Nodutdol . e*News
March 2010
Envisioning a World Free of Nuclear Weapons: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
By Hyun Lee and Juyeon Rhee
Hundreds of nations and civil society groups will gather in New York City from May 3 to 28 for the 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). We can be sure that during the conference at the United Nations, the mainstream U.S. media won’t be at a loss for words when it comes to bashing North Korea for its nuclear weapons. It is up to the grassroots peace movement to make sure the U.S. government doesn’t use the issue of Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs as distractions to deflect the public spotlight from the real issue at hand – the responsibility of the United States to take genuine steps toward eliminating its nuclear arsenal, the largest in the world.
What is the NPT?
The NPT was introduced in 1968 by Ireland and Finland to address growing international fears and cap the arsenals of nuclear weapons states, especially the United States and the former Soviet Union, which were locked in a dangerous arms race that threatened the world with nuclear destruction.1 Since then, 189 states, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – all nuclear weapons states - have signed onto the treaty.2 At the core of the NPT are three aims: 1. Non-proliferation (i.e. parties to the treaty agree not to transfer nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons technology to/from other states); 2. Disarmament (i.e. nuclear weapons states agree to enter good faith negotiations to eliminate their nuclear arsenals); and 3. Peaceful use of nuclear energy (i.e. all parties have the sovereign right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes).3 Parties to the treaty meet every five years to review progress on the NPT's stated goals and agree on new benchmarks.
United States - Greatest NPT Violator
Non-nuclear weapons states are quick to point out a contradiction inherent in the NPT: states that already possess nuclear weapons are enforcing a treaty that prevents others from doing the same. Without a genuine effort towards disarmament by the nuclear powers and a guarantee of security from the threat of nuclear attack, there's no incentive for non-nuclear weapons states to restrain themselves from pursuing nuclear weapons technology. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, the United States still maintains an arsenal of 5500 nuclear warheads.4 And while wielding the NPT to coerce other nations, such as Iran and North Korea, to abandon their nuclear ambitions, the United States has never been eager to give up its own arsenal. In fact, according to Joseph Gerson of the American Friends Service Committee, “nuclear terrorism” (i.e. terrorizing other countries with threats of nuclear attack to get its way) has been and continues to be a centerpiece of U.S. military strategy around the world.5 The United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 not because it was militarily necessary to win the war, says Gerson, but rather to gain a strategic advantage in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and instill fear in the rest of the world of its terrifying destructive might.6 And it has used its nuclear arsenal for global military dominance ever since. In Empire and the Bomb, Gerson lists a series of incidents in which the United States used what he calls “nuclear extortion” to subdue other countries into surrendering their interests – from “Truman’s 1946 threat to annihilate Moscow” to force the Soviet Union to withdraw from northern Iran, and “Eisenhower’s repeated nuclear threats during crises in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America,” to the “Carter Doctrine, which threatened the use of any means necessary to retain control of the oil-rich Persian Gulf.”7
The NPT clearly states nuclear weapons states shall not threaten non-nuclear weapons states with nuclear attack, as a guarantee of security for parties that agree not to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs. Contrary to this agreement, however, the 2002 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, championed by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, outlined a very different policy; it included possible plans for preemptive nuclear strikes on seven countries – Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China, Libya, Syria, and Russia - and urged funding for the development of more advanced nuclear weapons.8 And according to David Krieger of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the United States has the most abysmal record when it comes to voting on UN resolutions in support of nuclear disarmament. Of the 15 disarmament-related resolutions that were voted upon by the UN General Assembly in 2007, the United States alone opposed all of them.9
North Korea and Nuclear Weapons
In a speech he made in Prague last year, President Obama gave us a sneak preview of U.S. priorities regarding NPT enforcement and urged the international community to “stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course.”10 But why did North Korea feel compelled to develop nuclear weapons in the first place, and what led to its decision to eject International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and walk away from the NPT?
