Page 2 of
2 Peace or appeasement with
Pyongyang? By Sung-Yoon
Lee
what they should focus on today.
And the presence of US troops in South Korea has
been and remains the greatest deterrent to North
Korean adventurism and the disruption of the
ongoing peace on the peninsula.
Ever since
North Korea joined the World Health Organization
in 1973 and thereby was able to open a diplomatic
mission in New York the next year, Pyongyang has
proposed bilateral peace negotiations with
Washington, all the while as it was sending an
assassin to kill South Korean president Park
Chung-hee that
summer (which led instead to
the death of his wife, Yuk Young-soo, and a
high-school student) and hacking to death two US
soldiers along the Demilitarized Zone just two
years later.
North Korea knows better than
any other that a peace treaty is just an agreement
on paper, one that often conceals the true hostile
intent of the signatory. At the same time, North
Korea calculates that the conclusion of such a
peace treaty with the US would create enormous
pressure for the eviction of US forces from the
South. With the signing of a peace treaty and all
the political spin celebrating the dawn of a new
era and genuine peace on the Korean Peninsula, the
very raison d'etre for US troops in South
Korea would vanish.
Even a cursory glance
at international history over the past century
shows us that a "peace treaty" among hostile
powers has all too frequently been little more
than a historical canard. Often, a peace treaty or
a non-aggression pact is patently useless in the
prevention of war, its putative goal.
Although not directly responsible for the
rise of Adolf Hitler, the prohibitively punitive
Versailles Peace Treaty in retrospect stands
rather unimpressively. The Kellogg-Briand Pact was
an international treaty providing for the
renunciation of war as an instrument of national
policy. At first it was signed by 15 nations in
Paris in August 1928, including Germany, France,
Japan, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, all which went to war in the course of the
next 15 years. Barely six months later, an
"Eastern European" version (otherwise known as
"Litvinov's Pact") was signed in Moscow among the
Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Latvia and Estonia.
And, of course, the most infamous, deceitful and
worthless "non-aggression pact" ever to have been
devised was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, better
known as the Stalin-Hitler Pact, conjured up and
signed in August 1939.
The United States
and Korea's regional neighbors may grow to learn
to live with a nuclear North Korea. Practiced in
the art of deception and well versed in nuclear
blackmail, North Korea will go on reaping rewards
from its powerful and wealthy neighbors as long as
it does not completely dismantle its nuclear
arsenal. For a state like North Korea that hangs
on the precipice of economic collapse, nuclear
blackmail is a necessary condition for regime
survival and the prevention of absorption by its
Southern neighbor. By condoning this extortion,
the US may ensure North Korea's survival. In turn,
this new situation implies the perpetuation of two
separate Korean regimes on the Korean Peninsula, a
policy that China favors and one that spells doom
for the terribly suffering and politically
persecuted people of North Korea.
Unbeknownst to the US, a peace treaty with
North Korea might briefly tip the balance of power
between the two Koreas in Pyongyang's favor. The
US may have the wherewithal to live with the
uncertainties of a nuclear North Korea. But
rushing to sign a peace treaty with Kim Jong-il
might lead to conditions that would break the de
facto peace that has existed on the peninsula for
more than half a century. Just as the absence of a
peace treaty between Moscow and Tokyo does not
imply an imminent war between Russia and Japan, an
armistice in place of a peace treaty between
Washington and Pyongyang does not imply the
breakdown of the peace on the Korean Peninsula.
At the very least, the ill-advised rush to
"peace" is a likely candidate for the historical
annals of self-destructive appeasement. The great
sacrifices made by Americans in the Korean War,
the legacy of the close US-South Korea
relationship over the past 60 years, and future US
strategic interests in and around the Korean
Peninsula should not be sacrificed at the altar of
diplomatic peace. Real peace is won by resolve and
sacrifice, while ephemeral peace is all too often
concocted only by vowels and consonants.
Dr Sung-Yoon Lee is a visiting
professor of Korean studies at Sogang University,
Seoul.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
