Joshua has a question for everyone, is America too nice to South Korea?:
Is the problem that we’re too damn nice? Or is it just that as long as they sleep under Uncle Sam’s blanket, Koreans will never see their interests and the dangers beyond with anything resembling rational clarity? Of course, the threats of which we speak are much more threats to South Korea than to America, so we have only ourselves to blame if we’re being used. I doubt that most Americans even know we still have troops in Korea, so it’s little wonder they’re not questioning the reason for that increasingly anachronistic presence. [One Free Korea]
Popularity: 2%
4:45 pm on October 8th, 2008 1
I’ve often wondered if we have no choice but to be nice to them, since they own a large share of our debt and huge dollar reserves.
5:21 pm on October 8th, 2008 2
I have often wondered why we seem to put up with so much crap from them. All the anti-American protests / etc., that have gone on for a long time. Do you notice that when they try this with China, China just kicks their butt around the block and they back off real fast. They have learned that China won’t put up with their antics, but the good olde USA just seems to take it.
8:12 pm on October 8th, 2008 3
Brett:
Right on the money…we (Americans) have some sort of psychological baggage that prevents us from coming down hard on countries when they are acting stupid at our expense.
More to thge point…most Americans are so far removed from the realities of the world that they hav no idea what goes on in the world…even barely in their own backyards.
9:22 pm on October 8th, 2008 4
“…is it just that as long as they sleep under Uncle Sam’s blanket, Koreans will never see their interests and the dangers beyond with anything resembling rational clarity? Of course, the threats of which we speak are much more threats to South Korea than to America…”
I take it that this quote is implicitly referring to the “threat” that is posed by North Korea. Well let me break the news: the DPRK doesn’t pose an existential threat to the ROK.
Consider what the abstract to David C. Kang’s “International Relations and the Second Korean War”:
Ever since the first Korean war in 1950, scholars and policymakers have been predicting a second one, started by an invasion from the North. Whether seen as arising from preventive, preemptive, desperation, or simple aggressive motivations, the predominant perspective in the west sees North Korea as likely to instigate conflict. Yet for fifty years North Korea has not come close to starting a war. Why were so many scholars so consistently wrong about North Korea’s intentions? Social scientists can learn as much from events that did not happen as from those that did. The case of North Korea provides a window with which to examine these theories of conflict initiation, and reveals how the assumptions underlying these theories can become mis-specified. Either scholars misunderstood the initial conditions, or they misunderstood the theory, and I show that scholars have made mistakes in both areas. Social science moves forward from clear statement of a theory, its causal logic, and its predictions. However, just as important is the rigorous assessment of a theory, especially if the predictions fail to materialize. North Korea never had the material capabilities to be a serious contender to the U.S.–ROK alliance, and it quickly fell further behind. The real question has not been whether North Korea would preempt as South Korea caught up, but instead why North Korea might fight as it fell further and further behind. The explanation for a half-century of stability and peace on the Korean peninsula is actually quite simple: deterrence works.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a free-access version to this paper but here’s the necessary info if anybody want’s to read it for themselves:
International Studies Quarterly; Sept. 2003 Vol. 47 Issue 3 pg. 301-324
10:46 pm on October 8th, 2008 5
Regurgitation of other’s writings does not qualify you to announce that the North no longer poses a threat…nothing could be further from the truth. As long as the North, or any country, possses the ability to strike, they pose a threat.
6:47 am on October 9th, 2008 6
“As long as the North, or any country, possses the ability to strike, they pose a threat.”
You confuse capabilities with intentions “CalmSeas”. The US after all has by far and away the greatest ability to “strike”, does the US pose a “threat”?
As for regurgitation, I believe it is you whose doing the regurgitating. I mean, listen to the rhetoric of you and your cohort. It sound like some cornpone, English translation of something you would read in the right-wing pages of the Monthly Chosun, written by Cho Kab Jae.
8:03 am on October 9th, 2008 7
Uh…I think a lot of people around the world would answer yes to that question.
8:56 am on October 9th, 2008 8
We need to treat Korea with the respect they deserve as a significant player in the world economy. There seriously is, to borrow one of my favorite Bush lines “a bigotry of low expectations” in our dealings with the Republic of Korea. They can and should defend themselves. It would be very expensive for them to replace the American deterrent capability but they could do so particularly if there were a strong defense treaty in place that the North Koreans understood meant our full air and naval response. But they get a great deal now and are free to use their national wealth for other more productive purposes. A good deal if you can get it and they apparently can.
