South Korean and U.S. military forces are remaining on high alert after North Korea backed down from threats of retaliation for South Korea’s live fire artillery drills near Yeonpyong Island on Monday, according to Yonhap. North Korea had deployed multiple rocket launchers on its shore near Yeonpyeong Island, and had threatened an “unpredicted self-defense counterattack” to the South Korean drills, that could lead to “potential disaster.” However, later reports indicated that some of these weapons were fakes.
U.S. envoy Susan Rice (Reuters)
Attempts by Russia and China at the United Nations Security Council to pressure South Korea to halt the exercises collapsed, when an 8 hour meeting on Sunday ended with severe disagreements among the members, according to Reuters.
U.S. envoy Susan Rice said that the “vast majority” of the 15 council members were “insisting on a clear-cut condemnation of the November 23 attack” by North Korea. “There was not unanimity on that point,” she said.
Rice was referring to North Korean artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island on November 23, killing four South Koreans, including two civilians. China has publicly refused to condemn North Korea’s actions, and has referred to the November 23 incident as an “exchange of fire.”
Even if the next few days pass without a full-scale resumption of the Korean war, it’s increasingly recognized that the alignments in the Asia-Pacific region are changing and firming.
A clear-cut division, an ideological axis, is forming among the the countries of northeast Asia, because North Korea is complicating relations between the U.S. and China, according to an editorial in South Korea’s JoongAng Daily.
South Korea, the U.S. and Japan are on one side, while China backing North Korea are on the other.
A lynchpin of the new arrangement is the sudden decision by Japan to substantially strengthen its armed forces. That decision was spurred by a several events in the past year — the North Korean attack on the South Korean warship Cheonan last spring, the North Korean artillery shelling of the South Korean Yeonpyeong Island, and China’s overreaction to Japan’s arresting of a Chinese fishing boat captain in the summer. In addition, China became extremely aggressive in 2010, claiming sovereignty over a huge swaths of international waters in the South China Sea and East China Sea.
Japan’s era of postwar pacifism is coming to an end, as can be seen in Japan’s new National Defense Program Guideline, announced on Friday. The guideline outlines defense policy for the next ten years, according to the Japan Times.
The new guideline points to a Japan that’s considerably more militaristic than the country has been since the end of World War II. However, it indicates less focus than in the past on Japan’s former Cold War foe, Russia.
The guideline’s strongest language for threats from China and North Korea, and lays out “dynamic defense capabilities” that will allow greater flexibility in responding to threats from these two countries. This is a major policy shift from the traditional basic defense force concept, which allows Japan to posess only the minimum necessary forces, according to the Japan Times.
The guideline says that North Korea’s recent military activities, including its nuclear weapons program, are “an urgent and grave destabilizing factor” in regional security.
The guideline describes China’s military rise and other actions as a “matter of concern for the region and the international community.”
China Foreign Ministry immediately blasted Japan’s new defense policy as “irresponsible,” according to the Xinhua, saying that China had no intention of threatening anybody. “A certain country has no right to act as a representative of the international community and make irresponsible remarks on China’s development,” she said.
Japan’s military plans are also engendering a great deal of anxiety in the South Koreans. Japan colonized Korea for the first half of the last century, and Japan’s military used Korean “comfort women” during World War II. After the war, Japan became a purely defensive country, depending on America’s military umbrella for its protection.
But now, as the generations of survivors of WW II have disappeared and memories are fading, the U.S. is encouraging Japan to take more responsibility for its own defense, and Japan is becoming more militaristic again.
Although Japan and South Korea are closely aligned against the dual threats posed by China and North Korea, Japan’s colonization of Korea still stirs passion, according to an analysis in the LA Times. One South Korean military analyst is quoted as saying, “Many Koreans still recall the brutality of Japanese colonization, so it’s still not possible to talk of better military ties with Tokyo. We will not accept any military involvement with Japan, no matter what the outside threat.”
And yet, military involvement between Japan and South Korea is one of the new proposals. In particular, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan raised hackles when he said, “We need to carefully proceed in consultations with South Korea about whether they would let in aircraft from Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.” The idea of Japanese aircraft over South Korean airspace is anathema to the South Koreans.
While Japan’s government appears to be increasingly assertive in dealing with external threats, South Korea’s government has been giving the appearance of being increasingly chaotic.
Just at the time that South Korea needs a coherent military strategy to deal with the threat from the North, the Army Chief of Staff was forced to resign on Tuesday, because of charges of corruption in a real estate deal, according to Arirang.
The South Koreans simply have not come to terms with the two North Korean military attacks earlier this year. The look weak because they didn’t respond, but if then they risk starting a major war. Amid the chaos and anxiety in South Korea is the understanding that if North Korea stages another military attack, then they may have no choice but full-scale war.
That’s why everyone’s armed forces are on high alert today on the Korean peninsula.
As I’ve said several times in the past, it seems increasingly likely that the North Korean leaders are looking for an opportunity to start a war, and they may even believe that they can quickly win it, because they believe that nobody will want to fight back for long. This assumption was made by the Japanese when they bombed Pearl Harbor and by the American South when they fired on Fort Sumter. This may be a safe assumption during some generational eras, but once a country enters a generational Crisis era, the assumption is no longer true, and the U.S., Japan, China and the Koreas are all well into generational Crisis eras.
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