All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
And our next guest on the show today is Jon Pfeffer, co-director of foreign policy in focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, that's fpif.org on the web.
A lot of great writers there covering a lot of important subjects.
He writes the regular world beat column there, and he's got the new book out, Crusade 2.0, The West's Resurgent War on Islam, which I can't wait to read, but I'm going to have to wait to read.
But I'm going to get to it, I swear, and then I'm going to interview you about it, because I really don't like that whole ridiculous, I think, on its face, should be ridiculous, rejected on its face kind of proposition that mankind is determined to have this, you know, apocalyptic clash between the Muslim world and the West, or, you know, the East versus West in general, or anything like that.
I like to try to avoid apocalypses if I can, Jon.
And so I really like the debunking of all the propaganda that says those kinds of things really are necessary.
So I really do need to get this thing read, Crusade 2.0.
I go ahead and recommend it in advance to everybody because I'm sure it's great.
But the reason I brought you on is because I wanted to talk with you about North Korea and their failed satellite launch.
And what's the big hubbub anyway?
That's what you ask.
What's the big fuss over North Korea's satellite launch?
North Korea's failed fireworks at counterpunch.org.
Oh, what is the big fuss?
It's a good question.
You know, this is the third time that North Korea has launched a satellite, and it has failed each time.
And each time it's gotten a very, very negative response.
I mean, more than negative.
It's basically united the international community against it.
I mean, the major reason, at least articulated by the international community, is that a satellite launch and a missile test are roughly the same.
In other words, the same rocket that would put a satellite into space is the rocket that you would use for a long-range missile.
Oh, fair enough.
Right.
No, there is some truth to that.
And not only is there technical truth to that, in other words, the rockets are very similar, but it's also pretty well identified in a UN resolution that was passed by the Security Council, which basically said North Korea is prohibited from missile launches, and that includes satellite launches.
So that's the case that the international community has made.
Oh, OK, well, so I guess I'll just take the conservative position that who cares what the UN says, right?
They're a sovereign, independent nation.
Well, that's certainly what North Korea says.
It says, hey, look around the world and see what other countries are launching satellites.
Why can't we?
And they point to Iran, for instance, and Iran is a country that's also under considerable sanctions, the country that the United States has said, hey, we don't like it when they test missiles.
Yet Iran has also tested or rather launched satellite three times, and it's been successful all three times and most recently, just a couple of months ago in February.
But there was no hue and cry from the international community, no additional sanctions, no emergency meeting of the Security Council.
Why is that, though?
Well, it's a tough question.
Well, partly it has to do with the kind of origins of North Korea's satellite program.
It tested its first satellite or it tried to get its first satellite into orbit back in 1998, and it didn't actually make any announcement about that.
You know, if you're going to launch a satellite, you actually have to make some advanced notifications, tell people where it's going to go, especially the countries where the rocket is going to fly over.
And North Korea in 1998 did not do so.
And the rocket overflew Japan and Japan basically freaked out.
And so that was forever known as the Taepodong Shock in Japan or the Taepodong Shock, the Taepodong being the rocket that North Korea used.
Even though North Korea has subsequently gone through all the niceties of prelaunch notification, that kind of experience or that memory, I think, still kind of dominates certainly in Japan, but also for South Korea and the United States.
So I think that's one major reason.
Well, that makes sense.
But then the dang thing broke up on the way up to space and it was no big deal at all.
Now, is this but now I thought the Iranians got their rockets from the North Koreans.
So how come the Iranians are so much better at getting their satellites into space?
Well, Iran has purchased short range missiles from North Korea.
And that was a while ago.
I think basically Iran's technology, its scientific community is a little bit more advanced.
But the real issue here is money.
Iran has a lot of money.
Iran has a lot of gas and oil that it exports and it can basically afford to test.
It can afford the materials.
These are expensive.
It costs North Korea close to a half a billion dollars every time it wants to launch one of these things.
That's a lot for a country that has a GDP that's not a heck of a lot more than that.
Iran, on the other hand, has I don't want to say money to burn, but it certainly has a lot more money.
And I think that's the major issue here.
And it's also a major issue of why Iran satellite launches are treated differently than North Korea, because Iran supplies a lot of powerful countries with energy supplies.
Russia, China, India, Turkey, etc.
These countries are going to be a little less enthusiastic about condemning Iran if they're taking so much of Iran's exported energy.
And now you point out in the article here that the Chinese and the Russians both condemn this thing.
That's correct.
