The Obama vision of American national security is long, very long on lofty sentiments and fine rhetoric so that one suspects the final draft was written by a presidential speech writer and not some person with more than a nodding acquaintance with the concepts of national interest or national security. If inspirational approaches to foreign relations worked in the gritty world of countries pursuing subjectively defined national interests, the Obama rendition would be a winner.
There is very little in the document which excites disagreement. That is due to the "mom and apple pie content" which constitutes the vast majority of the essay's fifty plus pages. Who but the most hardened skeptic can be against diplomacy, collective effort, the need to put our domestic economic house in order, or the strength and resilience of "our greatest asset," the American people? Who can gainsay the desirability, even the necessity, of the US having a "strong" military capacity? And, who could not second the idea that diplomacy and the military serve to complement each other?
The problem comes not in the assorted sweet smelling, fine sounding, good looking parts but rather in the absence of a viable, real world oriented way of meshing all the parts into a whole which is at least as substantial as would be a mere sum of the parts. There is no overarching strategic plan, no architecture for a building comprised of all the materials individually listed. There is not any compelling statement of American national and strategic interests beyond a roster of four "enduring" factors, some of which actually predate WW II.
Worse, there is no indication of do-not-pass lines. "Adversary" governments are noted in passing with an implicit invitation to change their ways and enter into "engagement" with the US, but no specific behaviors or acts are noted which would demand an American response. Given that one of the purposes of the National Security Strategy document is the provision of guidance for the heads of governments both friendly and hostile, this is a glaring lack.
Not only is there no hint of what may be unacceptable conduct, there is no whisper of just what the US might do if confronted with a hostile act by an "adversary" state. Mention is made of improving "sanctions" and "isolation" with the implication that some international bad actor might expect to be faced by both, but the lack of specificity does nothing to deter. Neither does the oft-repeated refrain of "collective" efforts, of "coordination," of the semi-mythic "international community" and its companion, 'international institutions." Such importuning does little to weaken the spine of an ambitious, bad acting government.
(If the old saw holding that a camel is the horse as designed by a committee, then the rabbit is a lion after action by the UN or similar "international institution.")
The contretemps currently faced by the US in the matter of the Mahdi Bomb is a fine example of just how ineffective a reliance upon current international fora is. The UN is not alone in carrying responsibility for the glacial pace at which actions are considered and taken or the way in which Great Power patrons can act to protect their clients. All international institutions which are not bound together by a tight and comprehensive weave of coinciding national interests, basic values, shared history, and cooperative economies are identical in ineffectiveness with the UN.
The challenge presented to the US and other civilized states by North Korea is an even more stark example of how the real world comes into sharp conflict with the honeyed words of the new Obama vision of US national security. North Korea is guilty under the UN Charter of an act of aggressive war. There is no realistic doubt of Pyongyang's culpability no matter how much the Trolls of Beijing may wish otherwise.
What will the UN do about this affront to its very reason for existence? Not much. Everyone who is at all oriented in time and place already knows that. Knows that the fine words of Secretary of State Clinton regarding the "duty" of the "international community" to do something by way of "punishing" the Hermit Kingdom of the North are so much vapor. Knows that as long as China pursues its national interest above all other concerns, the fanatical leadership of North Korea has a remit to cause no end of international harm.
There is nothing reprehensible in the Chinese posture. Nothing intrinsically "wrong" let alone malign in Beijing's priority upon maintaining stability in North Korea. To do otherwise would be to open its territory to unacceptable consequences.
More than any other government, the Chinese know that North Korea will not give up its nuclear capacity. It is the paranoid state's only sure deterrent against the rise of South Korean revanchism or a new 21st Century form of the irredentism which propelled the first ruler of the South, Syngman Rhee, from calling for a "March to the North" in the period before the North invaded South Korea in June 1950. Beyond that, possession of the bomb is Pyongyang's only trump card in the diplomatic game.
The Chinese came to realize perfectly during the course of the Six Power Talks that the North would not abandon the bomb without suitable compensation. And, the only suitable compensation would be reunification on terms favorable to the North. That is reunification under Northern domination. With this understanding firmly in place, the Trolls of Beijing were not and are not displeased that failure in their great diplomatic initiative, an initiative which was intended to show Beijing as the regional hegemon, was averted by the Cheonan Incident.
