attack. But two investigation commissions documented dozens of sites of infection following U.S. air drops of contaminated insects, feathers, and other materials. Neither Mr. Leitenberg nor Ms. Weathersby has ever explained that issue, except to surmise that there may be documents that have yet to surface. In any case, the old fraud accusations seem moot now that we have evidence of Communist military units during the Korean War responding privately to each other regarding the vicissitudes of biological weapons attack.

Wherever the long denials of U.S. use of biological weapons during the Korean War may have originated, and no matter what the authority behind them, the denials fade away in the face of new unassailable documentation from U.S. government records of germ warfare attacks against North Korean and Chinese military units. The question now is how will U.S. historians, political scientists, the press, and the public respond to this turnabout regarding the old germ war charges.


Screenshot from CIA pamphlet, “Baptism by Fire: CIA Analysis of the Korean War”.


 

The U.S. record regarding the acknowledgment of atrocities during the Korean War is poor. In January 2001, President Clinton did issue a statement expressing “regret” for American killings in July 1950 of hundreds of unarmed South Korean civilians at No Gun Ri. As the New York Times noted at the time, Clinton’s “statement fell short of the apology many Koreans have demanded.”

It is time for a reckoning with our past. If we expect change in China and North Korea, then there must be change in the United States. Author Nicolson Baker has recently called for the declassification of all records from the Korean War. Perhaps a President Joe Biden administration will consider revising a policy that has not worked for decades, and as part of a general peace offensive in the region, finally admit American responsibility for its actions, including use of biological weapons. With such an admission, the U.S. could then call for a turning of the page and a new day of openness and peaceful coexistence in East Asia.


Jeffrey Kaye, a psychologist living in Northern California, writes regularly on torture and other subjects for Medium, Off-Guardian, Truthout, The Public Record, Counterpunch, and Firedoglake, among other publications. He also maintains a personal blog, Invictus. His email address is sfpsych@gmail.com .

Our main image motif: Painted by famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Glorious Victory is a critical and condemnatory view of the 1954 CIA coup of Guatemala’s democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. The United States removed Árbenz from power and replaced him with a dictatorial military commander because Árbenz threatened the landholdings of the United Fruit Company with his agrarian reform laws. In the center of the mural, secretary of state John Foster Dulles is seen shaking hands with military commander and then president Castillo Armas, Washington's putschist general. Rivera paints Dulles with an expression of idiocy to demonstrate how he was too ignorant (or indifferent) to understand the terrible chain of events he had sparked.


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