The debate over the North Korean threat is no longer the central or even a very important issue. What is the central issue is whether or not the ROK alone can provide sufficient deterrent military capability to maintain the peace. I believe they can.
For too long, we have indeed accepted the unfair trade practices, the anti-American protests, and frankly the burden to our nation and our military because we have failed to appreciate and acknowledge the fact that the Republic of Korea has long since matured and grown into a regional power. We have failed to respect their accomplishments and treat them accordingly.
In Congressional testimony the UN CINC in Korea testified over 40 years ago that it was too soon at that time to remove our troops from Korea but when pressed acknowledged that we could do so in 10 years when the right conditions are met. He would have been right and we could have left in the late 60s if we had developed a road map to get there that placed significant responsibility on the Republic of Korea.
Instead, the American taxpayers and our military accepted the burden and South Korean military leaders concentrated on the things that mattered to them and it wasn’t deterring the North Korean threat. It was all about gaining and maintaining political power.
Our military will never be able to leave Korea, Bosnia or Iraq until we determine and agree on exactly what the conditions must be achieved in order for us to leave, work to create those conditions, and then pack up and go when they are indeed met. As the saying goes, “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
9:49 am on October 9th, 2008 9
“It sound like some cornpone, English translation of something you would read in the right-wing pages of the Monthly Chosun, written by Cho Kab Jae.”
I see now why you use other’s writings to promote your points…
“North Korea to Test Missiles Over the West Sea”
I would say that this is definitely an “Intention.”
3:23 pm on October 9th, 2008 10
#4, So according to you South Korea built the invasion tunnels into the south?
5:10 pm on October 9th, 2008 11
“So according to you South Korea built the invasion tunnels into the south?”
Yes, there are these tunnels. But tell me has there ever been a considerable invasion force or even a mass mobilization of the DPRK military along the DMZ? Almost everything that everybody cites are these ancillary actions that when taken as a whole are just that a hodgepodge of ancillary actions. No mention of any actual, consquential actions that would logically flow from such ancillary actions.
In other words your attempting to turn mountain into mole hills.
5:38 pm on October 9th, 2008 12
The quote in #4 is convoluted as are other remarks in the threat.
“the DPRK doesn’t pose an existential threat to the ROK”
“The explanation for a half-century of stability and peace on the Korean peninsula is actually quite simple: deterrence works”
“Yet for fifty years North Korea has not come close to starting a war. Why were so many scholars so consistently wrong about North Korea’s intentions? Social scientists can learn as much from events that did not happen as from those that did.”
“The debate over the North Korean threat is no longer the central or even a very important issue. What is the central issue is whether or not the ROK alone can provide sufficient deterrent military capability to maintain the peace.”
The fact NK did not invade again in the past 50 years does not “prove” they had no “intention” of doing so. That the threat did not exist.
6:31 pm on October 9th, 2008 13
I repeat again: enemy deficiency syndrome.
One would think that terrorists who “hate us because of our freedom” would be enough for this crowd, but I guess not.
6:49 pm on October 9th, 2008 14
Gaetano. “has there ever been a considerable invasion force or even a mass mobilization by the DPRK along the DMZ?”. Yes. 1980, I believe, or whenever Pac Chung Hee was assassinated. The south was in turmoil with a coup by the generals and rioting in Kwang Ju. The south quietly moved two battalions of elite forces off the line at the DMZ and moved them into Souel. The NKs moved thier forces to thier forward operating locations all along the DMZ, including thier Navy to thier forward locations and paratroopers and Colt aircraft to forward airbases. An invasion was in the works until secretary of state Brown went to China on a special mission and the Chinese notified the North Koreans any attack and they would immediately cut off fuel to North Korea. I know because I was there at the time. We went on alert and were restricted to base and got ready to move out immediately if required.
7:27 pm on October 9th, 2008 15
That’s right Gerry, in 1980. What I’m asking has such an action ever happend RECENTLY.
Moreover, you also state the external pressure that was placed on the North on the part of the Chinese. If that sort of external, diplomatic pressure can be placed on the North, then I fail to see how the North can still be qualified as posing an external threat to the ROK.
I’d also like to offer a different interpretation of the North’s actions during the turmoil during 1980. As you state and is well known, the South was plunged into great uncertainty following Park’s assassination. In other words, there’s a leadership vacuum. Nobody is in charge. The situation is unpredictabl. It’s highly possible-from the DPRK perspective-that some cowboy general from the South could see it as an opportunity to launch an attack into the North. Could it not be possible that the North moved it’s forces towards the DMZ and other forward bases so as to anticipate such a contingency? That rather than trying to take advantage of the political chaos in the South that in actuality they were hedging themselves against the dangerously fluid situation in the South?
