Eve of destruction

By John Burton

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” is a famous quote from the Vietnam War. It referred to the bombing of a village by the Americans in the Mekong Delta during the 1968 Tet Offensive that called into question U.S. war aims.

I am reminded of that quote as the White House publicly debates whether to launch a preventive war against North Korea. The idea has gained traction in Washington in recent months that Pyongyang can no longer be deterred from completing its nuclear and missile program and must be stopped with military action or else it will reunify the Korean peninsula on its terms. But there is a strong likelihood that South Korea could also be destroyed in the process.

H.R McMaster, U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser and ironically known for his critical book on the Vietnam War, is a strong proponent of the view that North Korea is not seeking a nuclear-capable ICBM system to secure regime survival by deterrence but rather it represents the first step to conquer South Korea by coercion and force that could trigger a wider war threatening U.S. cities if Washington intervenes.

McMaster recently warned that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un wants to use its nuclear weapons to "drive the [United] States and our allies away from this peninsula that he would then try to dominate. And if you want to know what life looks like under a North Korea regime, you just have to look north of the 38th parallel."

It is an argument based on the premise that Kim is irrational and morally evil and that North Korea cannot be contained as the Soviet Union and China were after they obtained nuclear weapons, although they too had abysmal human rights records.

McMaster added that North Korea is also likely to sell nuclear weapons to others, while Pyongyang’s possession of nuclear weapons is likely to force South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam to acquire their own as well. “So, this would be the most destabilizing development, I think, in the post-World War II period, and it is something that places us at direct risk, but places the world at risk.”

That talk is scaring some in Washington. Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth from Illinois told Vox, the internet website, “I’m extremely worried ? not just based on what I’m hearing out of the White House but also what I’m hearing out of the defense community. We are far closer to actual conflict over North Korea than the American people realize.”

She added: “Everything we’re doing shows a military that, in my personal opinion, has turned the corner from ‘we need to try to prevent this from happening’ to a military that’s saying the president is likely to make this decision [to attack] and we need to be ready.” She noted that Trump “frankly seems eager to launch a first strike.”

McMaster and other hawks don’t seem to acknowledge that a preventive attack by the U.S. on North Korea would also amount to a “destabilizing development” that could plunge the world into its worst crisis since World War II. Start with the fact that it would likely trigger the most destructive war since 1945, with casualties amounting to more than 1 million people on the Korean peninsula. Casualties would further mount if the war expanded to Japan and China.

There is also the danger that a U.S. attack on North Korea would lead to a clash with China since Beijing would view such an event as a U.S. challenge to its own power in the region. There is surprisingly little discussion in Washington about this scenario.

Even if the U.S. decided to avoid a full-scale military attack on North Korea and instead opted for a limited decapitation strike to remove Kim from power, it would create its own problems. The North Korean military would likely go ahead and automatically execute war plans, which would likely include the shelling of Seoul, missile attacks on U.S. bases in South Korea and Japan, and the use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Even though the U.S. and South Korea would ultimately prevail, allied forces might continue to face an insurgency in North Korea while thousands of refugees could flood into China. This would likely force China to send its troops into North Korea to help restore order, but it would also send back efforts for reunification under Seoul’s leadership. Finally, the cost of reconstructing a war-ravaged North Korea would be astronomical for South Korea, particularly if it had suffered extensive economic damage resulting from a war.

Given the unthinkable consequences of a preventive war, many in Washington take comfort in the fact that hawkish talk is just that ― talk ― that is meant to spook China into applying stiffer sanctions against North Korea while intimidating Pyongyang into stopping its nuclear and missile. But is such complacency fully justified?

John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant.