World War Trump
Page 19
In Trump's September 2017 UN speech, Trump threatened to “totally destroy” the state of North Korea and its population of 26 million, in rhetoric that went way beyond the George W. Bush's threats to Pyongyang in his “Axis of Evil” speech (in which Bush aimed to engage in regime change in the name of democracy). In addition to effectively blaming the North Korean people for not standing up to overthrow Kim Jung Un (“If the righteous many don't confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph”), Trump criticized the North Korean leader in an apparently improvised attack—against the advice of his advisers, who argued that Kim would take such comments personally. Trump dubbed Kim a “rocket man…on a suicide mission.” Not surprisingly, Pyongyang then boosted rhetoric against the “mentally deranged US dotard” by threatening to detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.34 However, it appears that Trump cannot handle personal insults very maturely either: In addition to signing an executive order to introduce new sanctions against those who trade with or finance Pyongyang, Trump upped the ante by flying B-1 Stealth bombers and F-15s to the farthest point north of the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) that any US fighter or bomber aircraft has flown since the George W. Bush administration, according to the Pentagon.35 (See chapter 9.)
MISSILE DEFENSES
Both Beijing and Moscow have opposed the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) missile-defense system on Japanese and South Korean territory. THAAD is viewed as representing a means to counter China's strategic missile deterrent though a potential preemptive strike. And to the south and west, China also sees as a major threat India's deployment of sophisticated BrahMos cruise missiles in areas of Arunachal Pradesh that are close to disputed borders with China. At the time of this writing, Japan has purchased the Patriot and Aegis antimissile systems, among others, but has not yet decided to purchase the THAAD system.
In denouncing North Korean provocations, which are in large part intended to break US alliances with Japan and South Korea, Trump proposed accelerating the deployments of missile defense systems for Japan and South Korea.36 The United States had already begun to deploy advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense systems in South Korea, with the backing of the interim South Korean government, prior to the election of President Moon Jae-in. When the decision to deploy THAAD was announced, Chinese relations with South Korea plummeted—despite the US caveat that the MD systems would be designed only to counter North Korean missiles. Nevertheless, Beijing began an unofficial boycott of South Korean products. Both Beijing and Pyongyang have purportedly augmented cyber-attacks against South Korea.37
From Beijing's perspective, the THAAD deployments symbolized a closer defense relationship among the United States, South Korea, and Japan. The United States additionally appears to be forging an encircling alliance against China in the Indo-Pacific by also reaching out for defense accords with Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and China's major rival, India. Both Beijing and Moscow fear that US advances in missile defenses and radar systems, coupled with the speed and accuracy of US nuclear missiles, could permit Washington to launch preemptive strikes. Both Moscow and Beijing have accordingly engaged in overflights designed to test US-Japanese defense capabilities, but such actions appear to be further militarizing Japan.
In addition to the political-corruption scandals that confronted the government of South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who was impeached and forced to step down, the THAAD deployment is generally not popular among the South Korean population—even though Beijing's meddling in the affair may possibly have led more people to accept it. Trump himself further exacerbated domestic tensions in South Korea by stating that South Korea must pay $1.1 billion for the THAAD—an issue that US officials tried to downplay. In effect, South Korea would have to pay for a system that protects Seoul, but the THAAD system that would protect US forces from attack would be “free,” as the United States would pay for it!38 One can imagine that Trump might not have been happy with that prospect either.
The winner of the South Korean presidential elections in May 2017, Moon Jae-in, initially stated that he would reconsider Seoul's previous agreement to host the THAAD, if possible—given the fact that the corrupt Park government and the United States had rushed to sign the contract. But by September 2017, he reversed his previous stance and agreed to limited THAAD deployments, despite public opposition.39 President Moon Jae-in has likewise hoped to bring back former president Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy, which sought greater diplomatic and political-economic engagement with Pyongyang. He has also sought to revive the Kaesong industrial project that involved South Korean investment in North Korea. If possible, he would like to engage in direct talks.40
To help improve relations with North Korea, Moon hopes to encourage greater South Korean investment in Russia, in the hope that by reaching out to Moscow, the latter would help facilitate a new dialogue between Seoul and Pyongyang. Japan and now South Korea both appear to have adopted a more cooperative approach to dealing with Moscow. This position opposes US and European sanctions on Russia. At the same time, Moon Jae-in wants to press for greater South Korean input into Trump's America First policy orientation as it relates to Seoul's interests.
Here it cannot be ruled out that Moscow might want to play the game of spoiler, in taking advantage of disputes between China and North Korea. Moscow could then seek to expand its economic and financial cooperation with North Korea, which has included support for transportation networks, fuel supplies, and employment. But it appears unlikely that Moscow would support North Korea to the extent that it would alienate Beijing. More likely, the two powers would pursue a more coordinated approach, much as they did with the Iranian nuclear question. (See chapter 9.)