The challenge for Beijing is to avert another diplomatic failure, this time of even greater magnitude while preserving peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula without simultaneously alienating South Korea too much. Meeting this challenge is a real poser for the Trolls.
Time, however, is very much on their side. Also on their side is the unthinkability of war between the two Koreas. A war, even one which is of short duration and results in a clear victory for the South (and their American ally) would be too costly for Seoul to contemplate. Even though the Northern military is weak today compared to even a decade ago, it has the capacity to inflict totally unacceptable damage and loss of life on the South given that all of the Seoul-Inchon metroplex lies within range of Northern rockets and tube artillery.
There is no doubt that American air and naval firepower could quickly decapitate the North even considering the hardened facilities available to the Kim Crowd. Likewise, the feeble Northern electrical grid and food distribution system could be taken out quickly and completely with fatal results to the Northern capacity to wage war.
All of this and more is true. And irrelevant. The South cannot afford--Asia cannot afford, the rickety world economy cannot afford--the results of a short, sharp war. And, this includes China.
The greatest anxiety within Beijing must be that of the Pyongyang leadership engaging in a Great Adventure of the suicide-or-victory sort. The capacity of the North to pull the trigger of the gun aimed squarely at the head of both Koreas is their greatest possible trump. There is and has been a long standing belief in Pyongyang among the little men in oversized hats who surround Dear Leader that the decadent South would capitulate rather than see Seoul-Inchon turned into the "lake of fire" promised by the North Korean Peoples Army.
At the same time the Northern population has been and is imbued by a myth of their own hardihood, resilience, and capacity to both endure and overcome the greatest vicissitudes of life. They truly believe (with a very great deal of historical justification) that they could overcome future devastation as they did that of the Korean War or even the famines of recent years. The "Long, Hard March" is central to the defining mythology of North Koreans for the past three generations. Its power should not be underestimated.
The Chinese are not given to underestimating it. The close relationship between the Chinese and North Korean military forces has transmitted a full appreciation of the power and pervasiveness of the myth, which surpasses in extent and potency even its Chinese equivalent. Reinforcing this is the awareness in Beijing that North Korea recovered far faster than the South from the effects of the Korean War. At least until the final years of the Sixties, the GDP of the North exceeded that of the South and the per capita income of the people of the North outstripped that of the South almost until the Age of Disco was upon us.
In short, there are palpable reasons to both believe the North is convinced it can recover and flourish from a war and fear the consequences of this belief. As a result, the Trolls of Beijing have good reason to feel anxiety about the calculus of their client should too much pressure be exerted--even rhetorically--upon the North. With reason they fear that a Pyongyang Death Ride may be seen in Pyongyang as a Ride to Victory, and the northern leadership may be encouraged to be adventurous.
The world view as well as the vision of what constitutes American national security as well as the means by which that security can be achieved contained in the new Obama formulation shows no relevance to the requirements dictated by reality in the Korean Peninsula. It also shows no appreciation of what might happen to good intentions, the best of intentions, if a critical Great Power finds its self in opposition for reasons of self-defined national interest.
The US and the world have been down the road described in the Obama formulation before, twice before. The administrations of both Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt made the same miscalculations regarding the permanence of alliances, the coinciding of national interests, and the identity of national interest definitions among Great Powers. At Versailles and nearly thirty years later with the notion of the "Four Policemen," these two Democratic presidents believed without foundation that all countries were equally rational, were equally given to defining national interests in the same way, and were equally given to viewing the world through the same set of glasses.
They were wrong. The international institutions which bore their imprint proved to be inadequate to the tasks when finally placed to the test. President Obama has not read the historical record, or, if he has, somehow has convinced himself that with him in charge, matters will turn out differently.
Right now, it appears that the mullahs of Tehran and the Dear Leader in the Hermit Kingdom of the North are in the process of teaching the Nice Young Man From Chicago just how wrong he is. The sorrow and the pity of this is that the rest of us have to sit in the lesson as well.
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