The Nuclear Crisis in North Korea and China’s Military Countermeasures

In the aftermath of the war in Iraq, it is widely believed that the target of America’s next war is very likely to be North Korea or Iran.

Judging from the recent U.S. military deployments, there has been little military action in the Gulf region, and the United States is mainly preoccupied with the occupation of Iraq and a gradual withdrawal of some troops from this area back to its homeland or to East Asia. The American troops in South Korea have started to redeploy to military bases farther away from the 38^th Parallel, as the United States, actively seeks to establish new military bases in Southeast Asia and northern Australia. These developments indicate that the next phase of America’s military actions may take place in East Asia.

In the Middle East, although America’s military adventure in Iraq has achieved temporary success, the U.S. military is facing some deadlocks in the wake of the conquering of Iraq, including dealing with Syria and Iran, and facing the difficult situation in Golan Heights involving Syria and Israel. If the United States launched a military strike against Syria, the Arab world would create widespread opposition. Since the U.S has manufactured a "Road Map" for Middle East peace, it would not sabotage its own efforts by taking actions to destroy the peace. Furthermore, Iran’s national and military power is stronger than that of Iraq, and it will take several years for the United States to "digest" the Iraq that it has swallowed. If the U.S. started a war against Iran during this period and lost, they would most likely lose Iraq as well. Therefore, in the near future, the United States will mainly endeavor to cause internal collapse in Iran by taking advantage of the differences between Iran’s reformers and its conservatives. Whether this policy will succeed or not, it will take several years or longer to see the result. Even within the U.S. government, there are people who believe that during this period of "peaceful evolution" in Iran, military actions against them would only increase the position of the conservatives. This point has been proved true by many empirical examples.

Therefore, North Korea is most likely to become the chief target of America’s next military endeavors.

The Origin of the Nuclear Problem in North Korea

First and foremost, we must clearly realize that the so-called "North Korea nuclear problem" is a term manufactured by America’s propaganda machine. It has become a hot issue after it became widely disseminated by the media.

As far as North Korea’s capability to develop a nuclear program is concerned, Pyongyang does not have the ability to independently build nuclear reactors. All of North Korea’s nuclear reactors were built with aid from the former Soviet Union. The reactors North Korea has are not high capacity;, they have a backward functionality, and are unable to support North Korea as a nuclear big power. The current situation is that North Korea claims it has nuclear weapons. Some countries are still contemplating whether or not North Korea actually has nuclear weapons and if they do how many they have. The Russian experts who helped North Korea develop nuclear reactors believe that it is impossible for North Korea to have nuclear weapons.

In comparison, Japan’s nuclear reactors are much more advanced than North Korea’s in numbers, technological quality, and nuclear materials in reserve. In particular, Japan has spent an inordinate amount of money in developing multiplication nuclear reactors whose only meaningful purpose is to produce materials useful for making nuclear bombs, If we judge Japan and North Korea’s respective nuclear capabilities, we should have no doubt that Japan’s nuclear problem is far more serious than North Korea’s. However, the enormous nuclear capability of Japan has not become a focus of the world’s opinions, but the much weaker nuclear capability of North Korea have been made into a hot issue of debate everywhere. Behind this contradictory phenomenon lies the control over and manipulation of the global opinions by the United States. This is true also in the Middle East. Israel, who possesses nuclear weapons, has not been required to have an inspection; however, Iraq whose alleged nuclear possession has never been proven has received numerous inspections and military attacks.

The U.S. foreign policy has always been carried out with a double standard that is very shortsighted. America’s tolerance of Japan’s nuclear capability not only threatens the security of Asian countries, but also threatens America itself in the future. Just like the Pearl Harbor incident of 1941, the Americans sold scrap iron, steel and oil to Japan, and Japanese militarists used these materials to make weapons to kill the Chinese people in Nanking, as well as to make bombs to destroy the United States Pacific Fleet. However, because the U.S. is a strong power, the damages to weaker nations caused by a flawed U.S. policy would be far greater than what the United States would suffer.

The True Nature of "The Nuclear Problem in North Korea"

For decades, the Korean peninsula has been in a standoff situation, but it has been basically peaceful. This peace is not granted by the Heavens, we must question the reasons for such peace.

In 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its atomic bomb. Although, the Soviet Union’s nuclear program was far behind that of the United States, the nuclear deterrence posed by the Soviet Union prevented the American’s plan to use nuclear weapons during the Korean War. While the Americans were being defeated by the Chinese and Korean armies and retreating in disgrace, the U.S. planned to use atomic bombs to attack the Chinese troops in the battle fieldsbattlefields. Yet all these attempts were abandoned eventually for fear of nuclear retaliation by the Soviet Union. The United States threatened China six times to use nuclear weapons before China developed nuclear weapons of its own. In the end, it was the Sino-Soviet alliance that caused the Americans a great concern and their nuclear threats to fail. Especially during the 1958 Quemoy-Matsu Crisis, the Soviet Union fended off the American nuclear bluffing by issuing its stern warning to the Americans, despite the fact that at the time, the Sino-Soviet relation had already started to deteriorate.