First Nuclear Crisis in Korea - 1950
Contrary to popular belief, the first nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula was not in 2006 when North Korea test-fired Taepodong missiles over Japan, nor 1994 when North Korea removed spent fuel rods from its Yongbyon reactor, but in 1950, when, two weeks into the Korean War, General MacArthur requested the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to authorize the use of nuclear weapons. According to historian Bruce Cumings, Truman came close to using the A-bomb multiple times during the Korean War, and authorized Operation Hudson Harbor, which simulated atomic bombing runs, dropping dummy A-bombs over North Korea.11 Eight years later, in direct violation of the NPT, as well as the 1953 Armistice Agreement that halted the Korean War, the United States stationed nuclear warheads in South Korea and targeted them at North Korea.12 By 1967, the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons in South Korea consisted of some 950 warheads, and they remained throughout the Cold War until 1991.13 In addition, the U.S. and South Korean militaries routinely conducted massive joint exercises simulating scenarios involving the use of nuclear weapons.
Second Nuclear Crisis - 1994
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea suddenly found itself cut off from its fuel supplies and facing an energy crisis, as well as increasingly isolated and anxious about its national security in the post-Cold War era. Anticipating a collapse of North Korea’s regime, the United States intensified its war exercises. David E. Sanger, reporting in the New York Times in 1993, observed that the U.S. military’s Team Spirit exercises in South Korea were all about demonstrating its nuclear prowess – “The U.S. brought the B1-B bomber and other nuclear-capable equipment to South Korea for the exercise this year, presumably to make a point, and it was exactly that which sent the North into a frenzy.”14 That same month, North Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the NPT, and in 1994, it kicked IAEA agents out of the country and removed spent fuel rods from its Yongbyun reactor. In response, former President Clinton threatened a preemptive strike against the Yongbyun nuclear facility, and as Meredith Woo-Cumings notes, “came within a hair’s-breadth of a war in Korea without so much as consulting with its South Korean ally on an action that would have had devastating consequences for the nearly seventy million people on both sides of the DMZ.”15 The crisis was diverted at the eleventh hour by Jimmy Carter, who brokered the 1994 Agreed Framework, in which North Korea agreed to stop its nuclear program in exchange for energy alternatives and a non-aggression pact with the United States.16
The Bush Era – From Bad to Worse
North Korea’s energy crisis led to a widespread famine, and the United States, believing North Korea to be at the brink of collapse, didn’t deliver on the light water reactors to North Korea as promised in the Agreed Framework. Instead it revised OPLAN 5027, its plan in the event of a war in Korea, to include preemptive strikes. A senior US official was reported to have said the goal of the revised plan was to "abolish North Korea as a functioning state, end the rule of its leader, Kim Jong Il, and reorganize the country under South Korean control."17 And when George W. Bush took office in 2001, he refused to resume dialogue with North Korea and labeled it part of an “axis of evil.” His administration charged North Korea of secretly enriching uranium, halted all North Korea-bound oil shipments, and identified North Korea as one of its seven primary nuclear targets in its Nuclear Posture Review. In response, North Korea test-fired a scud missile into the East Sea and became the first state ever to withdraw from the NPT.
Determined to end North Korea’s nuclear program, the United States proposed (and North Korea eventually agreed to) the Six Party Talks, a series of multilateral negotiations involving North Korea, United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia. After five years of painstaking negotiations, the talks finally seemed to produce a breakthrough in 2008 when North Korea destroyed its cooling tower at Yongbyon's main atomic reactor and the United States in turn removed North Korea from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list. But the talks came to a screeching halt as conservative hardliners in Washington D.C., critical of negotiating with North Korea in the first place, pushed back and demanded that North Korea agree to intrusive verification measures that were, according to former CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy, never part of the negotiations up to that point.18 That same year, the United States also proposed developing OPLAN 5029, a detailed military operations plan simulating the collapse of the North Korean regime.19 Again, North Korea responded by conducting a nuclear test, and this time announced that it would never again return to the six party talks.
