Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, discusses N. Korea’s heated rhetoric after being blamed (and soon to be punished) for sinking a S. Korean warship, the strong motivation of all parties involved to ultimately find a peaceful settlement and the US intervention in yet another conflict halfway around the world.
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All right, y'all, it is Anti-War Radio Live on the Liberty Radio Network, and I got 10 minutes with Doug Bandow, so I'm going to get right to it.
He's the author of The Politics of Plunder, Tripwire, Korea, and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and Foreign Follies, America's New Global Empire.
He's formerly with AntiWar.com.
Now, back at the Cato Institute, welcome back to the show, Doug.
How are you, man?
Happy to be on.
Doing well.
I'm really happy to have you here.
All right, talk to me about North Korea.
What have you learned in the last month?
Well, the North Koreans seem ready to even commit an act of war if they think it will be helpful in stirring the pot, and they certainly have stirred the pot over in Korea.
Yeah, well, I mean, some of these headlines scare the hell out of me, but then again, it's the same old, same old from, I guess, all sides sort of threatening each other, and Hillary Clinton sounds about as belligerent as Kim Jong-il.
Yeah, the rhetoric that's being used is not news, so that doesn't surprise me.
We haven't seen any particular troop movements in the North.
I think Kim Jong-il is evil.
He's not stupid.
He's not going to start a war because he knows he'd lose it.
Yeah, well, then again, the South and the Americans would lose it too, wouldn't they?
Well, of course, everybody would lose, but at the end of the day, Kim Jong-il would be out of a job, and I think that's something which he clearly doesn't want.
So, you know, the good news there is I don't think he's very interested in trying to trigger things off where he figures he wouldn't be the last man standing.
All right, now, you know, on its face, when the news story broke, hey, South Korean ship sank for some reason.
It blew up and then went to the bottom of the sea.
I guess I was willing to just assume that, okay, it makes sense that the North Koreans shot it with a torpedo or something, and I was actually very pleased, we talked about on the show about how great it was that they weren't turning this into a Gulf of Tonkin incident and how, wow, you see, you can even have a ship sunk and you can shrug it off and not have a war.
You don't have to have a war every time you have an opportunity to have a war.
What a great example.
But then again, I already went too far.
I needed to stop and say, well, wait a minute.
What actually did happen to that boat?
Why should I believe necessarily that it happened the way any government says, South Korean, American or anything else?
I will add one thing here, which is that I got an email from a very informed military officer, a regular listener to this show, that said his speculation was it was a training accident, that they were shadowing this ship, and then they went, oops, fire, and hit the wrong button and accidentally really fired or something.
But anyway, I'll shut up and turn it over to you now, Doug.
Well, anything's possible.
I think what's interesting here is that in contrast to so often certainly American governments an excuse to go to war, everything I've seen suggests that the South Korean government really didn't want to turn this into a huge incident.
You know, they had been toughening up against the North.
They'd cut off some of the economic aid and whatnot.
But you get the feeling, you know, these are people who know that Seoul would be wrecked in any war.
So the South Koreans have a very clear incentive not to start a war.
So I think what we've seen on their side has been some real reluctance there.
And it looks like, you know, the local elections, actually, the ruling party hoped to do well.
It didn't do well.
You see amongst the Korean public, you know, no interest at all in belligerent policies.
So do you have any reason to suspect the story about what it was that happened here?
I know I'm trying to think of the particulars, but there was something by Jeff Stein over there, the great heroic Jeff Stein, who's now a blogger at the Washington Post, saying that there were some intelligence officials who were not so convinced that the North Koreans obviously shot a torpedo at this boat at all.
Well, there are folks out there who've spun a lot of stories.
I mean, there are some Japanese who think that it was probably, you know, who surmised maybe an American ship ran into it.
I mean, there's some speculation about an American ship, which actually turned up, you know, that was not in an accident.
You know, you have South Koreans who've raised questions.
You've had Americans who've raised questions.
