Korean 'tensions'? No, North Korean aggression
Despite the clear evidence last week of North Korean aggression — the second incident this year — major media are reporting the incident “evenhandedly” as usual, as if journalistic objectivity requires moral equivalency between the actions of the world’s worst tyranny and the democratic republic of South Korea.
This sort of “reporting” is hardly new, it having become the norm during the Vietnam War years when many Democrats turned against the commitment which two presidents of their party led the country into. It is not necessary for journalists to proclaim “No more Vietnams” each time they write something about crisis situations which invariably arise when tyrannical regimes bully a neighbor in pursuit of some advantage. We know what their bias is.
In the most recent incident, North Korea shelled a South Korean island near the North-South border, killing two South Korean marines and two civilians. Earlier this year, it sank a South Korean warship and killed 46 sailors. Invariably, as both these incidents demonstrate, the call for negotiations takes precedence over serious reprisals, although South Korea fired back this time.
No reasonable person wants war. But no reasonable person wants international bullies to get away with aggression either. Between the alternatives of peace and war, it is prudent to prefer the former. But failure to prepare for contingencies can bring wars that nobody wants. I say “nobody” not because all nations have good intentions but because the North Korea regime wants the fruits of war without the costs.
Besides the plain fact that war is always destructive and tragic, the 20th century’s horrors have forced a major rethinking of military and political strategy. World War I brought unprecedented casualties, but was dwarfed by the casualties, not only of fighting forces, but of civilians and the destruction of cities in World War II. The latter conflict ended in the Pacific theater only when the United States dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities.
Military campaigns of nation states may have lasted a few weeks or months before the modern revolution in warfare, but the world wars went on for years. We have had major conflicts since 1945 in Korea and Vietnam that also went on for years with lesser casualty rates, and the nuclear bomb has not been used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The immense military power of the United States has made shorter and/or less devastating campaigns possible, as in Grenada and Panama.
Given the sinister and unpredictable nature of the North Korean regime, one does not contemplate war lightly. Back in June, 1950, when the North invaded the South, initial communist victories were overcome by a remarkable American landing at Inchon that drove the enemy back to the Yalu River, the border with China. But then hordes of Chinese troops, not all of them armed, streamed across the river, driving the UN forces back again, leading ultimately to a truce that has uneasily persisted since.
Certainly, North Korea deserves a shellacking, the ultimate consequence of which must be the destruction of its tyranny and reunification of the peninsula under a free government. Economic sanctions have been a means to that elusive end, and they can still work if — and only if — they are accompanied by a determination to resist any more useless negotiations. Negotiations presuppose a mutual concern for peace, but that is nonexistent on the North Korean side.
Despite its military posturing, which includes the firing of missiles and the building of nuclear reactors, North Korea is a failed state, which cannot abide economic or political freedom and its people are paying the price in poverty and despair. The country is more tightly controlled than Iran, which has an opposition within the country. But there is no reason to believe that the oppressed North Korean people have any love or loyalty for the regime.
At the very least, North Korea should a heavy price for every act of aggression it commits and should never be rewarded with economic aid or international prestige facilitated by negotiations engaged in by conflict-averse diplomats. We need more than a show of force in the region; we need to augment the 55,000-man force stationed there now and to monitor North Korea more closely.
Just as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared that our goal in the Second World War was the “unconditional surrender” of the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan), so should President Barack Obama declare that we seek the end of the North Korean regime by all means possible.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Richard Reeb taught political science, philosophy and journalism at Barstow College from 1970 to 2003. He is the author of “ Taking Journalism Seriously: ‘Objectivity’ as a Partisan Cause” (University Press of America, 1999). He can be contacted at rhreeb@verizon.net.