Time to Change Course
The mainstream U.S. media is quick to sensationalize North Korea’s angry actions, but is conspicuously silent about U.S. provocations that precede them. As a result, what the public receives is a distorted picture that paints North Korea as an irrational violent nation, and this serves to justify U.S. aggression. According to Leon Sigal of the Social Science Research Council, however, North Korea has been nothing but consistent in its dealings with the United States – “Pyongyang's basic stance is that as long as Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul remain adversaries, it feels threatened and will acquire nuclear weapons and missiles to counter that threat. But, it says, if Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo move toward reconciliation, it will get rid of these weapons.”20
People’s Strategy for 2010 Review Conference of the NPT
The nuclear states (the U.S., China, Russia, France and the U.K.) have abused the NPT on the non-nuclear states and neglected their responsibility stated in the Article VI for pursuing “negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”21 The treaty has no actual binding power over the nuclear-states, including the U.S., to prevent them from developing (or ‘modernizing’) the nuclear weapons, transferring and sharing those weapons to other NATO countries22, and making nuclear threats (“preemptive strikes”). Clearly, the NPT has not worked so far.
Nevertheless, the NPT is the most comprehensive nuclear weapons treaty that the world has produced since the Cold-War era, and the only treaty that includes provisions for nuclear-states and non-nuclear states23. To create a nuclear-free world, for abolition of all nuclear weapons, and for peace and security of all living things in the world, we need to make the NPT a binding international treaty that every country must abide by. The Review Conference of the NPT in May 2010 appears to present a great opportunity to actualize the purpose of the NPT.
People around the world are more hopeful this year that the U.S. will now take serious measures for disarmaments of its own nuclear arsenals. Nuclear disarmaments should start with the nuclear states taking initiatives first. 2010 may be the best time, under President Obama and under the severe domestic economic crisis, to be practical and serious about our own disarmaments.
But will Obama be able to bring any change in policy without the power of the people? The answer is very clear: no. For example, an article in the Wall Street Journal argues that the military spending budget has to be increased even more because:
American defense needs are, if anything, even more daunting today. … Mr. Obama's budget isn't adequate to meet those challenges. … Weapons programs, such as missile defense or the Army's Future Combat Systems, are also in danger. Others have been ridiculously delayed. The Air Force flies refueling tankers from the Eisenhower era. Mr. Obama's own 30-something Marine One helicopter is prone to break down and technologically out of date. … The U.S. ability to project power abroad has been crucial to maintaining a relatively peaceful world, but we have been living off the fruits of our Cold War investments for too long.24
Let’s think about it. This type of argument is an example of the basic belief that has prolonged the unpopular war which the U.S. has been waging against Iraq and Afghanistan. The Congress has been supporting the use of military against the people’s wishes and has been dispatching U.S. soldiers to other countries because the politicians believe that the U.S. projects power in the world based on its military power. Under these circumstances, no one would be able to bring any changes, unless people mobilize themselves, demanding to end the war, and ask for reduction in military spending and abolition of nuclear weapons. President Obama is not going to be the one who will change the U.S. policy. People, when organized and mobilized, are the makers of real change.
Over 250 peace and anti-war organizations25 around the world are organizing under the banner “For Peace and Human Needs: Disarmament Now!” and presenting the following main events:
1.International People’s Conference on peace, disarmament, social justice and environmental issues: April 30 – May 1, 2010 at Riverside Church
2.Rally near Times Square, March to the UN, Peace Festival in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on May 2, 2010
3.100,000 Petition Drive for both President Obama and to the United Nations – delivery on May 4, 201026
4.Peace-Walk from Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee to New York City: From February 12 – May 127. (organized by Footprints for Peace)
2,000 Japanese citizens, including more than 100 Hibakusha [A- and H- bomb survivors] will come to N.Y. to join the US citizens in action from April 30 – May 2. Hundreds of youths and citizens from China, Belgium, Germany, France, and the U.K. are also planning to come to New York City. All around the world, people need to unite against nuclear ambitions and proliferations of the nuclear states. The U.S. has played a critical role in proliferation of nuclear weapons. Therefore, the people in the U.S. bear a huge responsibility in mobilizing and creating demanding voices for nuclear disarmament and abolishment.