Well, and that matters, right?
It does matter.
It matters when you're talking about the Security Council, since China and Russia are kind of key players.
They're often, you know, if they block something, it's just not going to go through.
So both Russia and China have been basically furious at North Korea's conduct.
What they feel about a satellite, it's hard to know.
I mean, obviously, they have their own satellites.
It's not like it's a big deal for them.
I think what is at issue here is that North Korea just doesn't listen to them.
So a couple of weeks ago, before the satellite launch, when North Korea was saying it was going to do this, both Moscow and Beijing said, hey, hold on.
This is not such a good idea.
It's not such a good idea because, you know, you guys just signed an agreement with the United States on February 29th, and this is going to blow it up, you know, I mean, we're not going to be able to go forward with the kind of plans for resumed negotiations around the six party talks, denuclearization, etc.
And Pyongyang said, well, you know, frankly, we don't care what you think.
Well, they've got nothing but time on their side.
They got nukes now.
So and of course, the new kid, he's got to prove himself that, well, he'll pull this same kind of stunt, make a deal and then turn around and blow it up a week later.
Well, he does have to demonstrate, I guess we would call it leadership.
In other words, he's got to, he's got to, especially this year, demonstrate that North Korea has got, you know, got things together, because this is the year of Kang Song Thaek, this is the year of North Korea's achieving the status of an economically prosperous and militarily strong country, or as the phrase goes, and they have to demonstrate that in some way, it's not exactly obviously economically prosperous country.
But if it can get a satellite into orbit, well, that would be an indication.
However, it didn't get a satellite into orbit.
So that still means that that Kim Jong Un, the third leader in North Korea's history, is going to have some difficulty proving that he is, you know, basically guiding his country into the 21st century.
Do they have one big crop or anything?
What is North Korea's income stream based on at all?
Well, they do have minerals, they have considerable supplies of coal, of rare earth elements, which we hear about so much from China.
And in fact, these are things that China very much wants to have and is investing a lot into North Korea to extract.
All right, I'm sorry, we got a hold of here.
It's Jon Pfeffer from Foreign Policy In Focus, new one at counterpunch.org, North Korea's failed fireworks.
What's the big deal over that satellite launch anyway?
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all, it's Antiwar Radio, I'm Scott Horton, I'm talking with Jon Pfeffer from Foreign Policy In Focus, fpif.org.
His latest piece at counterpunch is called North Korea's failed fireworks about their attempt to blast a satellite up into space that didn't work because their rocket exploded on the way up.
And I guess, you know, we're kind of talking about the state of North Korean diplomacy overall.
I guess I want to ask you about the future of whatever talks that'll mostly with the eye toward just what will satisfy the Americans with shutting up and leaving them alone and staying out of it, which is really what I want.
But first, maybe could you give us sort of a thumbnail of what you know so far about the new dictator of North Korea, Jon?
Sure.
So Kim Jong Un is the third leader that North Korea has ever had.
He's the grandson of Kim Il Sung, the founder of the country, the son of Kim Jong Il, who died just at the end of last year.
He's somewhere in his late 20s, looks like his grandfather.
It's a little bit more charismatic than his father was.
His father, of course, was notoriously not charismatic, has studied a little bit abroad.
He was in a private school in Switzerland, apparently likes basketball.
And that's about all we know about him.
I don't know anything about his politics, don't know anything about his other predilections.
So.
Well, now, was his father educated far away somewhere or not?
Russia, I mean, his father, Kim Jong Il, did grow up in Russia, spoke some Russian, apparently, but really had no exposure to the world outside the communist world for the most part.
Yeah.
Well, like I said, I think it's on the United States to quit picking this fight more than it is on the North Koreans, although, of course, that government should cease to exist as soon as possible.
I guess I like to think that it's a positive note that if he was educated in Switzerland and that means there's some kind of double digit probability that he read or saw on TV, an outside world that included things that North Korea doesn't have that it ought to have.
And I don't just mean, you know, material things, but just the way that they get on with their own people and everybody else that maybe he had a chance to maybe read some Murray Rothbard, probably not somebody smart, somebody different than just the same old commie propaganda that he pushes on his own people all day, you know.
Well, that that is a hope.
And I think it would have to depend a great deal on how many other people in the government have had that opportunity.
And in the last decade or so, we've seen the North Korean elite spend much more time in the outside world, studying at various universities, studying pretty unusual subjects.
I mean, they basically have been focusing on market economics, accounting law, that kind of thing.
