So far, it has been a very quiet year in the Korean peninsula. In March of 2010, a North Korean submarine torpedoed the South Korean destroyer Choygan, killing 46 South Korean sailors. The torpedo hit the destroyer in the middle of the hull, breaking the destroyer in half and sinking it almost immediately. Because many North Koreans lack carotene in their diets and probably have bad eyesight, due to the near-famine conditions that have existed for more than a decade, you might think it was a lucky hit. But no, my friends, it was skill. Unlike your average man on the street in North Korea, sailors on North Korean submarines can eat all the carrots they want so that they don’t mutiny, sack the storehouses full of grain that might go to feed their beloved communist commissars, and overthrow the government. That’s because North Korea is a military dictatorship under the King Dynasty, despite its pretenses of being a “people’s republic.” Soldiers always have adequate food and enough ammo for their weapons, or they mutiny.
As you can probably imagine, the South Koreans are hopping mad about the Choygan incident. Any talks of unity between the two Koreas (as if anybody ever realistically thought that would happen) have been put off even further into the future. The South Korean government is calling for U.N. sanctions against North Korea and has resumed its propaganda barrage at the North after having suspended its leaflet war in lieu of peace talks. Since the United States has been trying to get North Korea to cancel its nuclear program, the U.S. has been willing to back South Korea to the hilt. However, China is likely to exercise its veto on the U.N. Security Council because it doesn’t want to exacerbate the problem that it already has with North Korean refugees sneaking into China to escape the poverty back home. Communist North Korea has always been a protégée of the People’s Republic of China. Mao Zedong sent in a tidal wave of Red Army and Red Guards into Korea in 1951, after the United States was on the verge of overrunning North Korea during the Korean War.
North Korea is a problem that keeps coming back like a boomerang into the hand of its thrower. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, or “Kim 2” (like his father before him, Kim Il-sung, or “Kim 1”) has seen the prosperity that “socialism with a Chinese face” has created for China, but he wants none of that for North Korea. It isn’t that he has anything against the accoutrements of capitalism (at least for himself and his cronies), like gluttonous steaks, champagne and caviar. It’s just that leaders like him rely on isolation to keep themselves in power. That’s why leaders like Kim 2 (and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Saddam Hussein before he was hung) will always say to the U.N.: “Hit me with your best shot! My people can take it!” What do they care, as long as their steady supply of steaks and caviar continues?
Note: the beginning of the end for dictators like Hitler and Saddam Hussein is usually when they emerge from isolation and leap onto the world stage. When they can circulate among a crowd either at home or abroad, it means that they are popular at home and not taken seriously abroad. Any of the Kims could easily blend in with the crowd on New Year’s Day in Times Square; their own families probably can’t tell them apart.
What would the Israelis do if they were in South Korea’s position? If an Egyptian or Lebanese submarine sank an Israeli ship, Mossad hit teams would be put into action to eliminate the individuals responsible. The problem with that scenario in Korea, however, is that the North has a head start on their nuclear program over the South. The Korean CIA probably has a lot less intelligence on the North than the Israelis have on any of their Arab neighours. Nobody even knows for sure why the North Koreans sank the Choygan, though it is suspected that it was in retaliation for a warship that the South Koreans sank last year.
One thing is certain: if North Korea went to war against South Korea, it would be a disaster for the Kim Dynasty. When you look at the conditions that the people in North Korea face every day, there’s no way that North Korea could survive a war of attrition. The people of North Korea face famine conditions right now; nobody thinks that a war would improve the food situation. The North Korean Army would probably inflict thousands of military and civilian casualties in South Korea, but even the North Koreans understand that the South Koreans have long been prepared for war; otherwise, the North would have attacked a long time ago. Then there’s the United States: U.S. troops have never left the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two countries. Any war between North and South Korea will involve the United States, unless the U.S. turns and runs. Not even the North Koreans think that will happen.