Peace treaty as a step towards denuclearization in Korea
On January 11, 2010, North Korea again proposed talks with the U.S. to reach a formal peace treaty that would replace the 57-year-old armistice of Korean War. According to New York Times, North Korea indicated that “it would not give up its nuclear weapons until Washington signed such an accord.”28 Stephen Bosworth who visited North Korea in December 2009 as a special envoy stated in response that discussion of a peace treaty and “other incentives” will only be possible when the denuclearization of the Korean peninsular is being significantly progressed. South Korea Foreign Minister told the press that it is ‘unrealistic’ that the U.S. will negotiate a peace treaty with North Korea before North Korea relinquishes its nuclear weapons.
The beginning of this article illustrates that, in direct violation of the Armistice, it was the U.S. who introduced the nuclear weapons to the physical territory of the Korean peninsula, starting the nuclear era for Korea. There is a saying in Korea, “the one who ties a knot will have to be the one who unties the knot.” The U.S. is as much responsible for denuclearization of Korean peninsula as North Korea.
North Korea justifies its possession of nuclear weapons as security deterrence against the U.S. nuclear threats, and the U.S. justifies its reluctance and delay in getting to serious diplomatic and peace negotiations with North Korea to the North’s nuclear program. Rather than repeating the old ineffective rhetoric of what should come first and increase enmity, it is a high time to start the diplomatic negotiations for a peace treaty. North Korea has clearly articulated its intention to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for a peace treaty, economic aid, and a security guarantee from the U.S.29
A peace treaty for the Korean peninsula would not be just an incentive for North Korea. A peace treaty will work favorably for decreasing military tension and halting the arms race among China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, North Korea, and the U.S. A peace treaty, depending on how it will be crafted, will play an important role in not only denuclearizing Korean peninsula but also North East Asia. A Peace Treaty in Korea is not only a Korean issue; it is a world issue directly related to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Conclusion
Many Korean Americans will be present at the 2010 Review Conference for the NPT, creating dialogue regarding a peace treaty in Korea and joining with people around the world to demand abolition of nuclear weapons and peace. When President Obama pledged last year in Prague to build a world free of nuclear weapons, he added that as a nuclear power the United States has a moral responsibility to act first and lead by example. So when we march for peace during the NPT Conference, we need to demand that he deliver on his promise by honoring the NPT and putting an end to its nuclear war exercises, respecting North Korea’s sovereignty, and holding genuine peace talks to establish diplomatic relations. We, Korean Americans, have a lot of work to do.
1 “Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty” Wikipedia
2 Ibid
3 Ibid
4 “Nuclear Weapons and the United States” Wikipedia
5 Joseph Gerson, Empire and the Bomb (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp.11-32
6 Ibid, p.13
7 Ibid, p.27
8 “Nuclear Posture Review Excerpts” GlobalSecurity.org
9 David Krieger. “UN Voting on Nuclear Disarmament Shows Abysmal US Record” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
10 The White House Office of the Press Secretary “Remarks by President Barack Obama” (Hradcany Square
Prague, Czech Republic, April 5, 2009)
11 Bruce Cumings, North Korea Another Country (New York: The New Press, 2004), pp.1-42
12 Ibid
13 Ibid
14 Selig Harrison, Korea Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, Princeton University Press, 2003
15 Meredith Woo-Cumings, “South Korean Anti-Americanism,” Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper No. 93, July 2003
16 Don Oberdofer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, The Perseus Books Group, 2001
17 “OPLAN 5027 Major Theater War – West” GlobalSecurity.org
18 “Bush Policies Fail to Contain North Korea,” Radio Australia
19 “OPLAN 5029 Collapse of North Korea” GlobalSecurity.org
20 Leon V Sigal. “What Obama Should Offer North Korea” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (28 January 2009)
21 For a whole treaty text, go to: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/npttext.html
22 I am a real fan of wikipedia. The diagram is from the following link too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treaty#United_States-NATO_nuclear_weapons_sharing
23 See http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/161/t/288/content.jsp?content_KEY=5729
24 See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123595811964905929.html Ironically this article talks about how 4% increase in military spending budget ($533.7 billion, excluding $130 billion for Iran & Afghanistan spending) is not enough to keep US military technologically modern.
