05/25/10 – John Feffer – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, that was Crispus Attucks.
It's Antiwar Radio Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
I'm Scott Horton.
I appreciate y'all listening to the show today.
And now it's time to welcome John Pfeffer back to the show.
Let's see.
John Pfeffer's biography.
He's co-director of foreign policy and focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.
You can find what he writes oftentimes at the Huffington Post.
He taught a graduate-level course on international conflict at a university in Seoul, South Korea that I can't pronounce, and delivered lectures at a variety of academic institutions, including New York University, Hofstra, Union College, Cornell University, and Sophia University in Tokyo.
He's been widely interviewed in print and on radio.
And his biography goes on like that.
Check out his website, johnpfeffer.com.
And the latest at the Huffington Post is called U.S. Allies, We Want Space.
Welcome back to the show, John.
How are you?
Fine.
Thanks for having me on the show.
Well, I really appreciate you joining us today.
And please just give us a rundown real quick here of the news as far as, I guess I'll start you off with the South Koreans put out an official report saying, yes, it was in fact a North Korean torpedo that sank their battleship.
And then the consequences started flowing.
Tell us what's going on.
Sure.
Well, there was an incident back in March where the Cheongnam, a South Korean ship went down and 46 sailors were killed.
It was unclear what had happened.
The initial report suggested that it might have been a mine.
It might have been an internal explosion.
But the South Korean government said, we're not sure.
We're investigating this.
We will produce a report eventually.
And so this report has just come out and it has rather explosive findings in it as a result of not only the investigations they did in March and April, but even most recently, the discovery of an actual fragment from the torpedo.
They determined that it was of North Korean origin and the evidence is pretty strong.
There are markings on the fragment that suggests that it is of North Korean origin.
And there are other pieces of evidence, including propellant that matches between the torpedo and what's left of the ship.
And as a result, basically South Korea said it's suspending all economic relations, with one exception.
We can go into that later.
But it's suspending all economic relations with North Korea and it's banning North Korea's use of South Korean shipping lanes.
It's going to the UN Security Council where it's going to ask for condemnation of the country and harsher sanctions.
It's gotten the US basically to sign on to this.
And it is, in combination with the United States, pushing on China to agree to all this.
North Korea, meanwhile, has denied that it is responsible for this.
And it has just recently decided to suspend from its side all relations with South Korea and to kick out all South Koreans that are in the country.
That's where we stand right now.
All right.
Now, I guess the most optimistic thing here is that nobody wants war on the Korean Peninsula, right?
Cooler heads are going to prevail.
Not even Dick Cheney wanted to blow up that place.
That's correct.
And South Korea, of course, is the aggrieved party here.
And the South Korean government has basically gone on the record that it doesn't want military retaliation.
The South Korean public, when it's been polled, has been basically two to one against any kind of military response.
Am I right to believe, think, that I know that the North Koreans could basically reduce Seoul to rubble with their thousands or tens of thousands of artillery tubes that they have on the DMZ there?
That is the conventional explanation.
There might be some doubt as to whether North Korea has kept up its artillery positions to quite the capabilities that they were at, say, a decade or two decades ago.
But basically, that's something that we've been operating according to an assumption we've been using as an operating assumption, that if provoked, North Korea could respond very quickly and cause tremendous damage, not only to South Korea, but also to Japan as well.
All right.
I see here, also from the Huffington Post, I was looking at your page and there's a headline here, China brushes off Clinton's call for action against North Korea.
So it doesn't sound like this is going to go anywhere in the Security Council, despite her best efforts, huh?
China's been very reluctant to push North Korea to the wall.
It was very angry when North Korea tested the second nuclear bomb back in last spring.
And it actually went along with the United States and other countries in condemning North Korea and also tightening sanctions.
But I think China recognizes that North Korea is really at the precipice right now.
And it doesn't want to promote any greater instability right now in the region.
So I think China is very reluctant to go along with the United States and South Korea on any significant sanctions or any significant condemnation.
Though I think China is upset and I think China has communicated that to North Korea.
