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The US is no honest broker in the Korean peninsula – but its next actions will be critical to the region’s future

THE on-off-maybe Singapore summit between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States has brought an element of farce to a historical relationship that has more often been characterised by tragedy.

Tragedy, though, is still not an entirely unthinkable result of the actions and threats of US President Donald Trump. 

In his letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announcing that he was pulling out of the talks, scheduled for June 12, Trump wrote: “Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I felt it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long planned meeting.”

The attempt to blame the US withdrawal on North Korean statements was a diversion, especially coming from a potty-mouth president whose own crude language is notorious. 

The continuing confusion over whether the summit will actually happen appears to be linked to battles within Trump’s own administration between an egocentric but potentially pragmatic president, desperate for praise and plaudits, and the die-hard circle of ideologically driven neoconservative advisers that he has appointed to guide him.

Additionally Washington has managed to expose this division in public, undermining not only its own credibility but embarrassing and humiliating its own regional allies. South Korea was not even informed, never mind consulted, in advance over the plan to cancel the summit.

Hours after the news broke, Yonhap news agency quoted South Korean presidential spokesman Kim Eui Kyeom as saying: “[We] are trying to figure out what President Trump’s intention is and the exact meaning of it.”

If this is how Trump treats his allies, it’s no wonder that Pyongyang is proceeding cautiously. 

Nonetheless, North Korean statements have been more consistent, emphasising their openness for dialogue without preconditions.

The US move also illustrates that blaming North Korea one-sidedly for tensions on the peninsula ignores the repeated about-turns by various US administrations, not simply Trump’s. 

Typical of this condescending view was BBC reporter Jonathan Marcus, who wrote: “North Korea is certainly a difficult country to deal with. Previous [US] administrations have tried to get deals. Twice they have reached agreement and twice they have collapsed.”

The implication is that the US acts as an honest broker initiating agreements while the North spitefully breaks them. 

A clearer perspective is given by Professor Bruce Cumings, a leading Korean history specialist, in a recent interview with The Nation magazine. 

Noting that the US and DPRK signed an Agreed Framework back in 1994, only to have all progress derailed by the incoming Republican regime of George W Bush, Cumings said: “When Bush came in, he did everything he could to destroy our agreements with North Korea.

“John Bolton and Dick Cheney, in particular, were determined not to proceed with the missile deal and to kill the agreement that froze North Korea’s plutonium. 

“The main reason they did this was not because North Korea was a threat to the United States but rather because it was a useful foil for China, which Cheney and Bush and others saw as a looming threat. Here was a great way to build up missile defence. 

“And of course, Bush put them into the Axis of Evil. So I don’t blame the North Koreans for moving in the direction they did after 2002. It’s the same today. When North Korea explodes an atomic bomb or tests a missile, we put more anti-missile batteries into the Far East, which undermine China’s deterrent, and we try to weld together South Korea, Japan, and the US in a tight alliance against China.”

The 1994 nuclear agreement was designed to provide energy and food supplies to the DPRK in return for a commitment not to pursue nuclear arms. 

It has been suggested that the Clinton administration only agreed to the deal because it believed that the DPRK, suffering economic dislocation after the loss of the Soviet Union, would soon collapse itself.

In any case, US Congress hawks managed to block and delay food and oil shipments, as well as plans to build a light-water reactor. 

Later accusing the DPRK of technical breaches, Washington rightwingers used the claims as a pretext to smash up the Agreed Framework. 

John Bolton, today Trump’s national security adviser, boasted: “This was the hammer I had been looking for to shatter the Agreed Framework.”

It was also Bolton of course, who in recent weeks praised the “Libyan model” for North Korea. Last year, before his appointment by the White House, Bolton authored an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, headlined “The Military Options for North Korea.” 

He advocated either a pre-emptive strike on DPRK nuclear facilities or, alternatively, an attack on Pyongyang to “decapitate national command.”

Bolton’s options for North Korea, as for Iraq and Iran, have always been the same — war now or war later.

What these incendiary policies overlook is that the DPRK and China have a joint defence pact. If the US attacked the North, China would be under enormous pressure to render military assistance provided for in the treaty.

Both sides have edged closer to each other in recent months, provoking Trump’s public disapproval. 

Kim and Chinese president Xi Jinping have met twice, in Beijing and Dalian, in the past two months.

The DPRK saw the summit talks as the opening of a process of denuclearisation with reciprocal moves from the US, not as the signal for unilateral disarmament.

The destruction of the Pyongyang’s northern test site was one of three confidence-building elements outlined by the North and strongly supported by China. The other two are freezes on nuclear tests and intercontinental missile launches. 

Taken together these would represent a major relaxation of tension on the peninsula but only if they can be synchronised with a US response.

Another factor neglected by Trump has been the rapprochement between the two Korean states, culminating last week in the unprecedented second meeting at the demilitarised zone between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae In.

Trump has previously suggested that the US could cut its military presence in the South, where it has around 35,000 service personnel. This has more to do with Trump’s “America first” instincts than any commitment to peace. 

The US forces are already heavily subsidised by the South Koreans — at least 40 per cent of their operational costs or by about 80 per cent if land rental and usage costs arere taken into consideration. 

As with Nato in Europe, Trump believes US forces should be paid for out of someone else’s budget. He has also floated the idea that South Korea should contribute to US forces elsewhere in the Pacific, notably on the island of Guam, and called for South Korea to foot the bill for the newly deployed $1 billion THAAD anti-missile and spying system. Dismantling THAAD would be a popular move in South Korea where thousands demonstrated against its installation.

The US could also freeze the regular war games it holds with the South Koreans. On May 11, South Korean and US forces began Max Thunder, a joint air-combat drill, which was denounced by the North as a “sabre-rattling” exercise that was undermining dialogue. The North postponed talks with South Korea as a result. 

These and similar moves would be very small steps indeed in the direction of de-escalation, however far short they fall of the legitimate demand for the US to end its military presence and allow the Koreans themselves to determine the fate of the peninsula. 

Whether or not the Singapore summit is held as scheduled, it’s now up to the US to show in deeds that it is finally prepared to abandon the failed policies of confrontation against the DPRK and match Pyongyang’s offers with concrete proposals of its own. 

 

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