Opinion - The Korea Times

The US at war - again

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― The eyes of the world are upon the new U.S. war in Syria and Iraq, and that’s not just because people want to know how or whether aerial bombardments and missile strikes by the United States are really knocking out the bad guys.One question is whether such high-tech attacks from the air can suffice to defeat an implacable foe. Look at the images shown on television by the top brass at the Pentagon, and you get the impression of an omnipotent force annihilating a fanatic foe without the need for really going in there and killing them on the ground.Wait a second, though. Didn’t we seem pretty all-powerful in Vietnam when the military people staged those daily briefings in Saigon known as ``the five o’clock follies”? I can’t begin to recall how many briefings I attended, how high was the hype and how disappointing the results in the end.The U.S. war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos probably reached its highest moment of optimism when President Nixon ordered U.S. forces to cross the border into Cambodia and hit the enemy in their

Sep 25, 2014By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Pivoting toward war

By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON ― The debate is so familiar.Should the United States plunge into a war in a region about which all too little is really understood? President Obama, having foresworn war, now is edging into a conflagration in Syria and Iraq that is sure to go on for years and may eventually bring about a new influx of U.S. ground troops whom Obama withdrew so triumphantly from Iraq.Sure, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, playing with words, tell us it’s just a “counter-terror operation” and that they’re limiting the U.S. commitment to air strikes and a few people on the ground, special forces, forward observers, security guards, who knows? The point is you don’t win a war with air strikes alone.That’s axiomatic. In the end the infantry goes in and takes the territory. That’s what eventually will happen if the U.S. ― and whatever “coalition” the U.S. can piece together ― have a prayer of wiping out ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.The U.S. isn’t about to acknowle

Sep 18, 2014By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Why have UN 'peace-keepers'?

By Donald KirkThe United Nations as a force for peace has never lived up to the hopes implicit in the name. You can’t blame a succession of secretary-generals for the failures of the U.N. The current secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, may seem bland and ineffective, but there’s not much he can do when each of the five permanent members of the Security Council, including China, Russia, Britain and France as well as the U.S., has the power to veto anything.The ineffectiveness of the U.N. shows up in the record of peacekeeping forces. One notorious example was an agreement by a Dutch peacekeeping force in July 1995 to yield to Bosnian Serb demands to expel 5,000 Bosnian Muslims from the U.N. compound at Srebrenica.  In July, nine years later, a Dutch court ruled that the Dutch force had indeed surrendered 300 of them ― men and boys who were among 8,000 Bosnian Serbs shot to death in the worst case of genocide in Europe since World War II.What would have happened if the Dutch peacekeepers had stood their ground and refused? Would the Bosnian Serbs under their bloodthirsty c

Sep 11, 2014By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Waging the wars of the future

By Donald Kirk Star Wars is coming. Wait around long enough, and we’ll see missiles and interceptor projectiles knocking each other out in great blazes of flashing light hundreds of miles above from where we cower in fear of a deadly device sneaking its way through the flak and detonating on top of us, wiping out cities and societies.Why does this era of Star Wars conflict seem to be inevitable? Look at THAAD, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense the U.S. wants to set up in Korea. This counter-missile system is needed for the salvation of Northeast Asia, say the Americans, to spare us from missiles fired by North Korea. We’re not talking about garden-variety short-range Scuds and Rodongs and stuff like that. Think about missiles hurtling 100 or so miles overhead, whizzing toward South Korea, Japan, maybe Hawaii, Alaska and the U.S. West Coast.We’ve been hearing for a long time about the Taepodong, I and II, a long-range missile that put a satellite into orbit in December 2012, but Pentagon planners see much more sinister designs on the drawing boards of Nort

Sep 4, 2014By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Korea's 'Roaring Currents'

By Donald Kirk Shots of the treacherously swirling sea off Korea’s southwestern coast appear so often in the film "Roaring Currents” ― about an epic battle in which Admiral Yi Sun-sin’s iron-clad turtle boats withstood a Japanese fleet ― conjure up images of how the Sewol sank in those same waters in April.Unlike the captain of the Sewol, Admiral Yi remained very much on the bridge of his command ship, his pose awesomely heroic, as is that of the great statue that dominates Gwanghwamun in central Seoul. Viewers may wonder why Yi’s vessels performed so brilliantly under such conditions while the Sewol capsized, slowly sinking, and took 304 of its 476 passengers to their deaths.The warriors who secured Admiral Yi’s defeat of the Japanese in 1597 exemplify the fighting spirit of the Korean people as they withstood an attempted invasion by the evil Japanese in the late 16th century. The episode epitomizes stirring Korean resistance to subjugation by Japan more than 300 years before the Japanese turned the Korean peninsula into a colony. You have to wond

Aug 28, 2014By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Across bloodied borders