25 See http://peaceandjusticenow.org/wordpress/2010/01/participating-organizations/
26 See https://secure2.convio.net/afsc/site/SSurvey?JServSessionIdr004=8m37u7iwh5.app10b&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&SURVEY_ID=2422
27 See http://tenthousandthingsfromkyoto.blogspot.com/2010/02/abolition-flame-to-join-peace-walk-from.html
28 See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/world/asia/12korea.html
29 For a more elaborate argument and references, see Korea Policy Institute's "Case for a Peace Treaty" (2009) http://www.kpolicy.org/documents/policy/090529kpicaseforapeacetreaty.html
Hundreds of nations and civil society groups will gather in New York City from May 3 to 28 for the 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). We can be sure that during the conference at the United Nations, the mainstream U.S. media won’t be at a loss for words when it comes to bashing North Korea for its nuclear weapons. It is up to the grassroots peace movement to make sure the U.S. government doesn’t use the issue of Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs as distractions to deflect the public spotlight from the real issue at hand – the responsibility of the United States to take genuine steps toward eliminating its nuclear arsenal, the largest in the world.
What is the NPT?
The NPT was introduced in 1968 by Ireland and Finland to address growing international fears and cap the arsenals of nuclear weapons states, especially the United States and the former Soviet Union, which were locked in a dangerous arms race that threatened the world with nuclear destruction.1 Since then, 189 states, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – all nuclear weapons states - have signed onto the treaty.2 At the core of the NPT are three aims: 1. Non-proliferation (i.e. parties to the treaty agree not to transfer nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons technology to/from other states); 2. Disarmament (i.e. nuclear weapons states agree to enter good faith negotiations to eliminate their nuclear arsenals); and 3. Peaceful use of nuclear energy (i.e. all parties have the sovereign right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes).3 Parties to the treaty meet every five years to review progress on the NPT's stated goals and agree on new benchmarks.
United States - Greatest NPT Violator
Non-nuclear weapons states are quick to point out a contradiction inherent in the NPT: states that already possess nuclear weapons are enforcing a treaty that prevents others from doing the same. Without a genuine effort towards disarmament by the nuclear powers and a guarantee of security from the threat of nuclear attack, there's no incentive for non-nuclear weapons states to restrain themselves from pursuing nuclear weapons technology. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, the United States still maintains an arsenal of 5500 nuclear warheads.4 And while wielding the NPT to coerce other nations, such as Iran and North Korea, to abandon their nuclear ambitions, the United States has never been eager to give up its own arsenal. In fact, according to Joseph Gerson of the American Friends Service Committee, “nuclear terrorism” (i.e. terrorizing other countries with threats of nuclear attack to get its way) has been and continues to be a centerpiece of U.S. military strategy around the world.5 The United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 not because it was militarily necessary to win the war, says Gerson, but rather to gain a strategic advantage in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and instill fear in the rest of the world of its terrifying destructive might.6 And it has used its nuclear arsenal for global military dominance ever since. In Empire and the Bomb, Gerson lists a series of incidents in which the United States used what he calls “nuclear extortion” to subdue other countries into surrendering their interests – from “Truman’s 1946 threat to annihilate Moscow” to force the Soviet Union to withdraw from northern Iran, and “Eisenhower’s repeated nuclear threats during crises in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America,” to the “Carter Doctrine, which threatened the use of any means necessary to retain control of the oil-rich Persian Gulf.”7
The NPT clearly states nuclear weapons states shall not threaten non-nuclear weapons states with nuclear attack, as a guarantee of security for parties that agree not to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs. Contrary to this agreement, however, the 2002 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, championed by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, outlined a very different policy; it included possible plans for preemptive nuclear strikes on seven countries – Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China, Libya, Syria, and Russia - and urged funding for the development of more advanced nuclear weapons.8 And according to David Krieger of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the United States has the most abysmal record when it comes to voting on UN resolutions in support of nuclear disarmament. Of the 15 disarmament-related resolutions that were voted upon by the UN General Assembly in 2007, the United States alone opposed all of them.9
North Korea and Nuclear Weapons
In a speech he made in Prague last year, President Obama gave us a sneak preview of U.S. priorities regarding NPT enforcement and urged the international community to “stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course.”10 But why did North Korea feel compelled to develop nuclear weapons in the first place, and what led to its decision to eject International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and walk away from the NPT?
