World at war, almost

 

Certain parallels between the North-South confrontation on the Korean peninsula and the response to the Hamas attack on Israel are more than a little disquieting.

Just as the Americans sent an aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to the Mediterranean coast off Israel, so they sent another carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, and a B-52 bomber to South Korea. Their visits make a symbolic point: U.S. forces can deal with crises on widely separated fronts. However, that is less than totally certain when you consider the worsening build-up of arms everywhere.

Victor Cha, a Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, summarized the gravity of the problem at a talk in Seoul introducing his latest book, “Korea: A New History of South and North,” co-authored with Ramon Pachero Pardo of King’s College, London. Rail traffic across the 18-kilometer-long Tumen River border between North Korea and Russia, he observed, had vastly increased in recent weeks.

Whatever was hidden beneath the tarpaulins covering the freight cars was hidden, said Cha, but the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, was making good on promises he had made to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to ship artillery shells and other munitions for the Russians in their war in Ukraine. And the Russians no doubt were repaying the favor with gear the North Koreans need to put a satellite into orbit and to upgrade their basic arsenal, including an air force that dates from the Soviet era.

No one quite expects war to break out in the near future between U.S. and Russian forces in Ukraine, or between the U.S. and North Korea or between the U.S. and Iran and the Iran-armed Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, but Cha and Pardo make clear the unpredictability of the future, at least as far as North Korea goes.

“Against all odds, the small, isolated regime has survived while bigger counterparts have collapsed,” they write. “But at the same time, North Korea is resilient until the day that it is not.”

The element of surprise dominates the parallels and links between conflict from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to East Asia.

Might China go to war to recover the “lost” island province of Taiwan despite frequent air and naval exercises in surrounding skies and waters? Wouldn’t China’s President Xi Jinping prefer to improve frayed ties with the U.S. while exercising a restraining influence on North Korea?

Maybe so, but the potential for conflict strains relations and raises sensitive questions everywhere. The war in Ukraine cost the U.S. $12.8 billion in military aid alone last year. Next in line is Israel, getting $3.8 billion from the U.S. this year – and maybe more to make good on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to destroy Hamas totally in Gaza.

Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and Hamas’s assault on southern Israel have cost thousands of lives. Obviously, it’s necessary to defend Ukraine just as Israel has to destroy Hamas.

Both these struggles could go on for a long time. Israeli forces may rampage through Gaza in the coming days and weeks, but then they will face the danger of possible retribution not only from Arab countries, with which the Israelis have been trying to form decent relations, but also from Islamic Iran and Turkey and others ganging up in collusion against them.

As it’s done since its founding in 1948, Israel may weather the storm, but that’s to say nothing of the storm clouds forming over Asia. The United States formed a defensive line from alliances in Northeast Asia with Korea and Japan down through strengthened ties with the Philippines and, miraculously, rosy relations with Vietnam, whose Hanoi regime inflicted the most humiliating defeat in American history in the Vietnam War.

The U.S. network extends down under to Australia, anchor of AUKUS, the Australia, United Kingdom, U.S. alliance, and on to India, included in what’s called the “Quad,” a non-military grouping with military overtones that also includes Australia and Japan.

Nothing, though, is guaranteed. India still prides itself on “neutrality” and counts on Russia not only for nearly half its oil but also for armaments ranging from tanks to planes to ships, all vital for defense against China, nibbling away at its northern borders.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, moreover, is upset with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s charge that India engineered the assassination of a Sikh independence activist on Canadian soil. Strive as they might to convince the Indians otherwise, the Americans are suspected of having passed on secret intelligence on the alleged plot to the Canadians.

It is as though the world were on the brink. Any spark could blow up the elaborate framework that’s balancing forces in a delicate standoff. The Hamas onslaught in Israel, and the overwhelming Israeli response, show just how easily the sparks can explode into a limited war — and then, God forbid, into a much greater conflagration that nobody wants.

Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) writes about war and peace from Seoul. Washington, and elsewhere.