Published on March 24, 2016 by Pacific Daily News
By Kyle Daly
HIROSHIMA, Japan — Keiko Ogura, 78, remembers a bright light, a strong blast and being knocked to the ground.
On Aug. 6, 1945, Ogura was 8 years old.
“When I came to myself, it seemed like evening,” she said.
The city of Hiroshima, she recalled, was dark. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t hear.
When she did come to, the first sound she heard was that of her little brother, crying.
In the moments and days that followed, Ogura would witness the destruction, pain and death caused by a single bomb dropped from a U.S. military aircraft in the final days of World War II.
On Tuesday, Ogura led a group of foreign reporters on a tour through the city’s memorial park and museum built near the hypocenter of an atomic blast that leveled the city more than 70 years ago, resulting in the deaths of more than 100,000 on that day and the months that followed.
Next month, leaders from the Group of Seven, the world’s seven most industrialized nations, will come to Hiroshima for the G-7 Foreign Ministers Meeting — one of 10 ministerial meetings held prior to the G-7 Summit in May.
The summit, a gathering of world leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, will be held in Ise-Shima, a city almost 200 miles southwest of Tokyo.
According to media reports, the Asia-Pacific region is one topic of discussion expected to be on the summit’s agenda, including North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. U.S. bases in Guam and Japan have been threatened by North Korea in the past.
Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui on Tuesday said he hopes the political leaders that gather in his city will come to understand the “absolute evil” of nuclear weapons.
“We have to create a situation where the absolute evil will not be used as we resolve our problems,” Matsui told foreign press through an interpreter at the city’s administrative offices on Tuesday. “I hope they’ll have such a determination, and this determination should be communicated from this place — Hiroshima.”
Matsui called Hiroshima a “symbol of peace” — a holy site where people who visit can compare the tragic event of 1945 with how the city is today.
“Because of the action of humankind, the city was devastated 70 years ago,” he said. “But immediately after that, through the action of humankind, we have established this peaceful city.”
In 1982, then-Hiroshima Mayor Takeshi Araki began a program that called on city mayors around the world to advocate for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
The Mayors for Peace program, which has almost 7,000 member cities, plans to continue lobbying the United Nations to make this goal a reality. Its primary campaign calls for the total nuclear disarmament by 2020.
Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands is considered a member city, according to the program’s website.
Ogura, who is known as a hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivor, said the reality of a nuclear bomb’s effects is difficult to understand, but by coming to Hiroshima, world leaders can understand.
“Our dream is to have President Obama visit,” she said.
A sitting U.S. president has never visited Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial, where Ogura retold her story on Tuesday. In 2008, Nancy Pelosi, then-House Speaker, became the highest U.S. official to visit the site.
It’s currently unclear if President Obama will visit Hiroshima in May during the G-7 summit.
During her tour, Ogura pointed to the clear blue sky — gesturing past the eerie remains of the A-bomb dome, a building that survived the blast — and described the exact mid-air location where the bomb exploded. She also walked along a river, telling reporters about the dead bodies that were floating in the water following the bombing.
“I remember all night, the city was burning,” she said.
The bomb didn’t harm Ogura that day. That morning, her father, who had a “strange feeling” something bad might happen, told Ogura not to go to school. So the 8-year-old stayed home. The family’s house was located about a mile and a half from the bomb’s hypocenter.
After the blast, Ogura did receive “invisible scars” from the scenes she witnessed.
“A couple of victims died in front of me after drinking water from my hand,” she said. “So I blamed myself. ‘I’m a bad girl. I killed them,’ I thought.”
It was frowned upon to give water to people who had burns, she said, so she kept her actions a secret for years.
“And that became my trauma for a long time,” she said. “I suffered from very, very severe nightmares.”
To Ogura, those who need to learn about the horrors of such a destructive weapon are youths.
“The most important thing is that the younger people should know the reality of the nuclear weapon … and then lead the way.”
Editor’s note: Pacific Daily News was invited this week to join other foreign journalists in Hiroshima, Japan, for a press tour organized by the 2016 G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Hiroshima Support and Promotion Council, in partnership with the Foreign Press Center Japan, ahead of the foreign ministers meeting in April. PDN journalist and Content Coach Kyle Daly is reporting from Japan.
Showing posts with label North Korea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label North Korea. Show all posts
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Naval Base Tears Apart Korean Village
Published on Friday, August 19, 2011 by Foreign Policy in Focus
“The land and sea isn’t something you bought,” explained Kang Ae-Shim. “Why are you selling something that was there long before you were born?”
Kang Ae Shim is a haenyo, one of the legendary Korean women sea divers from Jeju Island who can hold their breath for up to two minutes while foraging the ocean floor for seafood. But today Kang and others are fighting to save their island from the pending construction of a South Korean naval base in Gangjeong village, which threatens to tear apart the age-old sisterhood of thehaenyo and destroy the pristine ecology of Jeju’s shores. The government and construction contractors are attempting to stamp out the outcry by arresting, beating, fining, and threatening villagers and activists.
In April, renowned South Korean film critic Yang Yoon Mo was arrested for erecting and living in a tent on the coast for years to impede construction. Yang subsequently went on hunger strike for 71 days, 57 of which were spent in prison. In May, Choi Sung-hee, an artist and peace activist living with the villagers, was arrested for demonstrating and standing in the way of cement trucks to prevent them from pouring concrete over lava rock along the coastline. In June, Gangjeong village chief Kang Dong-kyun and peace activist Song Kang-ho confronted a large Samsung construction vessel in a small tugboat. When Song attempted to board the vessel, he was beaten and thrown back into the tugboat.
In July, I traveled to Gangjeong to witness the courageous fishing and farming community fight to keep their beautiful coastline from becoming the site of a naval base.
During my five days there I interviewed the villagers, including farmers, haenyo, and the village chief, as well as others from Jeju Island supporting the resistance. I learned three things: the process that led to Gangjeong becoming the base site was grossly undemocratic; the community fabric is being torn apart; and the Korean War is still playing out in this struggle on Jeju Island.
The Wall
The morning after my nighttime arrival, I was stunned to see an approximately 30-foot tall fence surrounding the massive area of the proposed base. According to the villagers, the navy seized 160,000 pyong or 130 acres of farmland — equivalent to 169 football fields — from the port to the river. Inside the fenced-in area are remnants of greenhouses, torn-up farmland, huge cement planks, and abandoned tractors and other large machinery. The farm road to the coastline where the anti-base resistance has established a camp is bordered by amazingly rich and fertile soil, which during the Japanese occupation was allegedly the only soil on the volcanic island that could grow rice.
But the base’s impact isn’t limited to land. Off the coast of Jeju is the absolutely stunning Tiger Island and its sparkling surrounding waters, a UNESCO ecological reserve. According to Koh Yoo-Ki, an environmental policy analyst from Jeju, the planned naval base construction would destroy 98 acres of ocean floor inhabited by soft coral reef and nine endangered species.
The Jeju Island government had designated the coastline as a preservation area in 1991, but in December of 2009 then-Jeju Governor Kim Tae Hwan nullified the 1991 designation to make way for the naval base. “I cannot understand how there was five different protections for this area,” says Koh. “Before this naval base project, the state invested tons of money to preserve this area. Scholars used to come from the mainland to research corals. Now all of this has been undone.”
Undemocratic Process
According to an August 7 letter to the editor in The New York Times, the South Korean embassy in Washington wrote, “The construction site was selected after accommodating opinions of local residents in a legitimate process, including town hall meetings.” The villagers say it was far from legitimate, democratic, or just.