I find the explanation that they've given, you know, certainly very plausible.
I mean, evidence in terms of a torpedo and whatnot.
So I'm, and frankly, it fits with what we see with North Korea, and that I can come up with reasons why they might do it, even though I'm a bit surprised given the fact over the last 20 years, they seem to have been more rhetorical brinkmanship than anything else.
You know, to my mind, you know, the real issue here is why are we involved?
I mean, this is a Korean problem.
It shouldn't be an American problem.
You know, we shouldn't have to be worrying about who on the Korean peninsula, you know, is sinking ships.
This just shouldn't be an American issue.
Oh, boy.
There's some reason spoken on the show today.
Well, look, the entire population of Washington, D.C. sees it different, that America has to be involved in every dispute in the world, no matter how minor, to prevent them from becoming big disputes.
And that, geez, you know, Doug, if we had it your way, they'd probably be at war right now.
If we weren't there keeping them from being at war.
No, of course, that's such a very strange sentiment.
You know, if you believe that, you have to believe that America has managed to come up with, you know, allies that are completely helpless all around the world.
I mean, you know, the real issue, and I keep asking and nobody ever gives me a good answer to is, you know, why aren't the South Koreans, you know, doing what they need to do to defend themselves?
I mean, they're far bigger, bigger population, larger economy, you know, I mean, international contacts.
I don't understand this theory that the only thing that can protect South Korea is America.
And you find that same theory with Japan, there's been this big controversy over Okinawa, and people act as if we have to have Marines in Okinawa to stop the Chinese from apparently conquering Japan.
I mean, it's flaky.
It's very bizarre.
But these kind of things are used to justify American intervention.
I'm happy to give them, you know, an American alliance in 1953 and say, fine, we don't have to refight the past.
Yeah, let them have it then.
But what on earth are we doing in 2010, arguing that South Korea is helpless when faced with this utterly bankrupt kind of wrecked, you know, economy to the north?
Yeah, well, and you know, I think it's worth pointing out that the Bush administration lied and pretended to have evidence that the North Koreans were secretly enriching uranium, which there's not one atom of evidence anywhere on the face of the earth to this day that says that that was correct.
When they did make nukes, they made them out of plutonium.
But that's the story.
Bush accused them falsely, withdrew from the agreed framework, created the proliferation security initiative, put new sanctions on them and drove them out of the nonproliferation treaty and out of their safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
And only then did they begin making nuclear weapons.
And, you know, to paraphrase John Bolton talking with AIPAC on a conference call about Iran, he said he was very disappointed that Iran had not withdrawn from the treaty, that he was using the same strategy to try to beat them over the head to get them out the way it worked so well with the North Koreans, Doug.
Well, obviously, what you have here are very hawkish policies that have that very counterproductive effect.
I mean, the irony with the Bush administration is they spend most of the time in office refusing to talk to the North Koreans, apparently thinking that would achieve something.
And then once it completely failed, then they decided to do some talking to the North Koreans.
And that didn't work very well either.
And they really left us in a place where there isn't much of a policy going on at all.
And frankly, this is kind of what you'd expect.
This is, you know, that was an administration that thought you could bomb or invade your way to victory.
And what they found in Iraq, of course, was, unfortunately, that America can't impose its will and look at the big mess they made.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so bottom line here, because we are short on time, I know you got to go, but tell me to relax and breathe a sigh of relief.
And this is not going to come to anything, just like it never does.
Look, the good news is I don't think anybody really wants a war in the Korean Peninsula.
The South Koreans certainly don't, because they would end up, even if they were nominally on the victorious side, you know, Seoul would be a wreck.
The North Koreans don't want a war.
I don't think this administration does either.
They're too busy elsewhere.
So I think you can relax.
Yeah.
And China's staying out of it, too.
All right.
Thanks, Doug.
Appreciate everybody.
That's the great Doug Bandow from the Cato Institute.
We'll be right back.
LibertyRadioNetwork.com.