But for the time being, the official position of the Chinese is that we need to investigate this more and really emphasize negotiation.
Well, you know, it's funny when this thing happened, you know, what do I know about battleships?
Nothing.
It sort of seemed to me like, yeah, of course it was sank by some kind of bomb or torpedo or mine or something.
It was a battleship.
Those things don't just fall to the bottom of the ocean for no reason at all.
And yet it seemed like the South Koreans and maybe even the Americans from the beginning took a very anti-Gulf of Tonkin incident type of spin on this.
Oh, gee, we have no idea why our battleship might have sank.
We're going to look into it for a month and a half or so.
It seemed like they were really trying to, you know, cool off emotions a little bit before they came out with the obvious truth here, right?
Absolutely.
I mean, there are two major reasons.
One is because it's an embarrassment to the South Korean military that a submarine managed to elude its defenses and sink one of its ships.
And the second is economic.
The stock market is already responding very negatively to this news.
And I think South Korea is very sensitive to the possibility that its economy suffers as a function of this.
I don't know.
I mean, I see some of these headlines are kind of scary where South Korea cuts off all trade and, you know, harsh words back and forth.
Is this thing going to blow over?
Tell me it's going to blow over, John.
I would like to believe that it's going to blow over.
Because, you know, you talked about there isn't a great deal of interest right now among any of the parties to go to war.
South Korea has already gone on the record that this, you know, is something they want to handle diplomatically.
The United States is quite risk averse in this situation and is already involved in a number of other conflicts around the world.
It's overstretched at the moment.
Both China and Russia are very concerned about the situation.
They're going to do as much as they can to push things in the direction of diplomacy.
Japan, you know, is preoccupied with the base issue and upcoming elections.
I don't see them pushing a harder line.
North Korea, you know, has reacted very strongly.
It said that if there is any military retaliation, they will consider it an act of war.
But, you know, North Korea routinely makes such proclamations.
So I don't see it necessarily as any indication that North Korea is prepared to take this to the next level.
So we saw something similar after, again, the explosion of the second nuclear device last year by North Korea.
And there was a tremendous amount of concern.
There was a tremendous amount of activity in the Security Council.
And at that point, everybody had lined up against North Korea, including both China and Russia.
And eventually, people moved back from the edge.
And this is a serious incident.
There's no question about it.
I mean, this is the largest loss of life in any incident between North and South Korea since the Korean War, which is celebrating or commemorating, rather, its 60th year.
So it's a very serious incident.
But I trust that because it's not in the interests of any of the parties concerned, that they will step away from the precipice.
All right.
Now, everybody knows that Kim Jong-il is a ruthless dictator.
I guess all dictators are ruthless by definition there.
He's the worst kind of despot.
But is he crazy the way they portray him in Team America World Police?
No, I don't think he's any crazy.
He's crazier than, you know, other leaders of countries, and I actually think it requires a certain pathology at this point in the modern age to be a leader of a country.
But that aside, I think he obviously has the taste of a dictator in his personal life.
He crushes dissent rather ruthlessly within the country.
But when you're looking at how he acts internationally, I would say he acts rather rationally, given what his circumstances are.
In other words, we're talking about a very weak country that has seen virtually all of its allies abandon it during the last couple of decades.
It has basically put all of its chips in one place, and that's its nuclear program to function as a deterrent to prevent any other country from invading it.
But the economy is still in very poor shape, and the affections of the population are murky at best.
It's not clear whether anybody in the country owes allegiance to Kim Jong-il as they once did to his father, Kim Il-sung.
So given that situation, I think Kim Jong-il is acting according to the poor hand that he's been dealt, and that has in the past been a series of provocative actions to get world attention and to improve North Korea's bargaining place at the table.
I think he might have overreached himself with this particular act.
It's one thing to launch a missile, it's one thing to test a nuclear device, it's one thing to make a provocative statement, but to actually sink a ship from South Korea, that comes very close to the line, and he might have miscalculated in terms of his ability to turn something like this into an opportunity.
