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By Steven L. Shields
I grew up during the Vietnam War. I was safely tucked away in the mountains of the western United States, but the specter of war was ever-present. Neighbors and friends were being drafted to go to that faraway place to fight a war that few people supported. Family members in the U.S. military were deployed to the war. One uncle flew on bombers in the U.S. Air Force. Another uncle was a master sergeant in the U.S. Army; cousins were also deployed. Throughout my adolescence, the war loomed large, and it seemed my future had been predetermined, as all U.S. teenage boys were required to register for the draft.
The War in Europe, or World War I, was to be the "war to end all wars," and then less than 30 years later, another war in Europe broke out, but that time it truly spread around the world as the war in Europe was quickly followed by the Pacific War. World War II finally ended in 1945, when both Germany and Japan had been beaten into submission by overwhelming economic and industrial might on several fronts. But peace remained elusive.
During my teenage years, famous balladeers crooned, "Give Peace a Chance." Large movements cried out, "Make love, not war." Yet, as soon as one flare-up is extinguished, two more places erupt in a never-ending cycle of violence upon violence, death and sickness. Even the United Nations, for all its lofty goals and dreams, seems powerless to bring about a time when all people everywhere can sleep at night with full bellies, a time when we can raise our children and see them fulfill all our hopes and dreams for them.
Peace is an elusive dream that may never come to reality. Why?
This newspaper's recent headline proclaimed, "Korea becomes world's 8th-largest arms exporter." Such a wonderful (?) achievement of economic success. Not only did Korea make the top 10 list of arms merchants (topped by the U.S. and Russia), but Korea is also the world's 10th-largest in defense spending.
Korea, has seen a marked increase in exports to the Middle East, the newspaper reported. Korea also signed deals with Poland this year. My, my, aren't we so proud that Korea is expanding its presence in the global defense market? President Yoon Suk Yeol's goal is to boost Korea's defense (can we please call it what it is? War) exports so Korea can become the world's fourth-largest exporter of weapons of destruction. Nobody likes to call it war. The renaming of "war" to "defense" was a ploy to make people feel better about the reality of life in the modern world.
I find it difficult to argue that one should not be prepared. Ukraine was ill-prepared for the unthinkable prospect of an invasion. What should be done? Few would argue they should have stood down and accepted a hostile merger with Russia. They appealed for help, and many nations agreed to arm Ukraine and supply it with war materiel. The standoff continues, with death and destruction raining down on several sides.
Likewise, in Korea. Faced with a hostile northern neighbor (who, in turn, believes he is faced with a hostile southern neighbor), both are armed to the teeth and continue to stockpile tools of destruction, all for national "defense." I am not arguing that we should not be prepared to defend ourselves at any cost. It's just that the spiral continues to grow and grow with no end in sight.
We are between a "rock and a hard place." No country is willing to lay down its arms unilaterally and wait to be bulldozed by an aggressive neighboring country. And the United Nations cannot get all nations to lay down their arms. In the United States, much of the national economy is based on the war industry (and none of those industrialists will agree with my naming). Millions of jobs would be lost if all the bomb-makers, gun-makers, shell-makers, warplanes and warship makers were suddenly to close their doors. The level of poverty would skyrocket, and chaos would likely ensue.
While we all want peace, national governments, industrialists and economists would have to agree that peace is bad for business.
Rev. Steven L. Shields (slshields@gmail.com) has lived in Korea for many years, beginning in the 1970s. He is the president of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea. He served as copy editor of The Korea Times in 1977. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect The Korea Times' editorial stance.
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