First Nuclear Crisis in Korea - 1950
Contrary to popular belief, the first nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula was not in 2006 when North Korea test-fired Taepodong missiles over Japan, nor 1994 when North Korea removed spent fuel rods from its Yongbyon reactor, but in 1950, when, two weeks into the Korean War, General MacArthur requested the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to authorize the use of nuclear weapons. According to historian Bruce Cumings, Truman came close to using the A-bomb multiple times during the Korean War, and authorized Operation Hudson Harbor, which simulated atomic bombing runs, dropping dummy A-bombs over North Korea.11 Eight years later, in direct violation of the NPT, as well as the 1953 Armistice Agreement that halted the Korean War, the United States stationed nuclear warheads in South Korea and targeted them at North Korea.12 By 1967, the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons in South Korea consisted of some 950 warheads, and they remained throughout the Cold War until 1991.13 In addition, the U.S. and South Korean militaries routinely conducted massive joint exercises simulating scenarios involving the use of nuclear weapons.
Second Nuclear Crisis - 1994
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea suddenly found itself cut off from its fuel supplies and facing an energy crisis, as well as increasingly isolated and anxious about its national security in the post-Cold War era. Anticipating a collapse of North Korea’s regime, the United States intensified its war exercises. David E. Sanger, reporting in the New York Times in 1993, observed that the U.S. military’s Team Spirit exercises in South Korea were all about demonstrating its nuclear prowess – “The U.S. brought the B1-B bomber and other nuclear-capable equipment to South Korea for the exercise this year, presumably to make a point, and it was exactly that which sent the North into a frenzy.”14 That same month, North Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the NPT, and in 1994, it kicked IAEA agents out of the country and removed spent fuel rods from its Yongbyun reactor. In response, former President Clinton threatened a preemptive strike against the Yongbyun nuclear facility, and as Meredith Woo-Cumings notes, “came within a hair’s-breadth of a war in Korea without so much as consulting with its South Korean ally on an action that would have had devastating consequences for the nearly seventy million people on both sides of the DMZ.”15 The crisis was diverted at the eleventh hour by Jimmy Carter, who brokered the 1994 Agreed Framework, in which North Korea agreed to stop its nuclear program in exchange for energy alternatives and a non-aggression pact with the United States.16
The Bush Era – From Bad to Worse
North Korea’s energy crisis led to a widespread famine, and the United States, believing North Korea to be at the brink of collapse, didn’t deliver on the light water reactors to North Korea as promised in the Agreed Framework. Instead it revised OPLAN 5027, its plan in the event of a war in Korea, to include preemptive strikes. A senior US official was reported to have said the goal of the revised plan was to "abolish North Korea as a functioning state, end the rule of its leader, Kim Jong Il, and reorganize the country under South Korean control."17 And when George W. Bush took office in 2001, he refused to resume dialogue with North Korea and labeled it part of an “axis of evil.” His administration charged North Korea of secretly enriching uranium, halted all North Korea-bound oil shipments, and identified North Korea as one of its seven primary nuclear targets in its Nuclear Posture Review. In response, North Korea test-fired a scud missile into the East Sea and became the first state ever to withdraw from the NPT.