You know, I got an email from a guy who's a military officer, and I guess was just sort of referring back to events in the American Navy that he knew of, where he said that his most likely explanation of what happened there was that it was a training accident, that the North Koreans probably were shadowing this ship and accidentally fired a real torpedo at it.
Oops!
That kind of thing happens apparently when navies are training pretty often.
Well, if that's the case, then it's kind of incumbent upon South Korea and the United States to give North Korea an out on this issue.
In other words, North Korea said, look, we want to see the evidence.
So we got to show them the evidence.
And then we give them an opportunity to say, you know, we've checked our records.
And it turns out that, as you say, the scenario transpires, that during one of the routine exercises someone pushed the wrong button.
We've identified who that person is, and we have relieved them of their command.
And that would be one way out of this situation.
Yep.
No, that sounds good.
Although, then again, you know, you let Hillary Clinton do it, it's going to be an ultimatum form like, you know, Austria-Hungary threatening to invade Serbia if they don't cough up the black hand.
You know?
Well, fortunately, I don't think it'll be in kind of the State Department or the Obama administration's hands.
I mean, it really is South Korea's decision whether to accept North Korea's request for an evaluation of the evidence.
I know it might be difficult for South Korea to invite North Koreans to Seoul for this, but I think it is possible to do it in a neutral location, whether that's somewhere in Europe or even perhaps in New York at the UN.
And there, the United States could play a positive role as a broker for such a solution.
All right.
Now, you mentioned North Korea's nuclear weapons.
They did two tests, and I guess my best understanding is that both of them were semi-failures.
Is there any evidence that these people have figured out actually how to do an implosion, plutonium nuke?
Mm-hmm.
Well, the first test was clearly a failure.
The second one was an improvement.
So you know, they clearly got some information out of their failure, because you learn from failures, and they improved with the second test.
My guess is they would improve with the third one, were they to go ahead with one.
But it's not entirely clear that they've perfected this technology.
Certainly perfected it sufficiently to put together a weapon that is operational, and certainly they haven't demonstrated that they've been able to put together the technology to deliver such a weapon.
I mean, obviously, they could put it in a suitcase and bring it somewhere, but I'm talking about making a bomb that could be dropped from a plane, or as a nose cone to a missile.
We have no evidence that North Korea has mastered that technology, which requires miniaturization, and in terms of a missile, kind of guidance technology that so far, with their previous missile tests, they've demonstrated that they don't have.
So right now, I don't think they have to worry so much about their nuclear capability.
As I said, I think it functions largely as a deterrent, and that's how North Korea sees it rather than as a robust, you know, weapon that can be used in wartime.
Yeah.
Well, a minor point there.
Gordon Prather says there is no such thing as a suitcase nuke.
The smallest portable battlefield artillery shell, tactical nuclear weapons the Americans ever developed could fit in the trunk of a Lincoln town car, probably.
That's right.
A big suitcase, if we're talking suitcases.
Right.
Okay.
I'm pretty sure you can answer this one.
It's just a point of confusion and clarification for me, because I don't remember anymore.
I know that in 2002, John Bolton and his State Department guys claimed that a North Korean minister at a cocktail party admitted that they had been secretly enriching uranium with equipment that they got from the Pakistanis, and I think we all know that there still remains no shred of evidence, no atom of uranium anywhere to show that that's actually true.
But then Bush announced that he was withdrawing from the agreed framework of 1994, I think in the fall of 2002, but it wasn't until the spring of 2003 that the North Koreans finally said that's it, we're withdrawing from the NPT and kicking the IAEA out of the country.
And I seem to remember that there were two or three more things that Bush and Bolton did to beat them over the head, to force them out of the NPT, as Bolton admitted he was trying to get Iran to do.
But I can't remember what it was anymore.
There's a three or four month gap in my narrative.
Help me out.
Well, there was the construction of the PSI, Proliferation Security Initiative, which was the kind of coalition of the willing that was designed to kind of draw a cordon sanitaire around North Korea, to prevent it from shipping anything of value militarily out or importing anything in.