On April 24, 2007, former village chief Yoon Tae Jun announced his approval of the planned base and said that an application to the Jeju governor, would be made. Typically a meeting to discuss similar civic action is held after a one-week waiting period, but this time it was scheduled for only three days later. On April 26, only 87 of the 1,050 Gangjeong residents – less than 10 percent – were present. Approximately half of those present were elderlyhaenyo, which according to Gangjeong farmer Jung Young-hee was strange since these women rarely, if ever, participated in village committee meetings. In an unprecedented manner, a vote to endorse the base was held by clapping. Never before in Gangjeong history had a vote been conducted this way. Yoon said he would hold another village committee meeting within 10 days and promised that if more people opposed the base, he would revoke his approval. But he never followed through.
On May 14, Jeju governor Kim Tae Hwan announced that Gangjeong village would be the site. The outraged villagers mobilized, forced the village chief out of power, and held a referendum on the proposed base in August 2007. According to Gangjeong village chief Kang Dong-Kyun, “On Aug 20 we held another referendum. 94 percent opposed the base. 725 people participated. 680 voted against, only 36 for, and nine votes were defective. The central government only recognized the first vote by the villagers committee; the second one wasn’t recognized.”
In January 2009, the Ministry of Defense approved the construction plan, and in April Gangjeong village filed a lawsuit in response, arguing that the nullification of the preservation area should be recalled, which the judge denied. The villagers appealed, and the case is now pending in the Supreme Court. A decision is likely due sometime this winter.
Bribing the Elderly
According to a 65-year-old haenyo from Gangjeong who opposes the base, the former village chief Yoon and a representative from the fishermen’s cooperative convened a meeting ofhaenyo before the April vote, and claimed they would be compensated if they supported the base project. When I asked her why she thought the haenyo supported the base, she said, “If there was no money, they would all protest the base.”
She went on to describe a deliberate effort by government and naval officials to bribe severalhaenyo. She said that the gentlemen were waiting to take the elderly haenyo out for meals after they had just returned from diving for several hours. The men told the haenyo that the navy would build a hospital for the elder haenyo. her husband chimed in, “These elderly women didn’t know. [The Navy] used money to lure them. This is unethical and wrong to take advantage of them.”
Before Gangjeong was selected as the designated naval site, the Korean authorities approached two other villages –Hwasoon and Wimi –as early as 2002, but the residents, largely haenyo and fishermen who militantly opposed the base, blocked the initiative.
By round three, the Navy had become more sophisticated. “With the experience they had, the government went after the haenyo first in Gangjeong,” explains Lee Kyung-Sun, the general secretary of the Jeju Women’s Association. “They were cowardly for going after them,” says Lee, who insists that the haenyo should not be blamed if they supported the base, and that the focus ought to be on the government’s tactics. “Haenyo are victims too. They were tricked,” she said. “I still respect the haenyo. They have supported their family and the village, and they have preserved this area.”
Community Torn Apart
The row over the naval base has cleaved the community of Gangjeong haenyo who have worked together for over 40 years into two opposing groups. The 65-year-old haenyo from Gangjeong says that a few haenyo in opposition to the base refuse to enter the water with base supporters. “Now there is no conversation between the two groups,” she laments.
Kang Ae-Shim, a 56-year old haenyo from the neighboring village of Bopan explained, “The money that the haenyo was given is what you can make in one year.” She described how thehaenyo from Gangjeong and Bopan physically fought in the water — the very same women who for years ate dinner and sang together at noraebang (karaoke). But the Gangjeong base decision changed that dynamic. The haenyo from Gangjeong “don’t have much to say because they are ashamed,” says Kang. There is a saying that it’s better to go into the ocean rather than go to one’s own mother’s home to borrow money. “All the things that come from the ocean, the abalone, the snails — these are not just a matter of life, they are medicine that strengthens the life spirit.” Kang argues that pollution from the naval base will threaten the haenyo’s livelihood.
Gangjeong villagers told me of a recent survey revealing that 50 percent of haenyo were suicidal and 70 percent are extremely psychologically stressed. Hyun Ae-Ja, the former Jeju representative to the National Assembly who has chained herself to a tree blocking police and construction trucks from entering the farm road believes that “ultimately the Jeju naval base will bring the destruction of the community and life.”
The Never-ending Korean War
The unresolved Korean War has served as justification for the continued militarism of the Korean peninsula, including the build-up of nuclear weapons in North Korea, massive military spending on both sides of the DMZ, intensified U.S.-ROK military exercises, and the expansion of military bases, like the one under construction on Jeju. The irony here is that South Korea is forcibly destroying the livelihoods of farmers, fishermen, women sea divers, and the rich marine ecosystems –on which we all depend for our human security –in the name of “national security.”
According to the South Korean embassy, “The Jeju base was built solely for the defense of the Republic of Korea and has no connections to American military installations. There are no plans to use the base for American missile defense, nor have Korea and the United States had any discussion regarding this issue.”
But many defense analysts challenge this claim. According to the Monterey Institute’s arm control specialist Jeffrey Lewis in article in The New York Times, “the new Aegis destroyers to be based in Jeju would help defend South Korea against Chinese missiles and help defend Japan against missiles from both China and North Korea, [but they] “won’t provide much defense for South Korea against North Korean missiles… Very few North Korean missiles would rise high enough on their way toward South Korea to give South Korean destroyers a shot.” Also in a rejoinder to the Embassy’s New York Times letter, Matt Hoey, a missile defense analyst at the Military Space Transparency Project, argues, “The Aegis sea-based missile defense system planned for Jeju is networked to United States space systems and ground-based X-band radar.”
Furthermore, earlier this spring, when I and several other Americans called the Korean Embassy in Washington to register our concerns, we all received similar versions of the same prepared response, “Don’t call us; call the U.S. State or Defense Departments; they are the ones who are pressuring us to build this base.” And it’s not just ordinary Americans who have been told that the United States is involved with the Jeju base. Even former U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings wrote in a June 15, 2011 op-ed in the Huffington Post that the Obama administration is “establishing a naval base with South Korea on Jeju Island.”
At a time of severe economic recession, the global community can no longer afford to spend billions of dollars daily on a misguided notion of military security that only increases the threat of military action, loss of human life, environmental contamination, and the loss of precious biodiversity.
Under Siege
On the morning we departed the mayor of Seogwipo announced that the police could seal off access to the public agricultural road to the coastline, blocking off primary access to anti-base protesters. National Defense Minister Cho Hyun-oh promised Jeju’s police commissioner as many resources as was needed to remove the base resistance camp. Police and undercover vans now monitor the three entrances to the base site 24 hours a day.
Since I left Gangjeong there has been an intense stand-off. Hundreds of police attempted to come through the farm road where several women chained themselves to trees to block their access. Thanks to the increasing pressure by civil society on the South Korean government to release the villagers and activists from prison, all have now been released, including the artist and activist Choi Sung-hee.
But as the global community’s awareness of the issue rises, so has Seoul’s crackdown on the peaceful protestors. On August 15th a reported 700 riot police from the mainland landed on Jeju with three water cannons, 16 large buses, and 10 riot control vehicles. Nevertheless, the villagers and activists have remained courageous and resolved to resist through nonviolent disobedience for their village, land, and sea. We must not relent as long as the villagers don’t.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
The Son Also Rises
Next week, according to North Korea-watchers, the Korean Workers' Party (i.e. the Communists) will hold an assembly in Pyongyang to anoint Kim Jong-un, the youngest son of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, as the successor to his father and grandfather. There is already a song, "Footsteps", that praises the young man's qualities as a leader, and lapel badges with his image are already being churned out so that every North Korean citizen can wear one.
Egypt is not quite so weird, in the sense that the three generals who have ruled the country for the past 54 years were not actually blood relations, but it is getting weirder. It is universally believed that President Hosni Mubarak, now 82, is grooming his 46-year-old son Gamal as his successor. There were public protests about that in Cairo and Alexandria last week, though the police soon broke them up with the usual arrests and violence.
But where does this all come from? How can anybody believe that none of the 85 million Egyptians is better suited to be president than the son of the present incumbent, or that the "Young General", Kim Jong-un, is the only one of North Korea's 24 million people who is qualified to rule the country?
