Let Asia resolve the North Korea crisis
The Iraq war is over, but tensions in the Korean Peninsula are heating up.
Obvious disagreement over policy toward the North has clouded South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun's visit to the United States, while Washington's recent nuclear talks with North Korea ended in acrimony.
US President George W. Bush refuses to repudiate his talk of a "military option" against Pyongyang.
But why is the US worried about the so-called Democratic People's Republic of Korea? North Korea is distant and poor, an economic irrelevancy, a diplomatic nonentity and surrounded by powerful states. Most important, it has no effective means to attack America.
The Iraq war is over, but tensions in the Korean Peninsula are heating up.
Obvious disagreement over policy toward the North has clouded South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun's visit to the United States, while Washington's recent nuclear talks with North Korea ended in acrimony.
US President George W. Bush refuses to repudiate his talk of a "military option" against Pyongyang.
But why is the US worried about the so-called Democratic People's Republic of Korea? North Korea is distant and poor, an economic irrelevancy, a diplomatic nonentity and surrounded by powerful states. Most important, it has no effective means to attack America.
Unnatural presence
The only serious threat to America would come from plutonium sales to rogue states or terrorist groups. However, a multinational package of carrots and sticks, not Washington's military presence in the South, is the key to precluding that course.
In fact, North Korea should be the problem of other nations - China and Russia, East Asia's most important powers, and Japan and South Korea, America's closest regional friends. All have more at stake than does America.
The only reason Washington is entangled in the Korean Peninsula is inertia. Although recent attention has focused on North Korea's nuclear programme, that controversy grows out of Washington's unnatural military presence on the Korean Peninsula.
America's commitment to South Korea resulted from the post-World War II division of the peninsula and subsequent Chinese and Soviet support for North Korean aggression. Today the Cold War is over and China and Russia are friendlier with Seoul than Pyongyang.
Russia has even shipped weapons to South Korea to help pay off its debts. Although both former North Korean allies retain ties to the communist state, both have far more at stake in the peninsula's continuing stability and South Korea's continuing prosperity than in a North Korean 'victory', whether political or military.
Nor does Pyongyang have any other allies of note. Its recent international charm offensive has ground to a halt with the renewed nuclear crisis.
Moreover, the South has won the economic race: it is twice as populous and 40 times as prosperous as the North. Seoul is the world's 12th-largest economy.
In contrast, North Korea is an economic wreck, whose economy is estimated to have shrunk by half between 1993 and 1996 alone. Much of the country is enveloped in darkness much of the time.
Food production is down 60 percent over the last 15 years. Life expectancy fell 10 percent during the 1990s; at the same time hundreds of thousands, and perhaps as many as 2 million people, starved to death. North Korea has been reduced to begging for food aid.
Military sphere
Only in the military sphere does the North retain an advantage. Its armed forces are large, but ancient.
Its latest weapons date to 1990; spare parts are non-existent. Reports Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Bruce Bechtol, "the South is superior in other key aspects of military readiness, such as command and control and training".
Although South Korea's army is smaller, it would be fighting on the defensive with superior air and naval support.
Indeed, in the initial stage of any war, South Korea would have to rely primarily upon its own military for ground forces, irrespective of America's defence commitment, given the time necessary to deploy heavy armoured and mechanised reinforcements.
Moreover, South Korea has begun a serious space programme, launching last November a three-stage liquid-fueled rocket; Seoul hopes to launch a satellite in two more years.
It also has unveiled plans for a blue-water navy, one more obviously directed at Japan and China than North Korea.
To the extent that South Korea's military still lags behind that of its northern antagonist, it is a matter of choice, not necessity. There is no special gravitational field that prevents Seoul from building a larger force.
Rather, it is the American military tripwire that discourages it from doing so. As the South acknowledges in its own defence reports, it chose to focus on economic development at the expense of military strength because it was secure in America's protection.
But US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's proposal to redeploy US forces south of the border, rather than withdraw them, makes no sense. The commitment would keep the US entangled in the peninsula's problems, without providing a tripwire deterrent.
North Korea was America's problem when it was allied with the Soviet Union and Maoist China during the Cold War. North Korea was America's problem when Washington's ally, South Korea, was incapable of defending itself.
Neither is the case any more. Instead of threatening Pyongyang with war, the US should begin bringing home its troops and turning the problem of North Korea over to its neighbours.
DOUG BANDOW is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of 'Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World'. - GVNN/The Japan Times
