We’re At War
There has been considerable concern voiced about going to war with North Korea. In point of fact, however, the Afghanistan War is not the longest conflict in American History. We’ve been at war with North Korea since the 1950s. We may have agreed to a cease fire, but neither we nor the North Koreans ever sighed a peace treaty. Korea, it would appear, never stopped fighting that war and is in the process of upgrading its arsenal for the purpose of defeating us.
The United Nations Security Council has come down on our side and imposed stiff sanctions on Un’s country. According to UN Ambassador Haley, they amount to choking off seventy percent of the North’s foreign trade and thirty percent of oil imports. If North Korea were a capitalist state like the United States, the effects would be monumental. North Korea, however, is not capitalist and the sanctions merely mean additional belt tightening for the people at large while the military continues to receive supplies and dictator Un gets even fatter. Remember that this is a country that can’t be seen from the air after dark because there are no city lights at night. Un has taken his own people back to the dark ages.
It remains to be seen, however, whether Russia and China which voted for the sanctions will honor them. Even if they do, it may not be enough to bring the North around to talking. Even if they do agree to confer, our experience from the 1950s is that the communists spent the beginning weeks haggling about the shape of the table. Any talks must NOT be accompanied by an easing of sanctions.
The Trump Administration has also mentioned the possibility of imposing an embargo on any country that trades with North Korea. Significantly, such mention of an embargo has not exempted China, although reporters seem convinced that any embargo on Chinese goods would be too painful for the United States and for US companies with factories in China. I rather suspect, however, that Trump would opt for the pain in place of a couple of US cities being burned to a crisp by North Korean nuclear missiles. The President might also use such an embargo to illustrate the wisdom of international manufacturers moving their factories back to the United States and creating local jobs.
In the event of such an embargo China would have to decide whether it wanted to trade with the United States more than it wanted to maintain trade ties with North Korea. Since a US embargo would throw China into a depression, I’d put money on it deciding to shut off shipments to North Korea. The partial sanctions voted on in the UN would thereby become nearly universal sanctions. If shipping its people to other countries to supply labor (as it does) were included in the sanctions, and if our Navy put a blockade in place to prevent shipments to Iran and other Middle Eastern states, North Korea would be cut off from the rest of the world. That would make them either begin talks or attack. They know they would be totally destroyed if they attacked, so it’s extremely likely they’d opt for diplomatic conversation.
If they continued firing missiles over Japan, those missiles would have to be shot down to demonstrate the futility of a nuclear option to Un. That would cost us considerably more per missile than the launches would cost North Korea, but the action would be cost effective (particularly since Japan can be counted on to share the costs).
Every military dictatorship has a fatal weakness. If members of the military stop receiving their extra stipend to insure their loyalty, those soldiers are apt to rise up against the government’s leadership. If things get so bad in North Korea that both military commanders and the dictator start losing weight and run out of fuel for their vehicles, regime change will not be far away.
Americans must realize that our country is in a war with North Korea. If we do so, we’ll make the sacrifices necessary to produce a change of government in that country.
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Haughey is Senior Advisor of the Texas Republican County Chairman’s Association.