Korea: the next Kosovo?
By Philip Cunningham
wsws.org
17 April 1999
The following article expresses the views of Philip Cunningham, a
1998 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. In submitting his article
Cunningham noted that the "pro-war capitalist advertising vehicle
known as the New York Times" declined to publish this commentary.
The World Socialist Web Site encourages serious contributions from
readers, academics, historians and others on the historical and
political questions raised by the Balkan war. For the information of
our readers, the WSWS will publish submissions of political and
intellectual merit even if they do not fully correspond to the views of
the WSWS Editorial Board.
The lavish 1999 Academy Awards ceremony, reigned over by the
delightful Gwyneth Paltrow, replete with song, dance and celebration, may
one day be regarded as the last hurrah of America's near-universal appeal
to the world community, the last gasp of peacetime America before the
hostilities started.
War was something far away and imaginary, like Saving Private Ryan
and The Thin Red Line, when all eyes were on Hollywood. Yet a few
days later, Clinton, Berger, Albright and Cohen were on TV telling a
disbelieving nation that American credibility was on the line in an isolated
mountainous place called Kosovo. Increasingly sober bulletins upped the
tension, with talk of punitive bombing strikes during a last minute bout of
self-conscious summit diplomacy by the Nobel Prize-seeking Richard
Holbrooke. The war was about to be televised, but before it was, a
credibility-challenged President Clinton asked his fellow Americans to take
time out to look up Kosovo on the map.
Imbibing the arrogance Clinton's foreign policy team, NATO offered Serb
President Milosevic a flawed peace deal and then took him to war for not
signing it. From then on in it was bombs, bombs and bombs, mixed with
draconian actions by the Serb government, the forced relocation of
Albanian Kosovars and then a flood of refugees that a surprised and
unprepared NATO claimed they had been expected all along.
Rhetoric hardened on both sides and the high-tech bombing campaign
escalated, though at 19 nations to one, it was a bit surprising to see little
Serbia bouncing back after attack. NATO appeared to be both bully and
weakling, causing one to wonder how it might have fared had it fallen into
battle with the Soviet Union in its prime.
US contempt for the insignificance of Yugoslavia was initially demonstrated
in an air campaign designed to inflict a maximum of terror without easy
retribution, sort of like shooting at a crowd below a well-defended tower.
It was a classic Clintonian attack, like the bombing of Sudan, Afghanistan
and Iraq in past last ten months, except that post-impeachment Clinton
didn't want to feel the Serbs' pain. The key of using so many
television-guided cruise missiles was to wage war that isn't war, to hurt
without being hurt, the ultimate yuppie indulgence, making a video game of
death from the air.
Now daily briefings at the White House, Pentagon and NATO to tell us
that the fight, however ill-conceived and costly, will take time and must go
on for the sake of NATO credibility, even if it is a bloody war in an
"unimportant" place. The unstated assumption is that "important" places are
the real target.
So what's in store for an important place like Korea, north and south?
If, as many US politicians are now saying, Kosovo is not vital to US
interests, but credibility is at stake and an example must be set, North
Korea comes to mind as the nation for whom the lesson is intended. Iraq
has been battered by US bombs on and off for seven years, so if there are
lessons to be learned from being bombed, the Iraqis know all about that.
The sudden, unexpected descent into a punitive war by the US and its
NATO allies is of shocking relevance to parties on both sides of the 35th
parallel, for if there ever was a country that has been a constant thorn in the
side of the US over the last five decades it's North Korea. Peace today,
war tomorrow. It happened just last month.
If the US were to attack the North, one can hazard a guess that in addition
to fierce fighting and millions of war refugees, all sorts of unexpected
terrible things would happen. More than anything else the unfolding battle
in Yugoslavia demonstrates the unpredictability of war.
Three possible outcomes of NATO's war with Serbia give pause for
thought on the balance of power in Northeast Asia.
1) If the US-led coalition wins, the world's policeman will consolidate its
strength and be on the lookout for human rights violations elsewhere on the
globe to justify forceful intervention. China is too big to attack, Japan and
ROK are allies, home to US troops. North Korea stands out on the short
list.