So to the extent that Kim Jong Un's outside experience is going to be helpful in terms of seeing some transformation of the system, it's only going to happen because there's been a whole kind of layer of the elite that has had a similar experience.
Well, and now, you know, before the break, I was asking you, where do they get their revenue from?
You said they have some precious minerals, that kind of thing.
Is that that's all that sustains their state?
I mean, I guess people had predicted the fall of North Korean communism a long time ago, and it seems to just never fall.
Do you expect that Kim Jong Un's son will take his place in another couple of decades or a few?
Well, it has certainly outlasted its shelf life, so to speak.
People have been predicting its collapse ever since.
Well, certainly during the Korean War, but certainly ever since the communist world began to decay in the late 1980s.
Every year, North Korean agriculture is about maybe about a billion times short in terms of producing enough food to feed the population.
Much of the industrial base has deteriorated, in part because of sporadic electricity and also because of chronic malnutrition in the workforce.
However, what I think North Korean elite is putting its eggs into, the basket they're putting their eggs into, is kind of high tech.
They're looking at IT, information technology.
They're looking at animation.
And in those fields, North Korea, you know, actually is pretty competitive.
It actually has done a lot of animation for films that we see, like The Lion King, stuff we see on television that's been subcontracted to North Korean animators.
And their IT sector is quite good.
Does it generate enough revenue to keep the government going?
No.
I mean, obviously, the government has been relying on other exports as well.
Military exports.
There's been also some nefarious activities that haven't been proved beyond a doubt, but plenty of anecdotal evidence that it engages in, you know, drug trafficking, counterfeiting, that sort of thing.
So those because of all those things, it's possible that the government could limp along, you know, for for a good number of years.
But at some point, and I don't think it's going to become because of a disgruntled population, it'll be because of a disgruntled elite.
Things will change in that country.
The kind of mid-level party officials.
Yeah, I mean, they are going to be frustrated at not being able either to, you know, achieve the kind of economic success they want to do.
I mean, these are the so-called red capitalists, the kind of elite that emerged in communist countries in the 1980s, early 1990s, that basically used their political position to gain economic wealth.
So they'll be frustrated, perhaps, in not being able to achieve that, or they'll be fearful for their own lives.
In other words, the predictability of their political position.
So, you know, as a group, they might rise up, that might take place within the military, it might take place within the party.
So either of those scenarios, political or the economic, could spell transformation in North Korea.
All right, now, never mind my libertarian wish that we would just, you know, the U.S. would just pull all our military and spies and everybody out of there and all our aid to South Korea, too, and let them get along as best they can without our interference.
I wonder what you think it would take to get the Americans to just ratchet down their side of the crisis here.
It's always the perpetual crisis and, oh, no, now they have nukes and never mind our role in provoking them into it.
But now they have them.
And so now, you know, I guess that justifies some more sanctions and atmosphere of crisis, sometimes talks or talks of outsourcing talks to other powers and all this kind of thing.
What would it take?
What would the North Koreans have to give for the Americans to just chill out?
Or is there no answer to that?
Well, I think we're going to see some chilling out over the next year, at least through to the elections, only because the United States is going to be focused on other things, or rather the Obama administration is going to be focused on other things.
But in terms of what North Korea could do, well, you know, I think that first we have to get back to the negotiating table to get some semblance of that February 29th agreement back together.
I don't think that's going to happen during this election year.
I don't think the Obama administration is interested in doing that.
But, you know, come December, come early January, it's very possible that we'll see another attempt to try to negotiate some kind of step forward.
Maybe by that time, you know, North Korea will have, you know, launched a successful satellite.
It's a possibility it will have conducted another nuclear test.
And obviously that's not going to make the Americans any happier.
But by December, it's conceivable that North Korea will be in a position where, you know, it's coming out of 2012.
It's demonstrated what it had to demonstrate to its population.
And now it's willing to sit down again at the negotiating table and work it out.
Is Warren Christopher still alive?
Maybe we could send him back over there and work this out.
I'm not sure if he's still alive, but I just ran into his speechwriter the other day.
He was the fellow who wrote the speech for Warren Christopher, Christopher, for the agreed framework in 1994.
Wow.
Right on.
Hey, well, that sounds like an anecdote that now we don't have time for because I flubbed it.
Anyway, thanks very much.
I appreciate you as always, John.
OK, thank you, Scott.
John Pfeffer, everybody.
Foreign policy focus, FPIF.org.
See you all tomorrow.
Thanks for listening.