In fact, nobody does believe it, and neither of these men has a powerful personal following of his own. Moreover, these countries are republics, not monarchies. They may be dictatorial, repressive republics, but the whole notion of dynasties is alien to republics of any sort. So how can this sort of thing happen?
In monarchies, the son is SUPPOSED to inherit power from his father. In modern monarchies, they don't usually get much power anyway, since the job is largely ceremonial, but at least there is a theoretical basis for passing power down in this way. In a republic, on the other hand, there is just no room for the hereditary principle in politics.
Power does pass down within families in democratic republics from time to time, as with the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in India and the Bush family in the United States, but only if the would-be successor can win a real election. What's happening in authoritarian republics like Egypt and North Korea is quite different - and neither the father nor the son may be the prime mover behind the choice of the latter as successor.
The first modern case of an inherited dictatorship was Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his father Hafez as the president of Syria in 2000. The way he got chosen is quite instructive.
Hafez al-Assad was a former air force general who had ruled Syria with an iron fist for thirty years. He did want to keep power within the family, but it was his older son Basil whom he was grooming to succeed him. However, Basil died in a car accident in 1994, and Bashar (who was studying ophthalmology in London at the time) was ordered back to Syria by his father and put into an intensive program of military and political training.
When his father died six years later, Bashar, at the age of 35, was swiftly chosen to succeed him - but how did that happen? Hafiz al-Assad had wanted it to happen, but he was now dead. Why did all the other major players in the Syrian regime, a notoriously ambitious and ruthless group of men, agree to make this inexperienced nobody their leader?
Because they wanted to preserve their own privileges and power, and that could best be guaranteed by letting the old dictator's son take power. In a one-party regime, there are no real rules for the succession, and the risk that a struggle between rivals for the leadership will destroy the unity of the party and bring the whole regime down is ever-present.
Unless the son of the late leader is a murderous megalomaniac, he is the safest choice no matter how poor his qualifications are for the job. He can lead in name while the real decisions are made elsewhere, and all the powerful people within the regime get to keep their accustomed places at the trough.
That is the logic that brought Bashar al-Assad to power in Syria ten years ago, and it is what creates support within the North Korean and Egyptian regimes today for the elevation of the current dictators' sons to supreme power after their fathers die. It really doesn't matter who is up on the reviewing stand taking the salute, as long as the thousand most powerful people in the regime keep their jobs.
So Kim Jong-un (now 27 years old) will be acclaimed as the next leader of North Korea by the Party congress - and will probably take up the job quite soon, since his father had a stroke two years ago and is now very frail. Gamal Mubarak will run for president in next year's "election" in Egypt, and will win because the regime always fixes the elections. But despite the extraordinary durability of these regimes, they are not indestructible.
If you can credibly say about some situation that "it cannot go on like this forever," then the only logical alternative is that it will eventually stop. Just not right now.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Guam: An Ace up PACOM's Sleeve
Guam: An Ace Up PACOM's Sleeve
Guam News Factor
News Analysis
Written by Michael Rudolph, Guam News Factor Writer
Monday, 19 October 2009 15:59
Retiring Admiral: ‘I came in optimistic, I leave optimistic'
By Michael Rudolph
GUAM - In an interview with retiring PACOM commander Adm. Timothy Keating, the Honolulu Advertiser noted Guam's growing strategic significance in the region. And as this U.S. Territory's military buildup looms closer, its pivotal power in the Pacific can can only be underscored in the light of PACOM's Vision Statement:
"U.S. Pacific Command will be an engaged and trusted partner committed to preserving the security, stability, and freedom upon which enduring prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region depends. (According to USPACOM Strategy )
Guam's strategic importance has gained momentum as a result of the newly empowered Democratic Party of Japan's continued opposition to the relocation of a Marine Corps air base within Okinawa and other aspects of US-Japan bilateral defense agreements. The overall role Japan will play in PACOM's strategy is uncertain; Keating explains to the Advertiser that "we will be very interested in whatever security arrangement they choose."
The Advertiser goes on to comment on a shift in U.S. military activity in South Korea: "the U.S. is assembling a large majority of its troops in a base complex south of Seoul where they will form an expeditionary force that can deploy elsewhere in Asia. South Koreans will take complete responsibility for their own defense against North Korea." Keating's response was, "this affords us the flexibility to use those forces...in ways that we had not been able to use them in times past."
With Guam's military buildup gaining traction, the concentration of U.S. military in South Korea and the nuclear powered super carrier USS George Washington's recent replacement of the 48 year old USS Kitty Hawk, Keating said "we are as ready now as we were the day I walked in."
The retiring admiral was sure to clear up notions that have been flying around that American power in the Pacific region is on a decline. The fact that 30,000 of PACOM's 300,000 military personnel are assigned in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Indian Ocean has not affected its readiness, according to Keating. Keating concluded the interview with this closing statement about PACOM's capabilities and intentions: "I came in optimistic, I leave optimistic."
Guam News Factor
News Analysis
Written by Michael Rudolph, Guam News Factor Writer
Monday, 19 October 2009 15:59
Retiring Admiral: ‘I came in optimistic, I leave optimistic'
By Michael Rudolph
GUAM - In an interview with retiring PACOM commander Adm. Timothy Keating, the Honolulu Advertiser noted Guam's growing strategic significance in the region. And as this U.S. Territory's military buildup looms closer, its pivotal power in the Pacific can can only be underscored in the light of PACOM's Vision Statement:
"U.S. Pacific Command will be an engaged and trusted partner committed to preserving the security, stability, and freedom upon which enduring prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region depends. (According to USPACOM Strategy )
Guam's strategic importance has gained momentum as a result of the newly empowered Democratic Party of Japan's continued opposition to the relocation of a Marine Corps air base within Okinawa and other aspects of US-Japan bilateral defense agreements. The overall role Japan will play in PACOM's strategy is uncertain; Keating explains to the Advertiser that "we will be very interested in whatever security arrangement they choose."
The Advertiser goes on to comment on a shift in U.S. military activity in South Korea: "the U.S. is assembling a large majority of its troops in a base complex south of Seoul where they will form an expeditionary force that can deploy elsewhere in Asia. South Koreans will take complete responsibility for their own defense against North Korea." Keating's response was, "this affords us the flexibility to use those forces...in ways that we had not been able to use them in times past."
With Guam's military buildup gaining traction, the concentration of U.S. military in South Korea and the nuclear powered super carrier USS George Washington's recent replacement of the 48 year old USS Kitty Hawk, Keating said "we are as ready now as we were the day I walked in."
The retiring admiral was sure to clear up notions that have been flying around that American power in the Pacific region is on a decline. The fact that 30,000 of PACOM's 300,000 military personnel are assigned in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Indian Ocean has not affected its readiness, according to Keating. Keating concluded the interview with this closing statement about PACOM's capabilities and intentions: "I came in optimistic, I leave optimistic."
Saturday, July 18, 2009
DPJ May Seek Funding Cut for Troop Realignment
Japan’s Opposition Would Push U.S. to Renegotiate Troop Move
By Sachiko Sakamaki and Takashi Hirokawa
July 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Democratic Party of Japan will seek to cut the estimated $10.3 billion cost for transferring 8,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam by 2014 should it win next month’s elections, the party’s shadow defense chief said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone signed an agreement in February for Japan to provide $6.09 billion for the move and infrastructure. The costs include a projected $700,000 per housing unit for the troops, which is too much, DPJ legislator Keiichiro Asao said.
“Given the fact that the land is free, $700,000 is too expensive,” Asao, 45, said in a July 15 interview in his Tokyo office. “We’re ready to pay and aren’t calling for lowering the quality. But we cannot convince taxpayers unless we examine the grounds of such an estimation and cut what we can cut.”
Polls show the DPJ is poised to unseat Prime Minister Taro Aso and his Liberal Democratic Party in parliamentary elections on Aug. 30. The LDP has governed almost without interruption since 1955, with foreign policy centered around a U.S. security treaty that keeps 50,000 American troops stationed in Japan. DPJ leaders have called for a less subordinate alliance.