By Donald Kirk NEW DELHI ― The division between India-held and Pakistan-held Kashmir ranks with that between North and South Korea as long-running, bloody and dangerous.The two were divided at about the same time ― Kashmir in “partition” of the Indian subcontinent that gave birth to Pakistan as a separate nation at a cost of about two million people killed; Korea in the division of the peninsula in 1945 at the end of World War II, and then in the Korean War that ended in 1953 after another two million deaths.I was just up in Srinagar, the capital of the Indian portion of that beautiful Himalayan land, nestled between towering mountains with glaciers glistening in the distance. No one I met at Kashmir University was happy about the rise of Narendra Modi, who has described himself as a “Hindu nationalist,” as prime minister of India. Kashmiris, almost all of them Muslim, believe passionately in “separatism” ― to be decided, they say, in a referendum in which they would vote overwhelmingly to become an independent nation.Who would imagine, then,

May 29, 2014By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Dancing to India's new tune

By Donald Kirk NEW DELHI – The United States has to go through a skillfully choreographed diplomatic dance as a prelude to making up with India’s incoming prime minister, Narendra Modi.That’s because Washington refused for more than a decade to grant a visa to Modi for his failure as chief minister of Gujarat, the prosperous state southwest of Delhi, to stop anti-Muslim rioting and killing there in 2002.The U.S. was not alone in its exclusion of Modi. A number of other countries, including the United Kingdom, also believed they could punish him for his dereliction even though an Indian commission cleared him of wrongdoing.Now that Modi is rising to the pinnacle of leadership of the world’s second most populated country and largest democracy, at the crossroads of conflict in the new Great Game for Asia, everybody’s changing their tune. The U.S. is saying Modi as chief of state can have a visa, and President Obama would love to see him.U.S. diplomacy in India, uncertain and sometimes heavy-handed, bears a certain similarity to the ups and downs of U.S

May 22, 2014By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Exploiting tragedy of the Sewol

By Donald Kirk The Sewol tragedy is now old news. The international press barely covers the long aftermath as divers look for the last missing bodies. The news has receded from the lead position in the Korean media and sometimes barely makes front pages.The story, though, goes on in the form of recriminations and political backbiting and second-guessing that’s not likely to solve anything ― and could have a destructive effect.Anti-government politicos have seized upon the tragedy as a device to exploit for their own political ends. Demonstrators carrying candles in paper cups are visible on the streets of central Seoul and around the memorial hall in the suburb of Ansan where most of the 304 victims were going to school.Korean-Americans have placed a full-page ad in The New York Times blaming President Park Geun-hye and her government for the tragedy ― both the sinking and the failure to rescue all but 172 of the 476 people on board.The tragedy presents Park’s foes with another issue ripe for exploitation. Watching some of them the other night, I wondered if they wer

May 15, 2014By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Fixing a feudal system

By Donald Kirk The seas were running quite high when I took a small ferry from Mokpo to Jeju a month before the tragedy of the Sewol off Jindo.The agent who ticketed me at the Mokpo ferry terminal had to check to make sure the trip was on. After we had cleared the coastline and made our way beyond the protective shelter of the small islands where the Sewol would go down, the boat began to rock back and forth on the waves.My greatest concern was seasickness, but my stomach remained under control while I wondered if the seas were a bit rough for the five-hour voyage. I could see why they sometimes cancel trips.In retrospect, I should have been more concerned about the total absence of a safety drill. I do remember seeing some orange life jackets stowed somewhere, maybe under the seats, also stacked by a bulkhead, but there were no instructions on where to go or what do.If there were life boats, I didn’t notice them. The three or four crew members whom I saw appeared nonchalant. At the snack counter to which I eventually staggered across a rolling deck, a pleasant young woman

May 8, 2014By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Raising the stakes against China

By Donald Kirk MANILA ― U.S. forces were supposed to be gone from the Philippines for good by 1991 when the U.S. pulled out of Clark Air Base after ashes from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo inundated the airstrip and the Philippine Senate refused to renew the lease on the bases.Now they’re coming back, attuned to anti-base sensitivities and unpleasant memories of GI’s carousing around base towns that still prosper today on tourists in search of the same pleasures as the GI’s.Cautiously, the U.S. and the Philippines escalated their defense relationship this week with a landmark agreement on U.S. forces carefully scripted to sidestep a constitutional ban on “foreign military bases, troops, or facilities” except when approved by Philippine senate or by a national referendum.President Obama, on his first visit to the Philippines,  hailed the agreement, signed three hours before he got here by the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and the Philippine defense secretary, as “an important new chapter in our relationship.”That said, he quick

May 1, 2014By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Read more

The US at war - again

Pivoting toward war

Why have UN 'peace-keepers'?

Waging the wars of the future

Korea's 'Roaring Currents'

Across bloodied borders

Dancing to India's new tune

Exploiting tragedy of the Sewol

Fixing a feudal system

Raising the stakes against China

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