A victorious US might then call North Korea's bluff: let your people free or
be bombed. The recent US agreement to pay North Korea $300 million
(in food aid so as not to appear to be a bribe) to get one-time access to a
big hole in the ground at the suspected nuclear site may not be as foolhardy
as it appears. It may in fact be a cost-effective investment that permits the
electronic infiltration of North Korea parallel to the CIA-infiltrated
UNSCOM teams that collected vital information prior to the December
1998 bombing in Iraq.
In other words, the world's last superpower might be cocky enough to
pick another fight.
2) If the US pulls out without achieving its goals but only suffers light
casualties, an uneasy peace will prevail: the US is strong, but not so strong.
NATO isn't what it was cracked up to be. Russian influence will grow
deeper in the Balkans.
American will remain bound by treaty and troop presence to defend South
Korea and Japan, but will be unable to counter strong China moves in the
direction of Taiwan and the South China Sea islands. Domestic debate in
the US will indicate that fewer and fewer Americans are willing to die for
other people's problems and that includes Korea's problems.
3) If the US led mission fails, resulting in heavy casualties, an undesirable
situation on the ground and the possible dissolution of NATO, there is a
fear that North Korea and other rogue states would see US weakness as a
green light for more roguish behavior. That is one possibility.
Yet the collapse of NATO and a sober, less trigger-happy US military
might be good for the world in general and actually enhance world peace.
After all, the ideal world peace is not necessarily Pax Americana.
In the Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington predicts a world where
conflict can be reduced if nations recognize their "differentness" as
something that isn't going to change significantly. He orders the world into
large categories: Western culture, Islamic, Hispanic, Sinic, Hindu,
Japanese, etc. Interestingly, both Japan and China rank as civilizations,
whereas Korea is viewed merely as an appendage of one or the other.
This could be an oversight by an otherwise erudite professor, but it could
also help explain the tragedy that is Korea; the peninsula in between two
great powers.
Huntington suggests that similar cultures are less likely to battle, whereas
conflict is inevitable across civilizational lines. At first glance it would
appear that Huntington is painting a bleak war-like future for humankind,
but in fact the his model is somewhat hopeful because it is posited on the
natural balance of power a multipolar world.
In a world without a universal culture or a single hegemon, it's live and let
live. The inability to project power and re-create the world in one's image
forces each party to show some respect and tolerance for different
cultures. In such a multipolar world, different cultures are more or less
equal but, well, different. According to such a scheme, the US will remain
close to Canada and Britain, but it is almost inconceivable that America
would see a vital interest in Korea. By the same token, Japan and China
will have inevitable influence on the peninsula as they did in ages past.
According to this world view, Serbia is of vital concern to Russians and
other orthodox peoples, but only tangentially important to Western Europe
and the US. Indeed, the recent conflict shows the logic of Huntington's
argument inasmuch as support for Serbia runs deep in "orthodox" countries
such as Russia and Greece, and increases with every bomb drop.
Following the same line of reasoning, the borderline Muslim affiliation of
Albania and Kosovo evokes support from Turkey, Iran, Malaysia and the
sympathy of Muslims around the world.
Though Huntington does not go so far as to wish for the collapse of
NATO, the failure of the US-led coalition would teach a necessary lesson
about the limits of US power and cause the world's policeman stick to a
police beat closer to home. Russia, at least in cultural terms, is better
situated to exert influence in Serbia and help maintain peace in the Slavic
areas of the Balkans.
Huntington refines his controversial paradigm in a recent article in Foreign
Affairs. Unlike many American policy makers, he sees it as neither
inevitable or even beneficial that the US remain a superpower. Peace, or at
least geo-political stability, is enhanced if the world moves in multipolar
direction.
The one glaring exception to the "mind your own business rule" in today's
world of course is the US, and in this sense it is the US, not Islamic Iraq or
Sinic North Korea, that is the main threat to global stability in systemic
terms.
Thus America's tendency to bully other countries to follow the American
way is the one thing most likely to upset the balance of power in a
multipolar world. |