While echoing the call for “equal” ties, Asao said any concerns that a DPJ government would alter the fundamental relationship with the U.S. were misguided.
“We’re not going to be making major policy changes,” he said. The Japan-U.S. alliance “will be fine.”
Ending Refueling Mission
His party has opposed dispatching Japanese naval refueling vessels to the Indian Ocean to help the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and will end it once in office, Asao said.
“We’ll stop the refueling mission,” he said. “There won’t be much of an impact because the amount of fuel Japan is providing is decreasing.”
Aso has made the DPJ’s opposition to Japanese military missions overseas a campaign issue. He criticized former opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa’s suggestion that the U.S. should eventually reduce its forces in Japan, saying it would weaken the country.
Asked who they would support in next month’s election, 37.4 percent of voters favored the DPJ compared with 19.5 percent for the LDP, according to a Jiji News survey published yesterday. Aso’s support rate fell to 16.3 percent from 24.1 percent last month, according to the survey, which didn’t provide a margin of error.
The DPJ will submit a bill to enable Japan to inspect North Korean ships suspected of carrying nuclear-related goods to implement a U.N. resolution against North Korea once the party takes power. A similar bill introduce by the LDP, which cleared the Diet’s lower house, is likely to die because the DPJ- controlled upper house stopped any debate after Aso on July 13 said he would dissolve parliament next week.
By Sachiko Sakamaki and Takashi Hirokawa
July 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Democratic Party of Japan will seek to cut the estimated $10.3 billion cost for transferring 8,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam by 2014 should it win next month’s elections, the party’s shadow defense chief said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone signed an agreement in February for Japan to provide $6.09 billion for the move and infrastructure. The costs include a projected $700,000 per housing unit for the troops, which is too much, DPJ legislator Keiichiro Asao said.
“Given the fact that the land is free, $700,000 is too expensive,” Asao, 45, said in a July 15 interview in his Tokyo office. “We’re ready to pay and aren’t calling for lowering the quality. But we cannot convince taxpayers unless we examine the grounds of such an estimation and cut what we can cut.”
Polls show the DPJ is poised to unseat Prime Minister Taro Aso and his Liberal Democratic Party in parliamentary elections on Aug. 30. The LDP has governed almost without interruption since 1955, with foreign policy centered around a U.S. security treaty that keeps 50,000 American troops stationed in Japan. DPJ leaders have called for a less subordinate alliance.
While echoing the call for “equal” ties, Asao said any concerns that a DPJ government would alter the fundamental relationship with the U.S. were misguided.
“We’re not going to be making major policy changes,” he said. The Japan-U.S. alliance “will be fine.”
Ending Refueling Mission
His party has opposed dispatching Japanese naval refueling vessels to the Indian Ocean to help the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and will end it once in office, Asao said.
“We’ll stop the refueling mission,” he said. “There won’t be much of an impact because the amount of fuel Japan is providing is decreasing.”
Aso has made the DPJ’s opposition to Japanese military missions overseas a campaign issue. He criticized former opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa’s suggestion that the U.S. should eventually reduce its forces in Japan, saying it would weaken the country.
Asked who they would support in next month’s election, 37.4 percent of voters favored the DPJ compared with 19.5 percent for the LDP, according to a Jiji News survey published yesterday. Aso’s support rate fell to 16.3 percent from 24.1 percent last month, according to the survey, which didn’t provide a margin of error.
The DPJ will submit a bill to enable Japan to inspect North Korean ships suspected of carrying nuclear-related goods to implement a U.N. resolution against North Korea once the party takes power. A similar bill introduce by the LDP, which cleared the Diet’s lower house, is likely to die because the DPJ- controlled upper house stopped any debate after Aso on July 13 said he would dissolve parliament next week.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Gates Stops Over on Guam, No Korea Troop Buildup
Gates stops over on Guam, says no troop buildup in Korea
Sunday, 31 May 2009 23:25 by LARA JAKES The Associated Press
The Marianas Variety
(AAFB) -- While worrisome, North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests have not reached a crisis level that would warrant additional U.S. troops in the region, U.Dr. Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense | Photo courtesy of ww.defenselink.mil
S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.
Gates, flying to Singapore to meet with Asian defense ministers, said he has not seen any moves by North Korea’s military that would prompt the United States to add to the roughly 28,000 troops already in South Korea. He said any military actions would need to be decided upon, and carried out, by broad international agreement.
“I don’t think that anybody in the (Obama) administration thinks there is a crisis,” Gates told reporters aboard his military jet early Friday morning, still Thursday night in Washington.
“What we do have, though, are two new developments that are very provocative, that are aggressive, accompanied by very aggressive rhetoric,” he said. “And I think it brings home the reality of the challenge that North Korea poses to the region and to the international community.”
Gates appeared to try to tamp down some of the tough rhetoric that has flown between Washington and Pyongyang this week, since North Korea said it successfully detonated a nuclear device in its northeast on Monday and followed with a series of short-range missile launches.
Gates also cited a silver lining of the situation: an opportunity to build stronger ties with the Chinese government.
“Just based on what the Chinese government has said publicly, they're clearly pretty unhappy about the nuclear test in particular, and they weren't very happy about the missile test either,” Gates said. “And my impression is they were surprised by the nuclear test. And so, as I say, I think there may be some opportunities here.”
He added: “I don’t want to put the burden solely on China, because the reality is that while China has more influence than anybody else on North Korea, I believe that that influence has its limits.
But it is important for the Chinese to be a part of any effort to try to deal with these issues with North Korea.”
Gates suggested that diplomatic talks among six countries -- Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and the U.S. -- to get rid of all nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula have not worked. He said that while the discussions should continue, the nations other than North Korea now need to focus on what he described as “where do we go from here?”
“I think that they clearly have not had the impact in North Korea that any of us have wanted,” Gates said of the talks. “That doesn’t mean they are useless by any means, and we are still committed to the six-party talks. But I think that we need to figure out a way to try and move forward with North Korea.”
Gates said direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea are, for now, at least, “not the way to go.”
In what the Pentagon called a first for a U.S. defense chief, Gates was to meet with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts at the two-day Singapore conference. He also was to meet briefly with the head of China's military.
Gates said North Korea would likely dominate the Singapore discussions and hinted that additional economic or military sanctions might be put on Pyongyang as punishment for the tests. But he said that any sanctions should impact the communist government and not its citizens, whom he said have already suffered “enough damage” by their leaders.
He cited North Korean exports of missile and nuclear technology as a top worry, and said the United Nations, and Russia and China in particular, need to be part of any efforts to curb them.
Sunday, 31 May 2009 23:25 by LARA JAKES The Associated Press
The Marianas Variety
(AAFB) -- While worrisome, North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests have not reached a crisis level that would warrant additional U.S. troops in the region, U.Dr. Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense | Photo courtesy of ww.defenselink.mil
S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.
Gates, flying to Singapore to meet with Asian defense ministers, said he has not seen any moves by North Korea’s military that would prompt the United States to add to the roughly 28,000 troops already in South Korea. He said any military actions would need to be decided upon, and carried out, by broad international agreement.
“I don’t think that anybody in the (Obama) administration thinks there is a crisis,” Gates told reporters aboard his military jet early Friday morning, still Thursday night in Washington.
“What we do have, though, are two new developments that are very provocative, that are aggressive, accompanied by very aggressive rhetoric,” he said. “And I think it brings home the reality of the challenge that North Korea poses to the region and to the international community.”
Gates appeared to try to tamp down some of the tough rhetoric that has flown between Washington and Pyongyang this week, since North Korea said it successfully detonated a nuclear device in its northeast on Monday and followed with a series of short-range missile launches.
Gates also cited a silver lining of the situation: an opportunity to build stronger ties with the Chinese government.