Probably the best thing that could happen would be if the North Koreans launched an undeclared war like they did at the start of the Korean War in 1950, a renewal of the Korean War would mean the end of North Korea. However, it would be better if North Korea attacked before it amassed a huge nuclear arsenal, not after. Otherwise, the Kims would probably make due on their threat to nuke Los Angeles and Tokyo, as well as Seoul. What’s it to them if their country got nuked in retaliation? Reports say that Kim 2 has just had a stroke; he isn’t expected to live long anyway.
So here’s the scenario: the Korean CIA sends hit teams to assassinate key officers in North Korea’s military hierarchy; understandably, the North Koreans are furious. Since Kim 2 supposedly has had a stroke, the North Korean Army forces his successor, Kim 2‘s son, Kim Il-jong or Kim 3, to make war on South Korea as wave upon wave of demented North Korean avengers pour across the DMZ into South Korea. With ground and air support from the United States, however, the South Koreans successfully reverse the invasion as U.S. Stealth Bombers blast Pyongyang into a rock pile. Within a few weeks, North Korea resembles Haiti after the earthquake that hit that unfortunate island last January, with millions of North Koreans spending the winter of 2010-11 in tent villages.
The United States and South Korea might decide not to invade North Korea like they did in 1951, because nobody really knows what the Chinese would do if North Korea were invaded a second time. China has always treated North Korea like its prized bitch. However, the Chinese really don’t want to go to war against their biggest trade partner, the United States, either.
Like I said before, North Korea is a problem that leaves everybody clueless. China and South Korea have tried to bribe the North Koreans with food in the past, but that solution has had only limited success. China wants to host a six-party conference with the United States, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia. However, North Korea’s word isn't worth much. Kim 2 has promised to halt his country’s nuclear program before, but North Korea has started making nuclear weapons again. Even if his son, Kim 3 promised to stop the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it's likely that he would change his mind yet again. Those Kims have always been very changeable. Besides, you have to be able to use atoms for war before you can use them for peace, right?
Probably, the leaders of North and South Korea will take their cue from the people in Seoul and Pyongyang. The people curse the traffic, fight with other shoppers in the queues at the department stores, and complain about the crime rate in the bustling city of Seoul. In the moribund city of Pyongyang, people wait listlessly to receive their meagre rations of the basic necessities while the traffic outside is nearly dead; only the bigwigs (and they all seem to wear wigs) have cars in Pyongyang. The people in both countries are ready to go onto something else besides the Choygan incident. Eventually, other events will overshadow the sinking of the Choygan.
Let's hope so anyway.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Peace? Who Needs It!
Let me repeat: the United States can never let Israel be destroyed by its enemies. This statement reflects the will of the American people. More important, from a geopolitical standpoint, it reflects the best interests of the United States of America. The United States cannot let a small country that is friendly to its interests be swallowed up by a larger entity that could be hostile. Therefore, the United States must support Israel, hoping that "come what may" never comes.
The average American has an image of Israel as a little David fighting for its survival against a giant Goliath. This image is only partially correct. Militarily, Israel could easily defeat its neighbours, either one-on-one or all of them at once (like it did in the Six Day War of 1967). No other country in the region is in a better state of military preparedness than Israel. Yet over 200 million Arabs live between the Rock of Gibraltar and the Persian Gulf, where Israel is lodged like a bone in the throat of a senior citizen, while Israel only has a population of about 4 million. If all the Arab World united against Israel to put a Heimlich manoeuvre on itself, the Jewish state could be in trouble.
I don’t think that Arab unity is necessarily a bad thing. It depends on a few factors. For instance, does a politically united Arab World include an Anschluss with what many Arabs call “Palestine” or “The Zionist Entity”? More importantly, would this united Arab World be radically Islamic, with designs of bringing the entire world under its bernoos? Clearly, the rest of the world cannot accept an Arab Empire bent on the destruction of Israel and the forced Islamization of the world.
What the West has to be careful about, however, is creating the very conditions under which Islamist radicals would rise to the fore. We do not strengthen so-called “moderates” by appearing servile in our relationship with Israel. Nor do we help ourselves by ignoring gross human rights violations in Arab countries that we consider to be our “friends.”