Furthemore, a lot people who hype the North Korean threat always seem to forget that at least since the late 1970’s, the South has far outpaced the North both economically and MILITARILY. Say what you will about the North, but they’re not stupid. Their aware that they’re outmatched and have no to very miniscule chance at achieving any sort of meaningful victory.
10:54 pm on October 9th, 2008 16
You posed your statement within the last 50 years. My comment was to show its only been 28. As far as the North Koreans not being stupid, one could argue the fact that they have run thier country into the ground. I don’t think that is very bright. Do you? They are a desperate ountry, poorly administered, and as such are a danger.
6:41 am on October 10th, 2008 17
“Moreover, you also state the external pressure that was placed on the North on the part of the Chinese. If that sort of external, diplomatic pressure can be placed on the North, then I fail to see how the North can still be qualified as posing an external threat to the ROK.”
I’ll have to cut and save this for all future threads in which Calebrisi does a hit and run.
It is a nice short quote to demonstrate how far of an apologist he can be for the North when discrediting others.
8:44 am on October 10th, 2008 18
“As far as the North Koreans not being stupid, one could argue the fact that they have run thier (sic) country into the ground. I don’t think that is very bright. Do you? They are a desperate [c]ountry, poorly administered, and as such are a danger.”
All the above is true Gerry. But again, consider it another way. In spite of and in the face of all those calamities the North Korean state still stands. Famine, collapse of the USSR, opening and reform in the PRC, two confrontations with the US over its nuclear programs in the post-Cold War era, and not mention being thrown into the wake of the ROK’s economic and military wake, the DRPK regime still stands. Not since the late 1950’s has there been a serious challenge to the existing status quo.
Such can’t be the handy work of mere oafs.
8:49 am on October 10th, 2008 19
USinKorea:
I made that assertion to show that one can constrain and deter the North without having to resort to military coercion, bellicose statements, or threatening to decapitate the DPRK regime. That in fact, the North also operates under constraints and are not the psychotic, lunatic mavericks you and your ilk make them out to be.
If that makes me an “apologist” for the North then so be it. I just figure it’s better than being a chickenhawk like you.
12:41 pm on October 10th, 2008 20
Actually, the North is exactly psychotic. Do you suppose they let millions of their own people starve while they developed nuclear weapons because they’re not dangerous people? Do you suppose that all the refugees from that hell hole are lying? North Korea is a living hell and it’s of their own making.
12:59 pm on October 10th, 2008 21
“Actually, the North is exactly psychotic. Do you suppose they let millions of their own people starve while they developed nuclear weapons because they’re not dangerous people? Do you suppose that all the refugees from that hell hole are lying? North Korea is a living hell and it’s of their own making.”
First, the contention Knickerbocker makes is that while the citizens of the DPRK are materially deprived the DPRK gov’t pursues the development of nuclear weapons and is ergo psychotic. If this is the standard, then why not apply such a standard to say Pakistan. Last time I checked the people in Pakistan also have economic and financial problems and their gov’t went ahead and developed it’s own nuclear weapons. Moreover, the Pakistani ISI gives operational and material support to terrorist organizations that have inflicted real and direct harm against the US. But yet “enemy deficiency syndrome” manifests itself in a strange fixation over the “demon goblin” North Korea.
Second, I find it extraordinarily two-faced to be harping on the failures of others in criticizing the North about it’s human rights violations, when the US itself gives ample support and backing to states and individuals that are no better.
6:56 pm on October 10th, 2008 22
Gaetano,
So it’s okay to starve your people if other countries do it too? Is that your defense of North Korea’s atrocious human rights record and nuclear proliferation?
You may want to re-think your defense of the Dear Leader’s conduct. It’s a bit passé these days even in Seoul.
9:01 pm on October 10th, 2008 23
Nobodies contending here, Knickerbocker, that it’s okay for other countries to commit such actions simply because others do it as well.
I only question how such condemnations are applied selectively and opportunistically by you and your ilk. In other words, self-righteous jeremiads are delivered not because one believes in the morality and actual righteousness of such an argument per se, but rather because doings so advances a particular interest of the moment.
1:06 pm on October 11th, 2008 24
You want me to be less selective about condemning countries? No problem. We certainly have enemies in Pakistan, as we do in Iran and much of the Middle East as well. I never said North Korea was the only rogue regime out there with nuclear ambitions.
And by the way, my “ilk” is a coalition of 5 countries that has been trying to denuclearize Pyongyang for almost 6 years. I guess that counts as a “moment” to some people.