Continued.....
The integration of Australia and Japan into a US-led military front against China and Russia has not only included the formation of the Australia-Japan-US Trilateral Security Dialogue. The creation of this Washington-led front includes NATO as a key feature of the strategy of militarily encircling all Eurasia. It is in this context that the accession of both Canberra and Tokyo, alongside New Zealand, the ROK, and Colombia, as NATO partners has occurred. These NATO partnerships are referred to by NATO Headquarters and the North Atlantic Council as NATO’s “global partners” program. Mongolia, post-2003 Iraq, and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan are also partners of the NATO program. NATO has also created different partnership programs that include countries like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, the Republic of Georgia, Kuwait, Bosnia, and Mauritania.
The hardening lines being created, specifically with the instigation and agitation of the United States, are destabilizing factors in the international arena. This threatens to turn Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, including Northeast Asia, into war theatres. These regions could be theatres of a global confrontation or start off as theatres of regional wars that quickly escalate into broader hot wars.
Korea and the Global Multi-Spectrum War
The Cold War was more than an ideological struggle. Ideology was merely utilized as a justification for foreign policy and unacceptable actions. The divisions that were perceived to have existed during the Cold War did not or have not disappeared either, because the struggle fuelling the Cold War did not really end. In reality, there has been a “post-Cold War cold war” or a cold war after the Cold War. Over the years it has become increasingly clear that the divisions that existed in the Cold War have been carried on and merely transformed. Those divisions have slowly re-emerged and are displaying themselves again.
The specter of a nuclear war has not disappeared either. The US and its NATO allies “have always deemed the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)] to be null and void in the scenario of a world war” (Nazemroaya 2012:374).
In essence the NPT is nothing more than a convenient means of holding sway over non-nuclear states and insuring a partial US and NATO nuclear weapons monopoly to insure their dominance over other states; the moment that dominance fades, the US and NATO have no qualms in being unequivocal treaty violators as they themselves have warned (Ibid.:347-348)
In violation of the NPT, the US has even threatened to attack the DPRK and Iran with nuclear weapons. This is because Obama “redefined Washington’s NPT commitments in April 2010 by declaring that the” US government would violate “the NPT’s provision which barred a nuclear attack on certain non-nuclear states, meaning Iran and North Korea” (Ibid.:346). Although the DPRK is not legally obligated by the NPT since it cited the NPT’s Article 10 to withdraw on April 10, 2003, Washington’s justification for this was that it had unilaterally and illegally decided that both Iran and the DPRK were in noncompliance with the NPT.
In 2001, the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) acknowledged that the US had nuclear missiles pointed for an attack on Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, China, Russia, and the DPRK at all times. Since the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the NATO war on the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the US continues to maintain nuclear weapons pointed at the DPRK, Iran, Syria, Russia, and China. In 2006, the Pentagon even launched war games called Vigilant Shield 07 that simulated a nuclear attack on Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea, respectively codenamed Irmingham, Ruebek, Churya, and Nemazee.
Like Russia and China, this is why the DPRK maintains its nuclear weapons as a strategic deterrence against the US. The nuclear factor also makes the signing of a formal peace treaty to officially end the Libration War between the US and the DPRK of great consequence to Eurasian and global security, because a conflict in the Korean Peninsula could escalate into a nuclear war with immediate global ramifications that would draw in China, Russia, Japan, and NATO.
The threat of nuclear confrontation has actually increased, because there is less pressure for constraint on public officials due to the fact that the general public is less aware of the nature of global rivalries and the dangers of nuclear escalation. This is directly tied to the role of the mass media and the information strategies of governments.
A chain of US-controlled alliances are being constructed and equipped around three main actors, China, Russia, and Iran—the “Eurasian Triple Entente.” In this context, the following was averred in 1997:
But if the middle space rebuffs the West, becomes an assertive single entity, and either gains control over the South or forms an alliance with the major Eastern actor, then America’s primacy in Eurasia shrinks dramatically. The same would be the case if the two major Eastern players were somehow to unite (Brzezinski 1997:35).
