Are you willing to die for South Korea?

Geography still matters

Americans take the good fortunes of geography for granted.   We have some things to learn.

North and South Korea at night

The United States is protected on the east by the Atlantic, the west by the Pacific, the north by a land that will not support dense populations.   Our only neighbor that creates a threat of invasion is the land portion of the southern border.  

There is an irony there.  The Mexican border had been Spanish and Native American Indian from the Spanish Conquest of the early 16th century until the 1840s--some 320 years.  The United States concern now is that the area is once again reverting back to Spanish/Hispanic for the same primary reason it became Anglo 180 years ago: demography.  It is filling up with the same kind of people who possessed it for centuries.   

Americans give barely a thought to the great advantages of our own geography, including the great fertile center connected by the navigable Mississippi.   We take geography for granted.

So we give barely a thought to the great strategic advantage possessed by North Korea.  Americans perceive it as a tiny, poor, weak country, ruled by a blustering madman who holds power illegitimately.  In the back of American minds:  they haven't got the status to be a great power, one to be entrusted with nuclear weapons.  Russia and Pakistan might themselves have unreliable and irresponsible rogue governments--and some would say the USA as well--but at least these are large countries.

Americans have a lesson to learn and integrate.  Small countries can have special advantages.  Israel has its own, an extraordinary resource in human capital.  North Korea has its own: strategic location.  

North Korea will become--already is--a nuclear power for the simple reason that their location gives them hostages.   The Korean Conflict ended 65 years ago in a cease fire, leaving Korea divided.  It served Chinese and American interests at the time.  North Korea was a friendly-enough buffer state, keeping a western ally, South Korea, at arms length.  America stationed their own hostages in South Korea to keep the boundary secure.   An attack by China would instantly involve American troops and military bases.  They were a placeholder.  An attack to the north by an American/South Korean army would instantly engage China.  Therefore, both sides were held in check.  Peace.

For a refresher course on Korean history, the Korean War, and Korean geography, click here:  

Forty Maps to explain Korea

It was a happy enough result:  a stable border.  But there is a great problem that emerged over time.   South Korea got rich and populous, and North Korea's government retained power the way that strong-man governments do: by military power and monarchical succession.  Seoul, South Korea is one of the dozen or so great mega-cities of the world.  It is 30 miles from North Korea.  It is undefendable itself, which is why the US raised the stakes by stationing some 30,000 American troops there.   They are a bookmark.  They are hostages, along with the 20 million South Korean ally hostages, the people of northern South Korea.

I estimate that few Americans of non-Korean extraction care deeply about South Korea--deeply enough to think that it is a good trade to preserve South Korean independence in exchange for perhaps fifty million deaths--but the US has promised South Korea protection and walking away from that promise would mean American allies would realize that American guarantees are meaningless.  Americans don't want to die to save Seoul, but we are stuck.  North Korea has nuclear weapons because there is nothing anyone can do about it.  They have geography on their side as surely as the USA has the Mississippi River.

Somehow the Middle East survives with both Israel and Pakistan having nuclear weapons.  Currently Donald Trump is acting as if North Korea having them is impossible.  Taking nuclear weapons from North Korea is possible, but at the expense of at least 30,000 Americans, 20 million South Koreans, possibly 25 million Japanese, and tens or hundreds of million Americans in target cities.   This is true not because the USA is weak or irresolute.  Bill Clinton, George H. Bush, Barrack Obama, and presumably Donald Trump all confronted the same thing:  geography is on the side of North Korea.

What about China? Cannot they do something, anything?

Korea is to China somewhat as Israel is to the USA.  It is a bother, but it is mostly a bother for others.  Eventually Korea may re-unite rather as North and South Vietnam reunited, but such an event makes things worse for China rather than better.  A united Korea might well be prosperous and not inclined to be a quasi-client state of China.  North Korea can be managed.   A prosperous United Korea might not be.

Meanwhile, readers have sent me various suggestions on how to solve the great problem of North Korea.  My own sense is that it not a problem; it is a fait accompli.  Donald Trump acts and sounds as if he considers it an unacceptable outrage.  If it is that then Americans need to be prepared to pay the price.  Move from the cities, protect your family, get a bomb shelter.   Readers and correspondents have generally accepted the Trump view:  it is an outrage.  Maybe some tens of millions of people need to die.

Or we can live with it, like we live with Pakistan having nuclear weapons.

Reader Peter Coster in Virginia makes a suggestion:  Get China more involved.   It is their problem and their neighborhood, he says.   His suggestion has three presumptions:  one is that is in the interests of world peace that China and not North Korea be 30 miles from Seoul, since they are presumably going to be led by sounder leaders than Kim Jung Un.   Another is that it is in China's interest to remove North Korea as a buffer state.  And the third is that they actually can do it without creating a different war with millions of deaths.

Peter Coster is a retired trucking executive, an self-taught historian, and a progressive living in a red area of a purple state.  I consider him to reflect a certain kind of practical American can-do perspective.  If the course of action outlined below could, in fact, happen, it would be considered a good outcome by most Americans.  He considers nuclear war from a perspective on the beach in Virginia and Florida.   Readers contemplating a post-nuclear world are invited to read, by Nevil Shute, On The Beach, written in 1957.  He predicts it works out badly.

On the Beach

Solving the North Korea Mess:  a comment from Peter Coster

The key to the N. Korean problem is to somehow remove Kim Jong Un.  It could be done with bombs, but lots of innocent people would have to die, which would not endear us to many in the rest of the world and we would appear more like a conqueror than a liberator.  Typical United States stuff.

However, there is one other solution that might work.  Invite China to take it over.  Let the Chinese invade and make N. Korea part of the Chinese territory.  Although we are sort of enemies, they are at least responsible when it comes to nuclear weapons.  They seem to treat their own people fairly well and the ordinary N. Korean would most likely welcome the change.  We do trade with China and Western tourists frequent their cities. 

We should let China do it.  In fact, if they do it right, they would convince the N. Korean army to not resist.  Just let the Chinese army walk in and take over.  Execute Kim Jong Un on the spot.  Declare N. Korea a Chinese territory and give every N. Korean Chinese citizenship.  Boom. Done.  World breathes a sign of relief.  Trump takes the credit.

Of course, the deal would have to include a guarantee that China not interfere with S. Korea in any way.  We would support S. Korea with our full military force if China oversteps it's bounds.  I could see normal trading between the two countries, which would boost both their economies.  That area of the world would finally stabilize and would put everyone at ease.

Russia might object, but probably not too much.  It wouldn't make China any stronger, it just adds a little more territory.  Even Japan might be on board.

Something must be done and this is doable.  There isn't much downside to this idea, but the upside could be enormous.