On the surface, supporting Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980s seemed like a good idea at the time. What better way to put those “towel heads” in Tehran back in their place, right? However, it led to Saddam’s annexation of Kuwait (what he would have called an Anschluss if he were Hitler) and two wars in the Persian Gulf. The United States failed to appreciably weaken the ayatollahs in Iran while creating a monster in Iraq. What’s more, the U.S. still hasn’t extricated itself from the “reconstruction” in Iraq. But we all know what happens to the best ideas of mice and men, right?
In Algeria, France has done the very thing that the West should not do in the Arab World. In the civil war between the governing National Liberation Front (FLN) and the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the French have unequivocally thrown their weight behind the FLN, even though the FLN cancelled the results of elections that the Islamists had clearly won. This action did nothing to promote democracy in North Africa. What’s more, Algeria has been embroiled in a civil war since 1994. Who wins with this scenario? If anybody, it’s the radicals. But that's what you get when you leave the spread of democracy to the French.
The world would like to see three things in the Middle East: peace between Israel and its neighbours, the rise of moderation and secularism in the Arab World, and a steady flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. Clearly, these things have not been mutually exclusive so far.
In the conflict between Israel and its neighbours, there seems to be a perverse symbiosis. Members of Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon launch rockets into Israel. Then, when Israel gets “fed up” and retaliates, killing civilians (which invariably happens), the Arab radicals can say, “See? I told you those Zionists want to kill women and children!” Of course, extremists in Israel play the same game. Members of groups like Gush Enunim have been building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza since the early 1970s, because this land is the “Samaria” of the Bible in their minds. Then, when members of Hamas blow themselves up in suicide bombings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israeli extremists jump up and say: “Hey, Israel needs our settlements! We’re Israel’s first line of defence!”
There’s a term for this behaviour: Baron von Munchhausen syndrome by proxy, or “creating a problem in order to solve it.” It should be obvious to the rest of the world by now what both sides have been saying to themselves all along: “Who needs peace? Not us!”
Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t feed into the bigger problem of Islamic radicalism. If a country like Saudi Arabia wants to be ruled by Islamic law, or Shariya, and behead people, the rest of the world shouldn’t have a problem with it. After all, the U.S. has capital punishment, too. However, it can really be a problem when Saudi Arabia exports its brand of Islamic fundamentalism (called “Wahabism”) by building schools in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan that train young boys to be terrorists. It gets worse when you point these tykes towards targets in Israel and the West and say, “Think of Allah and pull the pin from the grenade like the imam showed you!”
Fortunately, the teachers at these madrassahs seem to know more about the Qur’an than they do about nuclear fusion. What's unfortunate, however, is that countries with a lot of oil seem to think that they have the right to tell others what to do or think.
I would not be a bold or innovative thinker if I pointed out that the West needs to wean itself from Middle Eastern oil. However, we all know that’s not going to happen until the entire Persian Gulf is as dry underneath the sand as it is above it. Until then, the oil companies will want to drill for oil on Alaska’s National Wildlife Reserve or in the Gulf of Mexico. Toyota will try to solve its problems with sudden acceleration with its Prius model so that we can all drive electric cars safely. At some point, all of our electricity will be from nuclear power plants, and Hydro-Québec will have dammed up sixteen rivers in la belle province so that it can sell power to New York State and the world will be safe for global warming. Until then, Muslim radicals will call for the destruction of Israel and the West, and try to make every woman in the world cover herself with a black table cloth in the name of “modesty.”
Some things never change, like the smell of raw sewage and the Middle East.
The average American has an image of Israel as a little David fighting for its survival against a giant Goliath. This image is only partially correct. Militarily, Israel could easily defeat its neighbours, either one-on-one or all of them at once (like it did in the Six Day War of 1967). No other country in the region is in a better state of military preparedness than Israel. Yet over 200 million Arabs live between the Rock of Gibraltar and the Persian Gulf, where Israel is lodged like a bone in the throat of a senior citizen, while Israel only has a population of about 4 million. If all the Arab World united against Israel to put a Heimlich manoeuvre on itself, the Jewish state could be in trouble.