Camouflaged behind thinly veiled liberal and academic jargon, what Zbigniew Brzezinski—the man making these statements—meant was that if the Russian Federation and the post-Soviet space manage to repulse or push back Western domination—meaning some combination of tutelage by the US and its allies—and manage to reorganize themselves within some type of confederacy or supranational grouping, either gaining influence in the Middle East and Central Asia or form an alliance with China, that Washington’s influence in Eurasia would be finished. This is why the US government is doing everything it can to prevent the “Middle Space” and the “Middle Kingdom” (Zhongguo/China) from uniting Eurasia. It is under this framework that the US opposes the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and China’s New Silk Road(s) or One Belt, One Road” project. With the shifting balance of power, this is also the reason that the US was forced to revise its policies with Cuba and Iran.
While NATO has expanded eastward in Europe towards the borders of Russia and its allies in the post-Soviet space, the US has tightened its system of alliances in East Asia and Oceania against China, incubated the rise of the so-called “Islamic State” death squads to devastate Syria as a means of weakening Iran and its Resistance Bloc, and working to control the Gulf of Aden and strategic Mandeb Strait through the Saudi-led war on Yemen. Chinese, Iranian, and Russian allies and partners, such as Belarus, Armenia, Syria, Kyrgyzstan, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, are being target in various ways as a means of getting them to change their orbits. In this regard, this and the self-sufficiency aspects of the DPRK’s Juche ideology are additional reasons why it is being targeted.
Land components of the missile shield have been kept and expanded in the Balkans, Israel, Turkey, and the Asia-Pacific region. Aside from land elements, the Pentagon’s missile shield project has been expanded to include a naval armada of ships that will surround Eurasia from the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, and the East China Sea. In Europe and the Middle East the missile shield project includes NATO. Missiles that are pointing at Armenia, Iran, Syria, and Russia have been deployed to Turkey while infrastructure has been put in place in Poland on the direct borders of Russian ally and EEU founding member Belarus, as well as the Russian Federation’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania.
The militarization of the Russian and Belarusian borders by the NATO alliance puts the US and its allies in direct opposition to not just Russia and Belarus, but the entire Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which is the military pact of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and converges with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that includes China. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are full members of both the CSTO and SCO; Armenia is a member of the CSTO and a dialogue partner of the SCO; and Uzbekistan is a member of the SCO while it has suspended its participation the CSTO. In 2007, the CSTO and the SCO signed a cooperation agreement, effectively creating a distinct Sino-Russian Eurasian security community covering the space from Shanghai and Vladivostok to St. Petersburg and Minsk through Dushanbe and Astana.
Economic sanctions have increasingly become a tool in the multi-spectrum war that the US is waging against its adversaries across the world. The DPRK has been one of the oldest targets of US sanctions, that deliberately target the civilian population to create internal instability and to cripple the country by means of crippling its most important resource—its people. Simply put, these sanctions are economic warfare.
Countries like the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Syria, Baathist Iraq, and the Russian Federation have also been targeted by US sanction regimes. Iran and Cuba, as two of the countries that have been sanctioned longest by Washington, have similar experiences against the US economic sanctions as the DPRK and in this regard have been unapologetic allies of Pyongyang as part of a network of international resistance to Washington’s system of economic coercion. The sanctions experience has made self-sufficiency an important security consideration in the DPRK and Iran.
Trade Blocs and Economic Rivalries
Washington’s militarization agenda is tied to a multilateral trade agenda that has hegemonic connotations. In other words, there is a trade dimension to the militarization and the stoking of tensions in the Asia-Pacific. The case is the same for the tensions with Russia in Europe. It is under this framework that the DPRK, China, and the Russian Federation are being instrumentally demonized to help increase US influence and justify a larger US presence in both East Asia and Europe. This is also part of a US strategy to marginalize and exclude the Russians and Chinese in the affairs of both Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. While Washington works to exclude China and Russia, the US goal is to integrate the other countries of these areas with itself using the tensions that it has promoted between Beijing, Moscow, and their neighbours.
In Europe, the objectives of the US are to create instability in the flow of Russian energy supplies to the European Union by instigating problems inside Ukraine and between the Russian Federation and the Ukrainians. What the US is actually doing through this is working to weaken both the Russians and the European Union economically. This includes the goal of disrupting trade ties. The deterioration of EU-Russian trade ties and relations is meant to aid US negotiations and weaken the European Union. This is part of the US strategy to eventually economically control and swallow the European Union under the framework of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which is under negotiation between Brussels and Washington. Washington’s objective is to construct a single US-controlled Euro-Atlantic military, political, and economic space that would absorb the EU and Europe.
