Why Trump is Winding Up Tensions with
North Korea
By
Finian Cunningham
December 25, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
- After 18 months of
on-off diplomacy with North Korea, the
Trump administration seems determined
now to jettison the fragile talk about
peace, reverting to its earlier campaign
of “maximum pressure” and hostility.
It’s a retrograde move risking a
disastrous war.
In a visit
to China this week, South Korean
President Moon Jae-in and Chinese leader
Xi Jinping both
urged
for greater momentum in the diplomatic
process with North Korea, saying that
renewed tensions benefit no-one. The two
leaders may need to revise that
assertion. Tensions greatly benefit
someone – Washington.
Why Trump is winding up tensions again
with Pyongyang appears to involve a
two-fold calculation. It gives
Washington greater leverage to extort
more money from South Korea for the
presence of US military forces on its
territory; secondly, the Trump
administration can use the tensions as
cover for increasing its regional forces
aimed at confronting China.
In recent
weeks, the rhetoric has deteriorated
sharply between Washington and
Pyongyang. The Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK) has resumed
references to Trump being a senile
“dotard”, while the US president earlier
this month at the NATO summit near
London dusted off his old disparaging
name for Kim Jong-un, the North Korean
leader,
calling
him “rocket man”.
On December
7 and 15, North Korea
tested
rocket engines at its Sohae satellite
launching site which are believed to be
preparation for the imminent test-firing
of an intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM). North Korea unilaterally halted
ICBM test-launches in April 2018 as a
gesture for diplomacy with the US. Its
last launch was on July 4, 2017, when
Pyongyang mockingly called it a “gift”
for America’s Independence Day.
Earlier
this month, Pyongyang
said it
was preparing a “Christmas gift” for
Washington. That was taken as referring
to resumption of ICBM test launches.
However, Pyongyang said it was up to the
US to decide which gift it would
deliver.
On the
engine testing, Trump said he was
“watching closely” on what North Korea
did next,
warning
that he was prepared to use military
force against Pyongyang and that Kim
Jong-un had “everything to lose”.
The turning away from diplomacy may seem
odd. Trump first met Kim in June 2018 in
Singapore at a breakthrough summit, the
first time a sitting US president met
with a North Korean leader. There were
two more summits, in Hanoi in February
2019, and at the Demilitarized Zone on
the Korean border in June 2019. The
latter occasion was a splendid
photo-opportunity for Trump, being the
first American president to have stepped
on North Korean soil.
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During this diplomatic embrace, Trump
has lavished Kim with praise and thanked
him for “beautiful letters”. Back in
September 2017 when hostile rhetoric was
flying both ways, Trump told the UN
general assembly he would “totally
destroy” North Korea if it threatened
the US. How fickle are the ways of
Trump.
What’s happened is the initial promises
of engagement have gone nowhere,
indicating the superficiality of Trump’s
diplomacy. It seems clear now that the
US president was only interested in
public relations gimmickry, boasting to
the American public that he had reined
in North Korea’s nuclear activities.
When Trump met Kim for the third time in
June 2019, they reportedly vowed to
resume negotiations on denuclearization
of the Korean Peninsula. North Korea had
up until recently stuck to its
commitment to halt ICBM testing.
However, for that, Pyongyang expected
reciprocation from the US side on the
issue of sanctions relief, at least a
partial lifting of sanctions. Kim gave
Trump a deadline by the end of this year
to make some concession on sanctions.
Russia and
China last week proposed an easing of UN
sanctions on North Korea. But Washington
rebuffed
that proposal, categorically saying it
was a “premature” move, and that North
Korea must first make irreversible steps
towards complete decommissioning of its
nuclear arsenal. The high-handed
attitude is hardly conducive to
progress.
The lack of diplomatic reciprocation
from Washington over the past six months
has led Pyongyang to angrily repudiate
further talks. It has hit out at what it
calls Trump’s renewed demeaning
name-calling of Kim. There is also a
palpable sense of frustration on North
Korea’s part for having been used as a
prop for Trump’s electioneering.
The fact that Washington has adopted an
intransigent position with regard to
sanctions would indicate that it never
was serious about pursuing meaningful
diplomacy with Pyongyang.
Admittedly, Trump did cancel large-scale
US war games conducted with South Korea
as a gesture towards North Korea, which
views these exercises as provocative
rehearsals for war. This was an easy
concession to make by Trump who no doubt
primarily saw the cessation of military
drills as a cost-cutting opportunity for
the US.
Significantly, this month US special
forces along with South Korean
counterparts conducted a “decapitation”
exercise in which they simulated a
commando raid to capture a foreign
target. Furthermore, the operation was
given unusual
public media
attention.
As
the Yonhap news agency reported: “A
YouTube video by the Defense Flash News
shows more details of the operation,
with service personnel throwing a smoke
bomb, raiding an office inside the
building, shooting at enemy soldiers
over the course, and a fighter jet
flying over the building… It is unusual
for the US military to make public such
materials… according to officials.”
The Trump administration appears to have
run out of further use for the
diplomatic track with North Korea. The
PR value has been milked. The policy
shift is now back to hostility. The
instability that generates is beneficial
for Washington in two ways.
Trump is
currently trying to get South Korea to
boost its financial contribution towards
maintaining US forces on its territory.
Trump wants Seoul to cough up an
eye-watering five-fold increase in
payments “for US protection” to an
annual $5 billion bill. South Korea is
understandably reluctant to fork out
such a massive whack from its fiscal
budget. Talks on the matter are
stalemated,
but expected to resume in January.
If
US relations with North Korea were
progressing through diplomacy then the
lowered tensions on the peninsula would
obviously not benefit Washington’s
demand on South Korea for more
“protection money”. Therefore, it pays
Washington to ramp up the hostilities
and the dangers of war as a lever for
emptying Seoul’s coffers.
The other bigger strategic issue shaping
US intentions with North Korea is of
course Washington’s longer-term
collision course with China. US
officials and defense planning documents
have repeatedly targeted China as the
main geopolitical adversary. American
forces in South Korea comprising 28,500
troops, nuclear-capable bombers,
warships and its anti-missile Terminal
High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)
system are not about protecting South
Korea from North Korea. They are really
about encircling China (and Russia).
Washington hardly wants to scale back
its military assets on the Korea
Peninsula. It is driven by the strategic
desire to expand them.
In
media comments earlier this month,
Pentagon chief Mark Esper made a curious
slip-up when referring to withdrawing US
troops from Afghanistan. He said they
would be redeployed in Asia to confront
China.
Esper
said:
“I would like to go down to a lower
number [in Afghanistan] because I want
to either bring those troops home, so
they can refit and retrain for other
missions or/and be redeployed to the
Indo-Pacific to face off our greatest
challenge in terms of the great power
competition that’s vis-a-vis China.”
The logic of war profits and strategic
conflict with China mean that Trump and
the Washington establishment do not want
to find a peaceful resolution with North
Korea. Hence a return to the hostile
wind-up of tensions.
