Trump’s options rapidly diminishing as he ramps up the rhetoric
THE morning after President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly that the US was prepared to destroy North Korea if necessary, I was in the Demilitarised Zone looking out over North Korea.
A paradise of lush green landscape and a river teaming with birdlife lay ahead in the 4km no man’s land, but underneath its natural beauty lies a sea of landmines, and blockaded secret tunnels that North Korea constructed in the 1970s in order to infiltrate the South and take it over. The third tunnel, discovered in 1978, could have secretly infiltrated 30 000 North Korean troops into Seoul in the space of an hour.
The situation in the DMZ was so tense this week that our specially arranged tour of the site of past negotiations between North and South had to be cancelled. The building lies precisely on the border line between North and the South in the heart of the DMZ, and guards now fear that the most minor of provocations could set off a war.
I had just finished a series of marathon meetings in Seoul the day before with North Korean policy experts. What was glaring was the lack of real concern about the possibility of a US attack on North Korea. To even the most informed, a conventional or nuclear attack by the US was simply unimaginable as South Korea would probably suffer just as many casualties, either from radiation or a retaliatory attack launched by North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.
They believe that Trump has at least minimal rationality, and would never play Russian roulette with the lives of millions of South Koreans in the name of US national interests.
What made the policy experts so confident is that a number of them had travelled to Washington last week, and been assured by officials in the US policy establishment that a military solution was not the way forward. Much of the US security establishment and state department would likely argue forcefully against any military solution to the North Korean crisis. They are all too mindful of the fallout after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The problem is that they just may be wrong when it comes to Trump’s intentions. Ultimately, Trump is the Commander-in-Chief of US forces, and his speech to the UN indicates that he is being driven by a sense of ensuring “good” triumphs over “evil”, and if that means the annihilation of an entire country if diplomacy fails, then so be it.
Whether Trump was grandstanding or not, it will be difficult to climb down from his threat to destroy North Korea if “Rocket Man”, as he calls him, continues down his “suicidal path towards self-destruction”.
What the North Korea experts could all agree on is that Kim will not stop his missile tests or his race to militarise nuclear warheads. Since the election of the new South Korean President, Moon Jae-In in May, who strongly advocated dialogue with the North, Kim has launched 10 missile tests, including a hydrogen bomb. There is nothing holding him back now, if anything Trump’s threats have egged him on to work even faster.
Even if South Korea’s policy experts don’t think a war is really coming to North Korea, South Koreans themselves are significantly more concerned. According to statistical surveys, previously 85% of South Koreans trusted the US president, but that has plummeted to 17%. Currently 70% are genuinely concerned about a possible war.
Pressed to comment on South Korea’s preparedness for nuclear war, the policy experts responded that South Korea was woefully underprepared.
Unlike Iran, North Korea, China and Russia, South Korea does not have an extensive and deep underground subway system that can double as nuclear bunkers with blast doors for thousands of people, capable of storing water and food supplies.
While the standard line among policy analysts in South Korea is that sanctions should be even further tightened, the reality is that even tighter sanctions are unlikely to deter or significantly slow down North Korea’s race to militarise its nuclear warheads.
Even during the worst human suffering in North Korea at the height of the great famine in the mid1990s which led to approximately 3 million dying of starvation, estimates are that the regime of Kim Jong-il spent US$6 billion on its military budget.
Despite existing UN sanctions against North Korea, the Bank of Korea says North Korea’s economy grew by 3.9% last year.
China and Russia will never allow a complete economic meltdown in North Korea as they have too much to lose in terms of refugees and instability, so they will probably keep the economy afloat one way or another.
So with few diplomatic options left to coerce North Korea into halting its provocations, what will Trump do at the sign of the next missile test, and then the next?
You can be sure that they are coming.