“Just based on what the Chinese government has said publicly, they're clearly pretty unhappy about the nuclear test in particular, and they weren't very happy about the missile test either,” Gates said. “And my impression is they were surprised by the nuclear test. And so, as I say, I think there may be some opportunities here.”
He added: “I don’t want to put the burden solely on China, because the reality is that while China has more influence than anybody else on North Korea, I believe that that influence has its limits.
But it is important for the Chinese to be a part of any effort to try to deal with these issues with North Korea.”
Gates suggested that diplomatic talks among six countries -- Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and the U.S. -- to get rid of all nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula have not worked. He said that while the discussions should continue, the nations other than North Korea now need to focus on what he described as “where do we go from here?”
“I think that they clearly have not had the impact in North Korea that any of us have wanted,” Gates said of the talks. “That doesn’t mean they are useless by any means, and we are still committed to the six-party talks. But I think that we need to figure out a way to try and move forward with North Korea.”
Gates said direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea are, for now, at least, “not the way to go.”
In what the Pentagon called a first for a U.S. defense chief, Gates was to meet with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts at the two-day Singapore conference. He also was to meet briefly with the head of China's military.
Gates said North Korea would likely dominate the Singapore discussions and hinted that additional economic or military sanctions might be put on Pyongyang as punishment for the tests. But he said that any sanctions should impact the communist government and not its citizens, whom he said have already suffered “enough damage” by their leaders.
He cited North Korean exports of missile and nuclear technology as a top worry, and said the United Nations, and Russia and China in particular, need to be part of any efforts to curb them.
Monday, May 07, 2007
North Korea and Guam
Pacific, Korean Commanders Declare ''Overmatch''
Mar 8, 2007
By Michael Bruno/Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
The four-star chiefs of the U.S. Pacific and Korea combatant commands declared March 7 that the United States and its allies enjoy an overwhelming "overmatch" of naval and air forces in the region against any challenger, but the Korea commander noted concern with longer-term supplies of air-delivered munitions.
U.S. Navy Adm. William Fallon, head of Pacific Command, and U.S. Army Gen. Burwell Bell, the military commander in South Korea, told the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) that they are not in immediate need of additional weapons, systems or other so-called unfunded priorities.
They also maintained that U.S. commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan operations, particularly ground forces, do not impede their abilities to respond to potential incidents with China, North Korea or other regional contingencies. The United States would lead with its Navy and Air Force, as well as the South Korean army there.
Moreover, despite being given plenty of opportunity to state otherwise, Fallon, who shortly will take over Central Command in the Middle East, also told lawmakers that proposed or potential delays to acquisitions like the Joint Strike Fighter, shipbuilding or other long-term programs do not concern him now as long as investments are kept up so those platforms and systems could be accelerated and expanded if need be.
"We weigh off risks," the admiral said. "You make these tradeoffs."
He also highlighted ongoing positive developments such as X-band and Aegis radars for missile defense, as well as the recently ordered deployment of a dozen F-22 Raptors to Kadena Air Base, Japan (DAILY, Feb. 28).
Nevertheless, under pointed questioning from Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), a retired vice admiral who unseated former HASC vice chair Curt Weldon (R) last November, Bell acknowledged that if a conflict with North Korea extended from days to weeks, he would ask for more strike munitions from U.S. inventories. Ideally, Korean and domestic inventories would be boosted before then anyway, he said.
Overall, U.S. air power apparently would play a major role in such an engagement, according to their dialogue during the hearing. North Korea watches Guam-to-South Korea B-52 exercises closely. While Bell is not too worried about North Korean air forces, whose flight hours and capabilities pale in comparison to U.S. aircraft, he is "very concerned" about roughly 80,000 North Korean special forces personnel who likely would be seeded throughout South Korea via aircraft and other means.
Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), HASC seapower and expeditionary forces chairman, also pressed Bell on Humvees in his area of responsibility. Taylor is convinced all U.S. branches should replace every Humvee with Mine Resistant Ambush Protection (MRAP) vehicles, as the Marine Corps plans to do starting in Iraq. The general responded that while "soft-skinned" Humvees would not be his first choice in a Korean conflict, officials do not anticipate the same problem with roadside bombs that plague U.S. forces elsewhere.
The Senate Armed Services Committee on March 8 will hear from Adm. Timothy Keating, to be the new Pacific commander, as well as Air Force Lt. Gen. Victor Renuart Jr., who will follow Keating as head of Northern Command.
Mar 8, 2007
By Michael Bruno/Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
The four-star chiefs of the U.S. Pacific and Korea combatant commands declared March 7 that the United States and its allies enjoy an overwhelming "overmatch" of naval and air forces in the region against any challenger, but the Korea commander noted concern with longer-term supplies of air-delivered munitions.
U.S. Navy Adm. William Fallon, head of Pacific Command, and U.S. Army Gen. Burwell Bell, the military commander in South Korea, told the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) that they are not in immediate need of additional weapons, systems or other so-called unfunded priorities.
They also maintained that U.S. commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan operations, particularly ground forces, do not impede their abilities to respond to potential incidents with China, North Korea or other regional contingencies. The United States would lead with its Navy and Air Force, as well as the South Korean army there.
Moreover, despite being given plenty of opportunity to state otherwise, Fallon, who shortly will take over Central Command in the Middle East, also told lawmakers that proposed or potential delays to acquisitions like the Joint Strike Fighter, shipbuilding or other long-term programs do not concern him now as long as investments are kept up so those platforms and systems could be accelerated and expanded if need be.
"We weigh off risks," the admiral said. "You make these tradeoffs."
He also highlighted ongoing positive developments such as X-band and Aegis radars for missile defense, as well as the recently ordered deployment of a dozen F-22 Raptors to Kadena Air Base, Japan (DAILY, Feb. 28).
Nevertheless, under pointed questioning from Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), a retired vice admiral who unseated former HASC vice chair Curt Weldon (R) last November, Bell acknowledged that if a conflict with North Korea extended from days to weeks, he would ask for more strike munitions from U.S. inventories. Ideally, Korean and domestic inventories would be boosted before then anyway, he said.
Overall, U.S. air power apparently would play a major role in such an engagement, according to their dialogue during the hearing. North Korea watches Guam-to-South Korea B-52 exercises closely. While Bell is not too worried about North Korean air forces, whose flight hours and capabilities pale in comparison to U.S. aircraft, he is "very concerned" about roughly 80,000 North Korean special forces personnel who likely would be seeded throughout South Korea via aircraft and other means.
Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), HASC seapower and expeditionary forces chairman, also pressed Bell on Humvees in his area of responsibility. Taylor is convinced all U.S. branches should replace every Humvee with Mine Resistant Ambush Protection (MRAP) vehicles, as the Marine Corps plans to do starting in Iraq. The general responded that while "soft-skinned" Humvees would not be his first choice in a Korean conflict, officials do not anticipate the same problem with roadside bombs that plague U.S. forces elsewhere.
The Senate Armed Services Committee on March 8 will hear from Adm. Timothy Keating, to be the new Pacific commander, as well as Air Force Lt. Gen. Victor Renuart Jr., who will follow Keating as head of Northern Command.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Military Power vs. People Power in Asia
FPIF Policy Report
People Power vs. Military Power in East Asia
John Feffer, IRC February 13, 2007
Editor: Chuck Hosking
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3990
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
People power does not just trouble the sleep of dictators. It can also introduce an element of unpredictability and uncertainty into the security debate in pluralist societies. People, to put it bluntly, can be a problem for the military because civilians frequently come between a military and its objectives.