Determined to end North Korea’s nuclear program, the United States proposed (and North Korea eventually agreed to) the Six Party Talks, a series of multilateral negotiations involving North Korea, United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia. After five years of painstaking negotiations, the talks finally seemed to produce a breakthrough in 2008 when North Korea destroyed its cooling tower at Yongbyon's main atomic reactor and the United States in turn removed North Korea from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list. But the talks came to a screeching halt as conservative hardliners in Washington D.C., critical of negotiating with North Korea in the first place, pushed back and demanded that North Korea agree to intrusive verification measures that were, according to former CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy, never part of the negotiations up to that point.18 That same year, the United States also proposed developing OPLAN 5029, a detailed military operations plan simulating the collapse of the North Korean regime.19 Again, North Korea responded by conducting a nuclear test, and this time announced that it would never again return to the six party talks.
Time to Change Course
The mainstream U.S. media is quick to sensationalize North Korea’s angry actions, but is conspicuously silent about U.S. provocations that precede them. As a result, what the public receives is a distorted picture that paints North Korea as an irrational violent nation, and this serves to justify U.S. aggression. According to Leon Sigal of the Social Science Research Council, however, North Korea has been nothing but consistent in its dealings with the United States – “Pyongyang's basic stance is that as long as Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul remain adversaries, it feels threatened and will acquire nuclear weapons and missiles to counter that threat. But, it says, if Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo move toward reconciliation, it will get rid of these weapons.”20
People’s Strategy for 2010 Review Conference of the NPT
The nuclear states (the U.S., China, Russia, France and the U.K.) have abused the NPT on the non-nuclear states and neglected their responsibility stated in the Article VI for pursuing “negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”21 The treaty has no actual binding power over the nuclear-states, including the U.S., to prevent them from developing (or ‘modernizing’) the nuclear weapons, transferring and sharing those weapons to other NATO countries22, and making nuclear threats (“preemptive strikes”). Clearly, the NPT has not worked so far.
Nevertheless, the NPT is the most comprehensive nuclear weapons treaty that the world has produced since the Cold-War era, and the only treaty that includes provisions for nuclear-states and non-nuclear states23. To create a nuclear-free world, for abolition of all nuclear weapons, and for peace and security of all living things in the world, we need to make the NPT a binding international treaty that every country must abide by. The Review Conference of the NPT in May 2010 appears to present a great opportunity to actualize the purpose of the NPT.
People around the world are more hopeful this year that the U.S. will now take serious measures for disarmaments of its own nuclear arsenals. Nuclear disarmaments should start with the nuclear states taking initiatives first. 2010 may be the best time, under President Obama and under the severe domestic economic crisis, to be practical and serious about our own disarmaments.
But will Obama be able to bring any change in policy without the power of the people? The answer is very clear: no. For example, an article in the Wall Street Journal argues that the military spending budget has to be increased even more because:
American defense needs are, if anything, even more daunting today. … Mr. Obama's budget isn't adequate to meet those challenges. … Weapons programs, such as missile defense or the Army's Future Combat Systems, are also in danger. Others have been ridiculously delayed. The Air Force flies refueling tankers from the Eisenhower era. Mr. Obama's own 30-something Marine One helicopter is prone to break down and technologically out of date. … The U.S. ability to project power abroad has been crucial to maintaining a relatively peaceful world, but we have been living off the fruits of our Cold War investments for too long.24
Let’s think about it. This type of argument is an example of the basic belief that has prolonged the unpopular war which the U.S. has been waging against Iraq and Afghanistan. The Congress has been supporting the use of military against the people’s wishes and has been dispatching U.S. soldiers to other countries because the politicians believe that the U.S. projects power in the world based on its military power. Under these circumstances, no one would be able to bring any changes, unless people mobilize themselves, demanding to end the war, and ask for reduction in military spending and abolition of nuclear weapons. President Obama is not going to be the one who will change the U.S. policy. People, when organized and mobilized, are the makers of real change.