Before the April 2017 Chinese-American summit, Trump appeared convinced that China could do much more than not just purchase North Korean coal exports—in order to change North Korea's nuclear policy. Yet Chinese President Xi was said to give Trump a ten-minute lecture on relations between China and North Korea. The lecture appeared to convince Trump how difficult it was for China to pressure North Korea: “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power over North Korea…But it's not what you would think.”41
Washington has accused Chinese companies of supplying North Korea with European- and Chinese-made dual-use and military technology and hardware. Washington has demanded that these sales be stopped, given estimations that show that trade between China and North Korea has increased and that secondary banks continue to provide North Koreans with loans. At the same time, Beijing and Washington have reportedly begun to share intelligence, which could permit the interdiction of arms and other illicit trade to North Korea.42
As previously discussed, soon after the US missile strikes on Syria, on April 15, 2017, North Korea displayed new weaponry—which included what appeared to be a new ICBM and a new submarine-launched ballistic missile—during the Day of the Sun military parade. The Day of the Sun parade celebrated the birthday of North Korea's founder, Kim Il-Sung, who had launched the Korean War in 1950, with Soviet and Chinese backing.
Just after Pyongyang displayed its new weaponry, Washington tested an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from Vandenberg Air Force Base off the coast of California as part of a series of testing.43 Then, in May 2017, the Pentagon deployed two supersonic B-1B Lancer bombers to conduct military operations with Japan and South Korea. The United States has furthermore engaged in major military exercises with South Korea that North Korea had ritually denounced as provocative.
In regard to US military actions, China has repeatedly asked that the Pentagon stop such exercises, in order to reach a peace accord. In April 2017, when the United States appeared to be threatening an attack on North Korea, Beijing warned Trump not to engage in a Syrian-like strike against North Korean nuclear facilities—as Pyongyang would most likely strike back against South Korea, Japan, and/or US bases in the region. At the same tim
e, despite their 1961 mutual assistance clause, it was not clear whether Beijing would be obliged to assist North Korea in the case of a US attack. This is true given Beijing's view that Pyongyang's development of nuclear weapons appears to represent a breach in their bilateral pact.44 Nevertheless, there is still a danger that Pyongyang will try to draw Beijing to support North Korea against Washington.
One way for North Korea to draw in China for support in case of war would be to expand the conflict to as many countries as possible. North Korea has accordingly hoped to build missiles as rapidly as possible to penetrate US, South Korean, and Japanese missile defenses. This can be accomplished by firing multiple missiles in rapid succession or simultaneously—in a tactic called “salvo fire.” Enough simultaneous launches could then overwhelm the THAAD missile defense system, which requires that several antimissiles be fired in order to be assured that a missile will be destroyed, and hence increase the possibility that a nuclear missile could reach its target in South Korea.45 Patterns in North Korea's missile testing behavior since 2014 indicate the regime's possible intention of deploying nuclear weapons to missile units throughout the country.46
At what point North Korea might use nuclear weapons is not certain, but Pyongyang appears to want to make a war as destructive as possible, in the hope that this will force its opponents to seek peace on North Korean terms. And attacking South Korea's twenty-four nuclear power plants with conventional weapons, for example, could prove an option. Even given the heavy damages that the United States inflicted upon North Korea during its invasion of the south in 1950, through the use of Napalm, for example, Pyongyang continued its struggle until 1953, until Stalin's death. Because there has never been a peace treaty between the North and South, Pyongyang has been preparing for the next round of conflict ever since. Yet a war could result in 1 million casualties, at the cost of $1 trillion. And it could go nuclear.47
Given the fact that North Korea wants formal recognition as a “nuclear state,”48 the major question for the Trump administration is whether the era of “strategic patience” is truly “over” as Vice President Mike Pence declared.49 Should the Trump administration attempt preemptive strikes now, at the risk of a very bloody war? Or should it engage in diplomacy that is intended to freeze Pyongyang's nuclear program where it is in 2017—as it appears unlikely that North Korea will totally denuclearize, at least in the near future?
The problem is that multilateral talks have yet not gone anywhere. The efforts of the six-party talks (between the United States, Japan, Russia, China, South Korea, and North Korea) to achieve peace ended in 2009. Tensions between North and South Korea since the end of the Cold War appear to be surging—and particularly once North Korea repeatedly tested nuclear weapons in 2006, 2009, 2013, and 2016. North Korean nuclear and missile threats, China's reluctance to drop North Korea as an ally, China's coercive tactics in the South China Sea, plus its military buildup aimed primarily at Taiwan, are all factors that are seen by Trump as threatening war in the Indo-Pacific.
WAR WITH NORTH KOREA? AND WITH CHINA?
Trump appears ready to extend Obama's “rebalancing to Asia” policy (originally called by Obama the “pivot to Asia”) with his Peace through Strength buildup of US military power in the region, as illustrated by his November 2017 visit to the region. But here, Trump appears to be taking a more forward-deployed stance than did Obama. Trump appears to be directly threatening North Korea with unilateral preemptive strikes instead of engaging in Obama's neo-realist strategy of “offshore balancing.”50 This latter, more defensive, approach uses regional allies to counter China and North Korea, while relying on a large offshore US naval presence in the Asia-Pacific region to deter a threatened attack. By contrast, as part of a forked strategy, while pursuing a forward military approach that threatens Pyongyang, Trump has hoped to influence China to engage in quiet diplomacy with North Korea.