"In the short term, making governments more accountable to people introduces new uncertainties and limits into diplomacy," Kent Caldor has written about Northeast Asia. Calder's point was that transitional democracies are not ready to open national security to public debate. But the people power quandary perhaps even more profoundly affects Washington. Other nation's democracies sound good on paper and in principle but are risky business in practice. Having frequently forged comfortable military relationships with reliably authoritarian
administrations such as Park Chung Hee's in South Korea, Chiang Kai-shek's in Taiwan, the United States has recently discovered that democratic movements in East Asia can pose an unpredictable and worrisome challenge to U.S. security objectives. Indeed, the transformation of U.S. doctrine and force posture in East Asia results not just from technological changes and the identification of new threats but also from the impact of democratic movements within the countries of our allies.
At the same time, people power influences decision-making in dictatorships. In North Korea, for instance, citizens do not communicate their views in any meaningful way through elections. Yet they are still actors in an important political sense. The leadership in Pyongyang relies on people power - not in the sense of an anti-government movement but as an expression of nationalist sentiment - to achieve some measure of legitimacy for its policies. In this sense, people power and democracy are not interchangeable concepts.
In short, people power is viewed neither wholly negatively by putatively totalitarian regimes nor wholly positively by putatively democratic regimes. The notion that democracy and military security mutually reinforce one another both underestimates the staying power of systems like North Korea and China where democracy is anemic and overestimates the strength of military alliances between more robustly democratic states. This misreading of the relationship between people power and military power significantly distorts the understanding of three major shifts in security doctrine in the United States, North Korea, and South Korea. Conventionally interpreted as responses to geopolitical realities
and technological advances, these transformations in thinking also strongly reflect the influence of the grassroots.
The failure to connect people power to these evolving shifts in doctrine has profound policy implications for the United States. By misjudging popular support for hard-line stances in authoritarian states and by glossing over grassroots challenges to U.S. security strategies in more democratic countries, Washington continues to risk clashing with its regional adversaries and, ultimately, losing influence with its regional allies.
Strategic Flexibility
According to conventional wisdom, the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and the development of the concept of "strategic flexibility" were chiefly responses to advances in technology (primarily computers and communications) and the application of market principles to military management. The end of the Cold War, the subsequent attacks of September 11, and an altered security environment further accelerated these shifts in doctrine and force structure. The latest war-fighting gurus view fixed military bases with lumbering tanks and static defenses as comparatively low-tech and incapable of addressing rapidly emerging
conflicts and threats. U.S. forces, they argue, should be flexible enough to respond to North Korean missiles, Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia, or a cross-straits confrontation in Taiwan.
But a case can be made that the RMA and strategic flexibility are also responses to NIMBY (not in my back yard) and democratic movements. Fixed bases were an easy target, not only for the enemy but also for popular discontent, starting in the Philippines and spreading to Okinawa, Tokyo, and Seoul (not to mention other parts of the world such as Vieques). The U.S. security umbrella was generally popular among allied leaders, but the actual U.S. security footprint was another matter.
In the Republic of Korea (ROK), popular anger against U.S. forces came to world attention in 2002, when tens of thousands of South Korean citizens demonstrated in the streets after the deaths of two schoolchildren run over by U.S. military armored vehicles. But this was not the first time that popular movements tried to effect change in the U.S.-ROK alliance. Earlier there were protests over the Status of Forces Agreement. Adding its voice, the "Reclaiming Our Land" movement targeted U.S. bases, as did organizing around prostitution. And the environmental movement campaigned against the toxic byproducts of the U.S. military presence. Nor has resistance dissipated with the planned reduction of
U.S. troops. South Korean movements continue to challenge U.S. plans to expand military facilities in Pyongtaek.
It is also important to acknowledge the influence that the inter-Korean summit of June 2000 had on the transformation of security perspectives. Kim Dae Jung's engagement policy, itself a response to and an incorporation of popular efforts at North-South reconciliation, changed the strategic nature of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The cross-border tourism projects, the efforts to reconnect the north-south train line, and the industrial park at Kaesong all challenged military planning and even the notion of an infantry tripwire. South Korea's more conciliatory policy toward North Korea, which began to diverge from Washington's hard line after 2001, has made Seoul a less reliable U.S. ally. For instance, reportedly apprehensive that Seoul would transfer advanced technology to Pyongyang, the United States cancelled the sale of four Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft to South Korea in July.
Roh Moo-Hyun's more participatory style of government has also had an effect on security issues beyond the reunification question. It actively brought representatives of people power movements-of civil society-into government and raised expectations that the new administration would be more responsive to concerns percolating up from below. Due in part to this responsiveness, South Korea only begrudgingly sent troops to Iraq, has refused to join either the missile defense alliance or the Proliferation Security Initiative, and has looked askance at the whole notion of strategic flexibility for fear that it might draw Seoul into a conflict with Beijing.
Democratic movements profoundly informed South Korea's new strategic posture. They also provoked both a long-term reappraisal of U.S. strategic objectives and, in 2003, a specific response by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to accelerate the process of U.S. troop reductions in South Korea and the transfer of wartime operational control to Seoul.
Washington's concept of strategic flexibility, in other words, is not only useful for fighting an unpredictable enemy but also for dealing with an unpredictable ally. With Manila, the United States negotiated a Visiting Forces Agreement that not only sidestepped many NIMBY issues but also accorded U.S. forces much greater potential access throughout the Philippines to carry out a rather vaguely defined range of activities. With Seoul, Washington is negotiating a deal to reduce its costs and its overall footprint (though not its firepower). It will also reduce U.S. dependency on South Korean support for strategic flexibility.
Strategic flexibility has allowed Washington to count less on a South Korea, perceived to be unreliable and to shift its security focus to Japan, a more dependable supporter of U.S. positions in the region and elsewhere. If Japan proves unreliable in the future, because of heightened NIMBYism or a nationalist backlash against the security partnership with the United States, strategic flexibility will allow Washington to negotiate a better deal with someone else. And indeed, with popular sentiment still running against U.S. bases in Okinawa and on the mainland, Washington has been forced to draw some forces back to
Guam. Meanwhile, activists in Guam have already begun to protest the relocation of half the U.S. Marines Corps contingent currently based in Okinawa.
South Korea, even under authoritarianism, was not always predictably subservient to U.S. military objectives. Park Chung-Hee was notoriously resistant to the troop reductions that President Carter proposed in the late 1970s. But in general, an authoritarian South Korea was more predictably anti-communist, pro-United States, favorably inclined toward Japan, and suspicious of China than a democratic South Korea. The same can be said about a quiescent Okinawa, an authoritarian Taiwan, and the Marcos-era Philippines. Close U.S. relations with yesteryear's East Asian dictators required a certain flexibility in stated principles. Today, close relations with their democratic successors require flexibility in strategic posture.
Military-First Doctrine
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is no fan of democratic movements. If the rumors of military coups are correct, he is even worried about popular uprisings within the North Korean military. Polls of North Koreans, if they existed, might strengthen Kim's hand by revealing a fierce determination to defend the homeland, a preference for an "iron fist" to insure domestic stability, and even a nationalist pride in their country's entry into the nuclear club. But popular discontent over budget priorities and disapproval of the leadership's decisions over the last decade-not to mention widespread human rights abuses-would likely
undermine his political position. There is no sign that the North Korean government plans to introduce even the modest political reforms adopted by its putative ally China. There is also no tradition of democracy in North Korea to which a dissident or opposition movement might appeal.
In the mid-1990s, Kim Jong Il introduced the "military first" doctrine to consolidate his own political position and mobilize the country against threats both external and internal. In 2003, the doctrine officially became an ideology. At one level, the leadership's emphasis on the military is a pragmatic political decision. Because of its sheer size, the military substitutes for any representative political body. There are practically no civilians in North Korea: there are only future soldiers, current soldiers, veterans, and families of soldiers. The military is the only truly functioning institution in the society, not only in terms of protecting borders and preparing for the much-touted foreign attack, but also in maintaining infrastructure and keeping the
extraction industries running.
