Monday, September 11th., 2017
'There Will Be No New Korean War': What Putin Knows
That Western Pundits Don't
©
Sputnik/ Michael Klimentyev
At
the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok last
week, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed confidence that there
would not be another large-scale military conflict on the Korean
peninsula. Russian political observer Anatoly Wasserman explains what it
is that the Russian president knows that many observers don't.
Addressing participants of the forum on Thursday, Putin said he
believed all the parties involved in the standoff in the Korean
peninsula are likely to "have enough common sense and understanding that
they bear responsibility to the people in the region, and [that] we
could solve this problem by diplomatic means."
Putin also recalled
that in 2005, the parties to the conflict were on the verge of reaching
an agreement on Pyongyang's nuclear program. "Agreements were reached
under which North Korea assumed responsibility to curtail its nuclear
and missile programs. All other parties in this process promised
to contribute to this. But then, someone started demanding from North
Korea what it did not promise, and gradually the situation deteriorated
to the present state," he said.
"Factually," Wasserman suggested, "among all the potential parties in the conflict on the Korean peninsula, only one is known for its inadequacy. Specifically, it was the same one that the Russian president was referring to a few days earlier at a press conference following the BRICS summit, when he said that these were the people who would confuse Austria with Australia." In the case of the Koreas, the observer suggested that both of them are rational enough, "if only because the conflict that's developing today is just another stage of a confrontation that's been going on in the peninsula since the beginning of the 20th century, when Korea was first occupied and thoroughly genocided by Japan. Then, after Japan was expelled, there were those who sought to turn the territory…into their own strategic base, and who would use this base for another genocide of Korea."
Background note: During the Korean War of 1950-1953, the US Air Force dropped 635,000 tons of bombs, nearly 150,000 tons more than it had in the entire the Pacific Theater during World War II, on Korea. The Korean War caused over 3 million civilian casualties, the vast majority of them in the north.
The
analyst recalled that in the early period of the dispute over North
Korea's nuclear ambitions, "the United States promised Pyongyang that it
would help it resolve a number of serious energy problems by supplying
it with sufficient energy resources at world energy prices, and create
in the country a powerful nuclear energy complex using American
technology which would guarantee the inability to use this complex
for military purposes."
"Is there anyone now who's interested in war?" the commentator asked.
"I think not," he answered. "Theoretically, one can imagine that for a
part of the American establishment, this war could be deemed profitable
under the present circumstances, since President Trump won the election
thanks to his promise to return jobs to the country. And jobs began
leaving the US for South Korea long before than they started to leave
for China. Therefore, I cannot rule out the possibility that the
destruction of South Korea as a result of a war would be beneficial
to the US," or at least to those financial and industrial groups who may
look to rebuild the US industrial base at any cost.
"Like my South Korean counterpart, I am sure
that there will not be a large-scale conflict, especially one involving
the use of weapons of mass destruction," the Russian leader added.
©
AP Photo/ Ahn Young-joon
Analyzing the Russian president's remarks in an article
for RIA Novosti, Anatoly Wasserman took note of the fact that "first
of all, Putin diplomatically avoided naming this 'someone'. It's like in
the famous anecdote about a group of woodland critters including a fox
sitting down in the woods to play cards, one of them saying 'if someone
cheats, they'll get a slap in the face –their sneaky orange face.'"
"In the conflict we're discussing here, it's equally obvious just who
it was that may have demanded from North Korea something that Pyongyang
never promised," the political observer wrote."Factually," Wasserman suggested, "among all the potential parties in the conflict on the Korean peninsula, only one is known for its inadequacy. Specifically, it was the same one that the Russian president was referring to a few days earlier at a press conference following the BRICS summit, when he said that these were the people who would confuse Austria with Australia." In the case of the Koreas, the observer suggested that both of them are rational enough, "if only because the conflict that's developing today is just another stage of a confrontation that's been going on in the peninsula since the beginning of the 20th century, when Korea was first occupied and thoroughly genocided by Japan. Then, after Japan was expelled, there were those who sought to turn the territory…into their own strategic base, and who would use this base for another genocide of Korea."
Background note: During the Korean War of 1950-1953, the US Air Force dropped 635,000 tons of bombs, nearly 150,000 tons more than it had in the entire the Pacific Theater during World War II, on Korea. The Korean War caused over 3 million civilian casualties, the vast majority of them in the north.
©
AFP 2017/ KIM DOO-HO
A
South Korean JSA guard (front R) and North Korean guard (L) stand guard
opposite each other at the border of the truce village of Panmunjom in
the Demilitarized zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas. File photo.
"So far as I understand it, both Koreas
remember the genocides that were arranged for them perfectly well, and
do not have the slightest desire to allow anyone to repeat them,"
Wasserman wrote. Therefore, he added, "I am quite certain that among all
the participants of the conflict in the Korean peninsula, only the US
is capable of behaving inadequately and aggressively."
"Given
these circumstances, I believe that the behavior of the South Korean
president, which consists of a harmonious combination of a reminder
of the danger posed by North Korea's conduct, and promises to offer
Pyongyang a role in mutually beneficial economic projects, is the most
reasonable way forward," the observer noted.
"Because on the one hand, participation in such
projects significantly weakens interest in any aggressive behavior,
even though it does not completely eliminate it…And on the other hand,
extensive global experience shows that when a country has great economic
potential, it often also has the opportunity to build up its defense
potential quickly and, therefore, does not have to do so in advance and
spend a great deal of money doing so…For this reason, countries that are
economically developed, as a rule, appear less aggressive."
With these facts in mind, Wasserman noted that the strict
pro-diplomacy position "expressed by the South Korean and Russian
presidents at the Eastern Economic Forum is the most promising way
to resolve the conflict."
©
Sputnik/ Grigoriy Sisoev
Russian
President Vladimir Putin and President of South Korea Moon Jae-in,
left, during a joint press statement on the results of the meeting held
as part of the 3rd Eastern Economic Forum at the Far Eastern Federal
University, Russky Island. September 6, 2017
©
REUTERS/ Defense Ministry/Yonhap
"Pyongyang readily agreed to these proposals,"
Wasserman wrote. "But after that, Washington, quibbling over some small
issue, refused to fulfill their own promise. And thus North Korea was
forced to develop its own nuclear energy, giving it the opportunity
to continue its project to create nuclear weapons. So the US did not
simply demand from North Korea something that Pyongyang did not promise,
but also violated their own promises, and in a way that obviously led
to an aggravation of the situation."
Ultimately, Wasserman wrote that he could not exclude that the US may
have sought to deliberately aggravate the situation in the region,
"because without this they would risk losing the political reason
for the deployment of US troops in the Korean peninsula."
©
AP Photo/ Ahn Young-joon
U.S.
Air Force F-16 fighter jets wait to take off from a runway during a
military exercise at the Osan U.S. Air Base in Osan, South Korea
"But even in the US, those forces for which a
war in Korea would be unprofitable are even stronger. And the Russian
president, I think, is also aware of this," Wasserman concluded.