There was some attempt to get South Korea and China to join PSI, but they were not interested at the time.
China still is not, but South Korea, as a result of this current incident, has decided to join PSI.
So that's definitely one thing.
There were additional sanctions that were put on North Korea as a result of the accusations that it was participating in a highly enriched uranium program.
I think those are the major things.
There was, of course, the Axis' evil comment, but that was before.
There was Banco Delta Asia.
What was that?
Banco Delta Asia, that was the freezing of North Korean assets at a Chinese bank, and that came along somewhat later.
But it was particularly what looked to be a promising development in negotiations between North Korea and other countries.
The current Bush administration's Treasury Department, acting in some sense by itself, although it obviously must have gotten some approval from the higher up officials, froze these assets, and North Korea was furious, and some negotiations fell apart at that point as well.
And that was before they withdrew from the NPT?
No, no, that was after.
I knew that there was more in there, I just didn't remember what it was.
But yeah, the additional sanctions in the creation of the PSI posse, as Gordon Prather called it.
In fact, I'd like to go ahead and take the opportunity to recommend a great article by Gordon Prather called, How Bush Pushed North Korea to Nukes, which is, I think, his best treatment of this particular issue.
But thanks for clearing that up, because I knew all that, but my mind's kind of fuzzy sometimes, especially this early in the morning West Coast time.
Okay, now I'm sorry, we only got four minutes here, John, but please talk to me about the capitulation of the Japanese government to the American empire there at Okinawa last week.
Sure, well, it's connected, because the Hatoyama government in Tokyo basically said, as a result of the Chonan incident, the sinking of the ship, Japan recognizes that this is a dangerous neighborhood in Northeast Asia, and they're going to have to go ahead and accept the U.S. plan to close down Futenma base and relocate it to another location in Okinawa.
And that's likely going to be the final determination of the current government in Tokyo at the end of May.
And now, I mean, this guy had sworn, I mean, this is how he got elected, right?
He's going to get us out of there.
That's right.
He made a promise to the Japanese population, and to Okinawans in particular, that he was going to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Okinawa, that they would close the Futenma base, and they would not open a new base, it would not relocate it within Okinawa Prefecture.
He got immediate pushback from Washington, Robert Gates went over there and put a lot of pressure on him.
Obama administration basically froze out the new prime minister, and that pressure had been building for months and months.
And finally, Hatoyama basically capitulated, even though the Japanese public still backed the proposals that the DPJ made when it was running for office.
Yeah, there's a picture of, well, we talked about last week on the show, how I think it was 17,000 people all held hands and surrounded the base, peacefully and quietly, and said get out.
And then here's a very compelling picture in the New York Times here under the headline Japan relents on U.S. base on Okinawa.
And everyone's just standing there silent with yellow pieces of paper written on it in Japanese, anger.
After the announcement that the airbase would remain on the island, the caption says there.
Got a million angry people in Okinawa.
They're very upset.
I mean, they could understand, perhaps, why Washington wouldn't listen to them.
It doesn't make them happy, but they were just completely outraged that Tokyo doesn't listen to them.
Is it right that Okinawa actually has kind of always been imperialized and occupied by Japan's kind of Tokyo central government itself?
And they've always kind of been treated second class.
Now they're third class because they're the ones who get inflicted with the permanent American occupation as well.
Is that right?
That's correct.
I mean, except for that period of time between 1945 and 1972, when Okinawa was basically a protectorate of the United States.
So the Okinawans just had the taste of colonial policies coming from Tokyo and from Washington.
They unfortunately combine around this U.S. military base issue.
All right, everybody.
That's Jon Pfeffer.
He's the co-founder of Foreign Policy and Focus.
And he's the author of North Korea, South Korea, Power Trip, Living in Hope, Shock Waves and the Future of U.S.
-Korean Relations.
Check out his website at JonPfeffer.com and you can also read him at the Huffington Post.
Thanks very much for your time on the show today.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.