In 1950, China was forced to send troops with light equipment to Korea and defeat the Americans along Qingchuan River. After the initial victory the Chinese troops replaced their light equipment with Soviet weapons. The two sides of the Korean War were locked in a seesaw struggle for three years. This struggle proved that the 38^th Parallel had been the division of military powers between the U.S. on one side and the Chinese, the Soviets, and the North Koreans on the other.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the security situation in the Korean Peninsula has changed dramatically. On the one hand, the old alliance treaties among China, the Soviet Union and the DPRK have expired one by one. On the other hand, the United States, Japan and South Korea have strengthened their military alliance. This tendency has caused the balance of peace that has existed since the Korean War. The loss of the nuclear umbrella previously provided by the Soviet Union has made North Korea choose the current security approach, i.e. keeping a massive conventional army. But it is difficult to keep a large army ready for battle for a long period of time and the DPRK’s national power is not strong enough to sustain such a task. Therefore North Korea has opted to establish its own nuclear deterrence.

No matter which approach it chooses, North Korea alone can notcannot match the strength of an alliance among the United States, Japan, and South Korea. In the end, North Korea needs its neighbor’s help, which has been the case for more than a thousand years.

The American Attitude

In dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program, the U.S., at first, demanded that North Korea abandon the program. Although the U.S. promised to provide compensation, this promise has been proved unreliable after several years of unfulfilled promises. The once much-talked-about plan that the Americans would help North Koreans in building "light water reactors" to replace North Korea’s previous reactors has up-to-this-date only resulted in the laying of a foundation of the promised project. The North Koreans accuse the U.S. of violating the agreement, but the Americans have tried all sorts of excuses to delay the project. The U.S. officials do not talk about it anymore, however the South Korean officials are still concerned about this matter.

On the one hand, the U.S. demands that North Korea give up its nuclear program to obtain peace; on the other hand, the U.S. refuses to sign a non-aggression treaty with North Korea. This contradiction has made the Americans more untrustworthy in North Korea’s eyes. In particular, there lies a logical irony: when North Korea did not have nuclear weapons, the U.S. bombed and leveled almost every village, while for several decades; the United States has been threatening North Korea.

　　Even if North Korea accepts the American plan of abandoning the nuclear program to obtain peace, it is very difficult to carry it out on an operational level. The Americans believe that North Korea could temporarily give up its nuclear program, but it could in the future re-activate it so that North Korea could demand more economic aid from the U.S.. Therefore, the conservatives in the U.S. believe the ultimate solution to this problem is to occupy North Korea. In the short term, the U.S. naturally wants to restore the inspection mechanism. But this U.N.-sponsored inspection mechanism was smashed only several months ago by America itself, making it notorious without any authority. From the perspective of the North Koreans, America’s action in Iraq has proved that submission to nuclear inspection not only cannot avoid war, but also becomes the trigger for war. This is yet another ironic consequence created by the shortsightedness of the United States foreign policy.

The victory of the Iraq war has injected a dose of cardio tonic into the U.S. war machine. The U.S. is now more inclined to use war as the solution to problems. The American military of course will not expect that North Korea will not fight back, as it was the case in the Yugoslav war. Therefore, the American military have planned to evacuate to places outside the range of the North Korea’s long rangelong-range artillery guns and short-ranged rockets. This action is very likely to be preparatory measure for a small scaledsmall-scaled air strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities. But even such limited military action can develop into extremely serious consequences.

Because the target of such air strikes is nuclear facilities, this may result in a nuclear fallout as serious as the fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. In such a scenario, China and Russia would become the major victims. Whether the United States uses nuclear weapons or not, such a strike against nuclear facilities would have crossed over the threshold to a nuclear war. The counter attacks by North Korea and America’s retaliations may well escalate the war into a small to medium scale nuclear war. This may be just a nuclear September 11 to the United States, but to North Korea, it may mean that its major cities will face all-out nuclear strikes.

China’s Countermeasures

If a military conflict occurs between North Korea and the United States, China cannot stand idly by, because the Korean Peninsula is a bridge leading to China.

In order to prevent a war from happening in this region, the neighboring country needs to take action; it can use conventional as well as nuclear forces. There are three layers of a neighboring country’s deterrent actions: (1), capability; (2), the determination to utilize such capability; (3), self-protection capability.

The U.S. conducts many military exercises every year in the Korean Peninsula. Even if there is no crisis there, China should increase its own military power.

In 1950, at the early stage of the Korean War, the U.S. made a serious mistake in calculating whether China would have the determination to support North Korea or not. But the Americans have learned their lesson, and, some people believe, tested China’s resolve in 1999 by bombing the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. In instances such as the embassy bombing, if China does not deliver a reply, the Americans will make another mistake in calculating China’s resolve to defend itself. This will create a bigger crisis.

From the perspective of regional military strengths, the restoration of military parity or balance of military strengths is the key to preventing the United States from developing any idea of invading North Korea. As we all know, North Korea shares a border only with China; therefore any foreign military presence in North Korea constitutes a threat to China. During the Korean War, the Americans deployed tactical nuclear weapons ("Honest John" surface to surface nuclear rockets and nuclear artillery firepower), as such, the so-called "non-nuclearization in the Korean Peninsula" is meaningless gibberish as long as American troops are stationed in the Korean Peninsula.

If the "nuclear problem in North Korea" causes a war, then many years from now, people will only remember the war’s results not its origins. This is similar to the fact that few still remember why Hideyoshi invaded Korea in the early 16^th century. Many years from now, people will only remember the result of this nuclear war in the Korean Peninsula: either that China sent troops to aid North Korea, expelled the invaders, and thus protected its own security; or that North Korea was occupied by a foreign enemy, and China’s security faced a long-term threat. The reason the Chinese nation has stood tall and proud in the world for 5000 years and has not succumbed is because our ancestors took active countermeasures. 　

 

http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2003-06/16/content_921430.htm