By putting the military first, the North Korean leadership is responding to a perceived foreign threat from the outside and strengthening the regime's hold on power. But it is also appealing to the country's most representative institution. In this sense, the military-first doctrine is a populist platform. Pyongyang's October nuclear test can be interpreted-in addition to its deterrent and "bargaining chip" purposes-as an attempt to stimulate nationalist pride and provide some measure of compensation for the economic adversity of the past decade, revealing that popular sentiment is not irrelevant to North Korean policymaking. North Koreans make their voices heard not through the ballot box or demonstrations but rather through their membership in military institutions and their capacity to respond to nationalist appeals.
Such informal political participation should not be construed as either pro-government or anti-government. It is very difficult to know the true feelings of North Koreans. But it would be a mistake for outside governments to assume an unbridgeable gulf between the people and the state. A mass organization like the army and mass ideologies like nationalism mediate between the two. It's certainly not democracy. But even states that aspire to totalitarian control must factor people power into their political calculus beyond merely its potential threat to regime stability.
Strategic Redeployment?
When evaluating the political situation on the Korean Peninsula, particularly as it relates to security issues, it is routine to discuss the personal quirks of the leaders (Kim Jong Il, Roh Moo-Hyun, George Bush) or the characteristics of their coteries (the revolutionary generation in North Korea, the 386 generation of 40-something activists in South Korea, the neoconservative generation in the United States). Yet it may well be the clout of popular movements - or the threat of them - that will prove most influential in determining the future security environment on the peninsula.
Behind the headlines, popular mobilization has profoundly influenced three key doctrinal shifts: the military-first approach in North Korea, a more independent security policy in South Korea, and strategic flexibility in the United States. Leaders in both democratic and nondemocratic countries have kept watchful eyes on people power when formulating security policy, both in terms of mobilizing support (through nationalist or populist appeals) and avoiding negative responses (such as NIMBY).
The future of these doctrinal shifts remains unclear. Should the current tensions around the nuclear conflict subside, North Korea might conceivably switch its military-first doctrine to the competing concept of kangsong taeguk (strong and prosperous nation) and reallocate precious resources to economic modernization. If market reforms don't benefit a large enough portion of the population, however, the country will face a pre-revolutionary predicament of rising and unmet expectations. Only if the military is fully behind these changes, in the sense of implementing them as well as benefiting from them, will the regime avoid collapse. As in Cuba, however, Washington's policy of unmitigated pressure allows Pyongyang to retain a measure of popular support through relentless, nationalist invocations of an external threat.
In South Korea, the character of Roh Moo-Hyun's more independent foreign policy is often ascribed to a narrow party agenda rather than reflecting more significant changes in how South Koreans view their country's role in the region. China has become a much more important economic partner and diplomatic player in the region, and South Koreans are rapidly waking up to this reality (conflicts over the Koguryo historical dispute notwithstanding). U.S. force reductions in Korea, and what will inevitably be a widening conflict over military purchasing and interoperability, will only distance Seoul further from Washington. Even the conservatives, should they win the 2007 presidential election in South Korea, will likely continue Roh's more independent military and foreign policy, partly in response to the pressures of popular sentiment and partly because of geopolitical realities such as China's economic might.
The biggest question mark remains the future of Washington's policy of strategic flexibility. Technological change and new threat perceptions suggest that this doctrinal shift will be with us for some time. But as a response to democratic movements on the ground, strategic flexibility might prove self-defeating. Shifting security emphasis from one ally to another depending on the amplitude of protests around U.S. basing, military policies, or out-of-area operations may not prove sustainable. In the grand scheme, with the focus of U.S. geostrategy still on the Middle East and a period of military belt-tightening likely to return to Washington, strategic flexibility may simply become a cover for U.S. disengagement--strategic redeployment--not just from South Korea but from the region as a whole.
--------
John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus and the director of global affairs at the International Relations Center.
People Power vs. Military Power in East Asia
John Feffer, IRC February 13, 2007
Editor: Chuck Hosking
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3990
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
People power does not just trouble the sleep of dictators. It can also introduce an element of unpredictability and uncertainty into the security debate in pluralist societies. People, to put it bluntly, can be a problem for the military because civilians frequently come between a military and its objectives.
"In the short term, making governments more accountable to people introduces new uncertainties and limits into diplomacy," Kent Caldor has written about Northeast Asia. Calder's point was that transitional democracies are not ready to open national security to public debate. But the people power quandary perhaps even more profoundly affects Washington. Other nation's democracies sound good on paper and in principle but are risky business in practice. Having frequently forged comfortable military relationships with reliably authoritarian
administrations such as Park Chung Hee's in South Korea, Chiang Kai-shek's in Taiwan, the United States has recently discovered that democratic movements in East Asia can pose an unpredictable and worrisome challenge to U.S. security objectives. Indeed, the transformation of U.S. doctrine and force posture in East Asia results not just from technological changes and the identification of new threats but also from the impact of democratic movements within the countries of our allies.
At the same time, people power influences decision-making in dictatorships. In North Korea, for instance, citizens do not communicate their views in any meaningful way through elections. Yet they are still actors in an important political sense. The leadership in Pyongyang relies on people power - not in the sense of an anti-government movement but as an expression of nationalist sentiment - to achieve some measure of legitimacy for its policies. In this sense, people power and democracy are not interchangeable concepts.
In short, people power is viewed neither wholly negatively by putatively totalitarian regimes nor wholly positively by putatively democratic regimes. The notion that democracy and military security mutually reinforce one another both underestimates the staying power of systems like North Korea and China where democracy is anemic and overestimates the strength of military alliances between more robustly democratic states. This misreading of the relationship between people power and military power significantly distorts the understanding of three major shifts in security doctrine in the United States, North Korea, and South Korea. Conventionally interpreted as responses to geopolitical realities
and technological advances, these transformations in thinking also strongly reflect the influence of the grassroots.
The failure to connect people power to these evolving shifts in doctrine has profound policy implications for the United States. By misjudging popular support for hard-line stances in authoritarian states and by glossing over grassroots challenges to U.S. security strategies in more democratic countries, Washington continues to risk clashing with its regional adversaries and, ultimately, losing influence with its regional allies.
Strategic Flexibility
According to conventional wisdom, the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and the development of the concept of "strategic flexibility" were chiefly responses to advances in technology (primarily computers and communications) and the application of market principles to military management. The end of the Cold War, the subsequent attacks of September 11, and an altered security environment further accelerated these shifts in doctrine and force structure. The latest war-fighting gurus view fixed military bases with lumbering tanks and static defenses as comparatively low-tech and incapable of addressing rapidly emerging
conflicts and threats. U.S. forces, they argue, should be flexible enough to respond to North Korean missiles, Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia, or a cross-straits confrontation in Taiwan.
But a case can be made that the RMA and strategic flexibility are also responses to NIMBY (not in my back yard) and democratic movements. Fixed bases were an easy target, not only for the enemy but also for popular discontent, starting in the Philippines and spreading to Okinawa, Tokyo, and Seoul (not to mention other parts of the world such as Vieques). The U.S. security umbrella was generally popular among allied leaders, but the actual U.S. security footprint was another matter.
In the Republic of Korea (ROK), popular anger against U.S. forces came to world attention in 2002, when tens of thousands of South Korean citizens demonstrated in the streets after the deaths of two schoolchildren run over by U.S. military armored vehicles. But this was not the first time that popular movements tried to effect change in the U.S.-ROK alliance. Earlier there were protests over the Status of Forces Agreement. Adding its voice, the "Reclaiming Our Land" movement targeted U.S. bases, as did organizing around prostitution. And the environmental movement campaigned against the toxic byproducts of the U.S. military presence. Nor has resistance dissipated with the planned reduction of
U.S. troops. South Korean movements continue to challenge U.S. plans to expand military facilities in Pyongtaek.