The dilemma is that Trump's efforts to engage a reluctant China in diplomacy with North Korea could lead Beijing to demand considerable concessions from Washington in exchange. Moreover, China sees US policies at fault and has urged Washington to engage in direct bilateral diplomacy with Pyongyang, which will in effect legitimize the regime. Washington has been afraid that direct diplomacy will not lead North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program.
Furthermore, given Trump's ideology of “economic nationalism” and his threats of a trade war with China, there is a real danger that Washington will not respond to Chinese political-economic demands due to Beijing's ostensible lack of assistance on the North Korean question, and that a Sino-American economic war could break out. China then could decide not to buy American products, and instead choose European products, such as Airbus over Boeing, for example. China has already been slowly selling American treasuries and can continue to do so if it begins to establish new markets in the Asia-Pacific through the Chinese-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which could soon represent the largest market in the world without US participation, while Beijing concurrently tightens its political-economic and military alliance with Russia. (See chapter 1.)
If tensions grow even greater, Beijing could begin to threaten Taiwan by cutting off joint economic agreements. It could further increase the number of intermediate-range nuclear missiles aimed at Taiwan, while militarizing islands and strategic positions in the South China Sea by deploying air-defense systems and advanced fighter jets on a number of China's artificially constructed islands. And if China threatens to attack Taiwan, Taipei has threatened to attack the massive Three Gorges Dam in return so as to flood vast areas.
These actions and threats could be combined with a formal declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea, much like how Beijing had established an ADIZ in the East China Sea in late 2013.51 Beijing, along with North Korea and Russia, could augment its cyber-attacks against private corporations, financial institutions, government agencies, and military and intelligence networks in the United States.
And, finally, if tensions really escalate, Beijing could decide not to sanction North Korea, while increasing Chinese economic aid (and possibly covert military aid) to Pyongyang.52 In such a way, an economic war could lead to a military conflict with both North Korea and China—as China has not given up its goal to unify with Taiwan, by force, if necessary.
The above sketch of the possible outbreak of war in Asia is of course hypothetical and hopefully will not take place. Nevertheless, after Trump's visits Asia in November 2017, a number of key questions remain: How might US frictions with China over Taiwan and North Korea, among other political-economic issues, impact the Sino-Russian relationship? Will Trump's policy toward China bring Russia and China even closer together? Or will Trump be able to draw Beijing and Moscow away from closer defense ties, if not an alliance? Will all three powers cooperate with Japan and South Korea as well, to prevent North Korea from wreaking havoc?
In sum, it is crucial for the United States to find ways to work with South Korea to open the doors to discussions with the North. Concurrently, Washington must engage with both China and Russia in such a way that not only seeks a peaceful resolution to the disputes with North Korea, but also concurrently sets the stage for a more fundamental rapprochement between the United States, Japan, China, and Russia as well. And as multilateral diplomacy between the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and China with North Korea progresses, Trump will eventually need to meet directly with Kim Jung Un in order to mend relations and provide security assurances that the US will not attempt to destabilize or overthrow the regime.
But is the flip-flop Trump administration and presently demoralized State Department capable of such a sophisticated diplomatic engagement in the quest for peace? (See chapter 9.)
It has been estimated by different sources that the ongoing war in Syria has killed between 321,358 and 470,000 people and has turned millions into internal or external refugees, as of July 2017.1 Some 13.5 million people require
humanitarian assistance, including 4.6 million who are trapped in besieged and hard-to-reach areas, as of September 2017.2
The possibility that the conflict could provoke a major power conflagration is illustrated by the shooting down of a Russian military aircraft by NATO member Turkey in November 2015 as a Russian jet passed out of Turkish airspace. US efforts to coordinate effective military actions among the partners in the Global Coalition against Daesh (Islamic State), which was formed in September 2014, and which possesses 73 partners,3 have proved difficult, to say the least. This is true given the fact that many coalition partners oppose Jabhat al-Nusra (or al-Nusra Front), an al-Qaeda affiliate, and the Islamic State, as well as the Assad regime, while some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, have been accused of secretly supporting either the al-Nusra Front or the Islamic State, or ignoring private funding that supports or trades with those terrorist organizations.4 In addition, Israel, for example, is not a coalition member, yet it periodically intervenes militarily in Syria, primarily against Hezbollah, when Tel Aviv sees its interests being threatened, while Iran, which is not a member of the coalition, supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and other Shi'a militias in Syria and Iraq. Concurrently, Turkey, which is a member of the coalition, has opposed US military support for Kurdish militias that are fighting against IS in Syria and Iraq. While most NATO member countries have participated in the Global Coalition against Daesh, it was not until the May 2017 NATO summit that NATO countries agreed to engage in that Global Coalition as a collective NATO operation. This represented a political statement designed, in large part, to obtain greater political support for NATO from Donald Trump, who had been highly critical of what he saw as NATO's lack of participation in the Global War on Terrorism. (See chapters 4 and 5.)