There
are a few facts to keep in mind to understand what’s going on in the
wake of the death this week of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
#1.
US foreign policy vis-a-vis North Korea has always sought to force the
latter’s collapse to pave the way for its absorption into the
US-dominated South [1] — and did so well before Pyongyang began to work
on nuclear weapons. US hostility toward North Korea has never been about
nuclear weapons. On the contrary, North Korea’s nuclear weapons are a
consequence of US hostility. US hostility, now in its seventh decade, is
about what it has always been about: putting an end to what Washington
mistakenly calls North Korea’s Marxist-Leninist system (Marxism-Leninism
has been replaced by Juche ideology—a home-grown doctrine of
self-reliance), its non-market system, and its self-directed economic
development [2]. None of these offer much latitude for US profit-making
at North Korea’s expense, and hence are singled out for demolition.
#2.
North Korea only began to seek nuclear weapons after the United States
announced in 1993 that it was retargeting some of its strategic nuclear
missiles from the former Soviet Union to North Korea. Since then the
country has only been able to develop its nuclear capability to a
kindergarten level. [3] The plutonium devices it tested in 2006 and 2009
produced only one-tenth the power of the Hiroshima blast. There is no
evidence it has miniaturized a warhead to fit atop a missile. And its
missile program is plagued by problems. [4]
#3.
North Korea is a military pipsqueak, whose personnel are deployed in
large numbers to agriculture. The military budgets and weapons’
sophistication of its adversaries, the United States, South Korea and
Japan, tower over its own. If the Pentagon’s budget is represented by
the 6’ 9” basketball player Magic Johnson, North Korea’s military budget
is 1”, about the height of a small mouse. South Korea’s is 4.5” and
Japan’s 3.9”, multiple times larger than the North’s. [5]
#4.
North Korea has no more military heft to mount a provocation against
the United States than a mouse has to beat Magic Johnson on the
basketball court. Nor has it the capability to wage a civil war against
its southern compatriots and expect to win. North Korea is not an
aggressive threat. “In the Obama analysis,” writes New York Times
reporter David Sanger, “the North is receding into what the president’s
top strategists have repeatedly called a ‘defensive crouch,’ trying to
stave off the world with a barrage of missile and nuclear
tests…Constantly on the brink of starvation, its military so broke that
it cannot train its pilots, it has no illusions about becoming a great
power in Asia. Its main goal is survival.” [6]