In the Asia-Pacific region the US is following or using the same strategy of artificially creating tensions and instigating problems between China and other countries in the region. This is exactly why US officials continuously showcase the territorial disputes that Beijing has and the reason why Washington has been getting itself involved in the bilateral or multilateral territorial disputes that China has in East Asia. Washington has used this to promote the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ultimately, what the US wants is to subordinate China and Russia. In the case of Russia, it wants to control Russia’s vast resources and technology. As Nikolai Patrushev notes, this is why Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state during the presidency of Bill Clinton, has had the nerve and audacity to say in doublespeak that the Russians have “unfair” control of the world’s resources on their country’s vast territory and should give the US and its allies “free access” to it “to serve humanity” (Yegorov).
The case with Beijing is different. There is a level of alignment between it and economic interests in the so-called West. This is why after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s very revealing October 2015 visit to London, one of the world’s financial hubs, the British declared that a “golden age” was starting with China. The visit to Britain came after Xi Jinping was in Washington making deals with the US.
In the case of the Chinese, the US wants to control China as an industrial colony. Washington and Wall Street want China to be a giant labour camp of manufacturing for US corporations. Thus, Washington’s goal is to put a leash on China as a subordinate. This is why Obama (2014) made the following points to his audience in Brisbane: “And the question is, what kind of role will it play? I just came from Beijing, and I said there, the United States welcomes the continuing rise of a China that is peaceful and prosperous and stable and that plays a responsible role in world affairs.” What Obama is saying is that Beijing serves Washington interests as a manufacturing hub. What he meant by China playing “a responsible role in world affairs” is that Beijing will be considered a “responsible” international actor by the US as long it follows Washington’s designs and scripts. “So we’ll pursue cooperation with China where our interests overlap or align. And there are significant areas of overlap: More trade and investment,” Obama’s (Ibid.) admitted.
Korea: Peace at Home, Peace Abroad or Peace Abroad, Peace at Home?
Peace, security, and unification in the Korean Peninsula are internal matters for the Korean people, but there are important external factors involved. The key word here is “glocalism.” In other words, both local and global considerations must be taken into account for peace in Korea. North Korean-South Korean or inter-Korean relations are predisposed to external forces. As long as the government of the ROK is subordinated to Washington the external factor is a part of the equation.
As it should be realized, Chinese-US relations are another external factor in the equation. Even if a peace treaty is signed between the DPRK and the US, it will be ineffective for as long as Washington is targeting China and wants primacy in Eurasia. This is why, as declassified US government documents reveal, US Secretary of Defence James Baker instructed Richard (“Dick”) Cheney to make the ROK reject an inter-Korean deal with the DPRK to have US forces leave the ROK in exchange for the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in cable dated November 18, 1991. As long as the US is targeting Beijing, Washington will want a military presence in the Korean Peninsula and maintain hostilities with the DPRK directly and by means of the leadership in the ROK. This means that the US will continue to obstruct Korean unification and continue to demonize the DPRK’s leadership as a means of weakening and dividing the unification movement in the ROK. Washington will maintain this position unless the DPRK surrenders to US edicts or there are tectonic shifts in Chinese-US relations.
The case of the USS Pueblo, the US Navy spy ship that was caught in DPRK waters in 1968, must be recalled too. To free the USS Pueblo’s crew, the US committed itself to halting any future violations of the DPRK’s territories and ending its spying missions. Washington never honoured its commitments to Pyongyang.
The increasing tensions between the US and Russia, the decline of the global influence of Washington, Eurasian integration, and the growing clout of the Iran are also all important factors for how China and the US will act in Northeast Asia. Along with growing multipolarism, these events are giving the DPRK options, alternatives, and moving space.
Despite Washington’s intentions in Korea and against China, a peace treaty between the DPRK and the US is still an important step and ingredient towards Korean reunification. Such a treaty would give strength to the calls to remove the US military in the ROK and transfer operation control of the ROK military to Seoul. It would make it harder to justify the US military presence and command in the ROK.
In Turkey, it was once said that “peace at home” will translate to peace abroad.” For the Korean Peninsula, the case is inversed. “Peace abroad” will equate to “peace at home” in the divided homeland of the Korean people. This is because of the role that external factors play on local policies, politics, and security in the Korean Peninsula. Thus, the road forward for Korea will be a glocal one.
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This paper (original title: “Examining The Global Kaleidoscope: Glocalism and Korea”) was presented at the Second International Conference for Peace and Prosperity on the Korean Peninsula, which just took place in Berlin, Germany from Nov. 24 to 27, 2015.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research, 2015