I don’t think that Arab unity is necessarily a bad thing. It depends on a few factors. For instance, does a politically united Arab World include an Anschluss with what many Arabs call “Palestine” or “The Zionist Entity”? More importantly, would this united Arab World be radically Islamic, with designs of bringing the entire world under its bernoos? Clearly, the rest of the world cannot accept an Arab Empire bent on the destruction of Israel and the forced Islamization of the world.
What the West has to be careful about, however, is creating the very conditions under which Islamist radicals would rise to the fore. We do not strengthen so-called “moderates” by appearing servile in our relationship with Israel. Nor do we help ourselves by ignoring gross human rights violations in Arab countries that we consider to be our “friends.”
On the surface, supporting Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980s seemed like a good idea at the time. What better way to put those “towel heads” in Tehran back in their place, right? However, it led to Saddam’s annexation of Kuwait (what he would have called an Anschluss if he were Hitler) and two wars in the Persian Gulf. The United States failed to appreciably weaken the ayatollahs in Iran while creating a monster in Iraq. What’s more, the U.S. still hasn’t extricated itself from the “reconstruction” in Iraq. But we all know what happens to the best ideas of mice and men, right?
In Algeria, France has done the very thing that the West should not do in the Arab World. In the civil war between the governing National Liberation Front (FLN) and the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the French have unequivocally thrown their weight behind the FLN, even though the FLN cancelled the results of elections that the Islamists had clearly won. This action did nothing to promote democracy in North Africa. What’s more, Algeria has been embroiled in a civil war since 1994. Who wins with this scenario? If anybody, it’s the radicals. But that's what you get when you leave the spread of democracy to the French.
The world would like to see three things in the Middle East: peace between Israel and its neighbours, the rise of moderation and secularism in the Arab World, and a steady flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. Clearly, these things have not been mutually exclusive so far.
In the conflict between Israel and its neighbours, there seems to be a perverse symbiosis. Members of Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon launch rockets into Israel. Then, when Israel gets “fed up” and retaliates, killing civilians (which invariably happens), the Arab radicals can say, “See? I told you those Zionists want to kill women and children!” Of course, extremists in Israel play the same game. Members of groups like Gush Enunim have been building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza since the early 1970s, because this land is the “Samaria” of the Bible in their minds. Then, when members of Hamas blow themselves up in suicide bombings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israeli extremists jump up and say: “Hey, Israel needs our settlements! We’re Israel’s first line of defence!”
There’s a term for this behaviour: Baron von Munchhausen syndrome by proxy, or “creating a problem in order to solve it.” It should be obvious to the rest of the world by now what both sides have been saying to themselves all along: “Who needs peace? Not us!”
Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t feed into the bigger problem of Islamic radicalism. If a country like Saudi Arabia wants to be ruled by Islamic law, or Shariya, and behead people, the rest of the world shouldn’t have a problem with it. After all, the U.S. has capital punishment, too. However, it can really be a problem when Saudi Arabia exports its brand of Islamic fundamentalism (called “Wahabism”) by building schools in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan that train young boys to be terrorists. It gets worse when you point these tykes towards targets in Israel and the West and say, “Think of Allah and pull the pin from the grenade like the imam showed you!”
Fortunately, the teachers at these madrassahs seem to know more about the Qur’an than they do about nuclear fusion. What's unfortunate, however, is that countries with a lot of oil seem to think that they have the right to tell others what to do or think.
I would not be a bold or innovative thinker if I pointed out that the West needs to wean itself from Middle Eastern oil. However, we all know that’s not going to happen until the entire Persian Gulf is as dry underneath the sand as it is above it. Until then, the oil companies will want to drill for oil on Alaska’s National Wildlife Reserve or in the Gulf of Mexico. Toyota will try to solve its problems with sudden acceleration with its Prius model so that we can all drive electric cars safely. At some point, all of our electricity will be from nuclear power plants, and Hydro-Québec will have dammed up sixteen rivers in la belle province so that it can sell power to New York State and the world will be safe for global warming. Until then, Muslim radicals will call for the destruction of Israel and the West, and try to make every woman in the world cover herself with a black table cloth in the name of “modesty.”
Some things never change, like the smell of raw sewage and the Middle East.
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