It is also important to acknowledge the influence that the inter-Korean summit of June 2000 had on the transformation of security perspectives. Kim Dae Jung's engagement policy, itself a response to and an incorporation of popular efforts at North-South reconciliation, changed the strategic nature of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The cross-border tourism projects, the efforts to reconnect the north-south train line, and the industrial park at Kaesong all challenged military planning and even the notion of an infantry tripwire. South Korea's more conciliatory policy toward North Korea, which began to diverge from Washington's hard line after 2001, has made Seoul a less reliable U.S. ally. For instance, reportedly apprehensive that Seoul would transfer advanced technology to Pyongyang, the United States cancelled the sale of four Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft to South Korea in July.
Roh Moo-Hyun's more participatory style of government has also had an effect on security issues beyond the reunification question. It actively brought representatives of people power movements-of civil society-into government and raised expectations that the new administration would be more responsive to concerns percolating up from below. Due in part to this responsiveness, South Korea only begrudgingly sent troops to Iraq, has refused to join either the missile defense alliance or the Proliferation Security Initiative, and has looked askance at the whole notion of strategic flexibility for fear that it might draw Seoul into a conflict with Beijing.
Democratic movements profoundly informed South Korea's new strategic posture. They also provoked both a long-term reappraisal of U.S. strategic objectives and, in 2003, a specific response by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to accelerate the process of U.S. troop reductions in South Korea and the transfer of wartime operational control to Seoul.
Washington's concept of strategic flexibility, in other words, is not only useful for fighting an unpredictable enemy but also for dealing with an unpredictable ally. With Manila, the United States negotiated a Visiting Forces Agreement that not only sidestepped many NIMBY issues but also accorded U.S. forces much greater potential access throughout the Philippines to carry out a rather vaguely defined range of activities. With Seoul, Washington is negotiating a deal to reduce its costs and its overall footprint (though not its firepower). It will also reduce U.S. dependency on South Korean support for strategic flexibility.
Strategic flexibility has allowed Washington to count less on a South Korea, perceived to be unreliable and to shift its security focus to Japan, a more dependable supporter of U.S. positions in the region and elsewhere. If Japan proves unreliable in the future, because of heightened NIMBYism or a nationalist backlash against the security partnership with the United States, strategic flexibility will allow Washington to negotiate a better deal with someone else. And indeed, with popular sentiment still running against U.S. bases in Okinawa and on the mainland, Washington has been forced to draw some forces back to
Guam. Meanwhile, activists in Guam have already begun to protest the relocation of half the U.S. Marines Corps contingent currently based in Okinawa.
South Korea, even under authoritarianism, was not always predictably subservient to U.S. military objectives. Park Chung-Hee was notoriously resistant to the troop reductions that President Carter proposed in the late 1970s. But in general, an authoritarian South Korea was more predictably anti-communist, pro-United States, favorably inclined toward Japan, and suspicious of China than a democratic South Korea. The same can be said about a quiescent Okinawa, an authoritarian Taiwan, and the Marcos-era Philippines. Close U.S. relations with yesteryear's East Asian dictators required a certain flexibility in stated principles. Today, close relations with their democratic successors require flexibility in strategic posture.
Military-First Doctrine
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is no fan of democratic movements. If the rumors of military coups are correct, he is even worried about popular uprisings within the North Korean military. Polls of North Koreans, if they existed, might strengthen Kim's hand by revealing a fierce determination to defend the homeland, a preference for an "iron fist" to insure domestic stability, and even a nationalist pride in their country's entry into the nuclear club. But popular discontent over budget priorities and disapproval of the leadership's decisions over the last decade-not to mention widespread human rights abuses-would likely
undermine his political position. There is no sign that the North Korean government plans to introduce even the modest political reforms adopted by its putative ally China. There is also no tradition of democracy in North Korea to which a dissident or opposition movement might appeal.
In the mid-1990s, Kim Jong Il introduced the "military first" doctrine to consolidate his own political position and mobilize the country against threats both external and internal. In 2003, the doctrine officially became an ideology. At one level, the leadership's emphasis on the military is a pragmatic political decision. Because of its sheer size, the military substitutes for any representative political body. There are practically no civilians in North Korea: there are only future soldiers, current soldiers, veterans, and families of soldiers. The military is the only truly functioning institution in the society, not only in terms of protecting borders and preparing for the much-touted foreign attack, but also in maintaining infrastructure and keeping the
extraction industries running.
By putting the military first, the North Korean leadership is responding to a perceived foreign threat from the outside and strengthening the regime's hold on power. But it is also appealing to the country's most representative institution. In this sense, the military-first doctrine is a populist platform. Pyongyang's October nuclear test can be interpreted-in addition to its deterrent and "bargaining chip" purposes-as an attempt to stimulate nationalist pride and provide some measure of compensation for the economic adversity of the past decade, revealing that popular sentiment is not irrelevant to North Korean policymaking. North Koreans make their voices heard not through the ballot box or demonstrations but rather through their membership in military institutions and their capacity to respond to nationalist appeals.
Such informal political participation should not be construed as either pro-government or anti-government. It is very difficult to know the true feelings of North Koreans. But it would be a mistake for outside governments to assume an unbridgeable gulf between the people and the state. A mass organization like the army and mass ideologies like nationalism mediate between the two. It's certainly not democracy. But even states that aspire to totalitarian control must factor people power into their political calculus beyond merely its potential threat to regime stability.
Strategic Redeployment?
When evaluating the political situation on the Korean Peninsula, particularly as it relates to security issues, it is routine to discuss the personal quirks of the leaders (Kim Jong Il, Roh Moo-Hyun, George Bush) or the characteristics of their coteries (the revolutionary generation in North Korea, the 386 generation of 40-something activists in South Korea, the neoconservative generation in the United States). Yet it may well be the clout of popular movements - or the threat of them - that will prove most influential in determining the future security environment on the peninsula.
Behind the headlines, popular mobilization has profoundly influenced three key doctrinal shifts: the military-first approach in North Korea, a more independent security policy in South Korea, and strategic flexibility in the United States. Leaders in both democratic and nondemocratic countries have kept watchful eyes on people power when formulating security policy, both in terms of mobilizing support (through nationalist or populist appeals) and avoiding negative responses (such as NIMBY).
The future of these doctrinal shifts remains unclear. Should the current tensions around the nuclear conflict subside, North Korea might conceivably switch its military-first doctrine to the competing concept of kangsong taeguk (strong and prosperous nation) and reallocate precious resources to economic modernization. If market reforms don't benefit a large enough portion of the population, however, the country will face a pre-revolutionary predicament of rising and unmet expectations. Only if the military is fully behind these changes, in the sense of implementing them as well as benefiting from them, will the regime avoid collapse. As in Cuba, however, Washington's policy of unmitigated pressure allows Pyongyang to retain a measure of popular support through relentless, nationalist invocations of an external threat.
In South Korea, the character of Roh Moo-Hyun's more independent foreign policy is often ascribed to a narrow party agenda rather than reflecting more significant changes in how South Koreans view their country's role in the region. China has become a much more important economic partner and diplomatic player in the region, and South Koreans are rapidly waking up to this reality (conflicts over the Koguryo historical dispute notwithstanding). U.S. force reductions in Korea, and what will inevitably be a widening conflict over military purchasing and interoperability, will only distance Seoul further from Washington. Even the conservatives, should they win the 2007 presidential election in South Korea, will likely continue Roh's more independent military and foreign policy, partly in response to the pressures of popular sentiment and partly because of geopolitical realities such as China's economic might.
The biggest question mark remains the future of Washington's policy of strategic flexibility. Technological change and new threat perceptions suggest that this doctrinal shift will be with us for some time. But as a response to democratic movements on the ground, strategic flexibility might prove self-defeating. Shifting security emphasis from one ally to another depending on the amplitude of protests around U.S. basing, military policies, or out-of-area operations may not prove sustainable. In the grand scheme, with the focus of U.S. geostrategy still on the Middle East and a period of military belt-tightening likely to return to Washington, strategic flexibility may simply become a cover for U.S. disengagement--strategic redeployment--not just from South Korea but from the region as a whole.
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John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus and the director of global affairs at the International Relations Center.
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