Over 250 peace and anti-war organizations25 around the world are organizing under the banner “For Peace and Human Needs: Disarmament Now!” and presenting the following main events:
1.International People’s Conference on peace, disarmament, social justice and environmental issues: April 30 – May 1, 2010 at Riverside Church
2.Rally near Times Square, March to the UN, Peace Festival in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on May 2, 2010
3.100,000 Petition Drive for both President Obama and to the United Nations – delivery on May 4, 201026
4.Peace-Walk from Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee to New York City: From February 12 – May 127. (organized by Footprints for Peace)
2,000 Japanese citizens, including more than 100 Hibakusha [A- and H- bomb survivors] will come to N.Y. to join the US citizens in action from April 30 – May 2. Hundreds of youths and citizens from China, Belgium, Germany, France, and the U.K. are also planning to come to New York City. All around the world, people need to unite against nuclear ambitions and proliferations of the nuclear states. The U.S. has played a critical role in proliferation of nuclear weapons. Therefore, the people in the U.S. bear a huge responsibility in mobilizing and creating demanding voices for nuclear disarmament and abolishment.
Peace treaty as a step towards denuclearization in Korea
On January 11, 2010, North Korea again proposed talks with the U.S. to reach a formal peace treaty that would replace the 57-year-old armistice of Korean War. According to New York Times, North Korea indicated that “it would not give up its nuclear weapons until Washington signed such an accord.”28 Stephen Bosworth who visited North Korea in December 2009 as a special envoy stated in response that discussion of a peace treaty and “other incentives” will only be possible when the denuclearization of the Korean peninsular is being significantly progressed. South Korea Foreign Minister told the press that it is ‘unrealistic’ that the U.S. will negotiate a peace treaty with North Korea before North Korea relinquishes its nuclear weapons.
The beginning of this article illustrates that, in direct violation of the Armistice, it was the U.S. who introduced the nuclear weapons to the physical territory of the Korean peninsula, starting the nuclear era for Korea. There is a saying in Korea, “the one who ties a knot will have to be the one who unties the knot.” The U.S. is as much responsible for denuclearization of Korean peninsula as North Korea.
North Korea justifies its possession of nuclear weapons as security deterrence against the U.S. nuclear threats, and the U.S. justifies its reluctance and delay in getting to serious diplomatic and peace negotiations with North Korea to the North’s nuclear program. Rather than repeating the old ineffective rhetoric of what should come first and increase enmity, it is a high time to start the diplomatic negotiations for a peace treaty. North Korea has clearly articulated its intention to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for a peace treaty, economic aid, and a security guarantee from the U.S.29
A peace treaty for the Korean peninsula would not be just an incentive for North Korea. A peace treaty will work favorably for decreasing military tension and halting the arms race among China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, North Korea, and the U.S. A peace treaty, depending on how it will be crafted, will play an important role in not only denuclearizing Korean peninsula but also North East Asia. A Peace Treaty in Korea is not only a Korean issue; it is a world issue directly related to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Conclusion
Many Korean Americans will be present at the 2010 Review Conference for the NPT, creating dialogue regarding a peace treaty in Korea and joining with people around the world to demand abolition of nuclear weapons and peace. When President Obama pledged last year in Prague to build a world free of nuclear weapons, he added that as a nuclear power the United States has a moral responsibility to act first and lead by example. So when we march for peace during the NPT Conference, we need to demand that he deliver on his promise by honoring the NPT and putting an end to its nuclear war exercises, respecting North Korea’s sovereignty, and holding genuine peace talks to establish diplomatic relations. We, Korean Americans, have a lot of work to do.
1 “Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty” Wikipedia
2 Ibid
3 Ibid
4 “Nuclear Weapons and the United States” Wikipedia
5 Joseph Gerson, Empire and the Bomb (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp.11-32
6 Ibid, p.13
7 Ibid, p.27
8 “Nuclear Posture Review Excerpts” GlobalSecurity.org
9 David Krieger. “UN Voting on Nuclear Disarmament Shows Abysmal US Record” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
10 The White House Office of the Press Secretary “Remarks by President Barack Obama” (Hradcany Square
Prague, Czech Republic, April 5, 2009)
11 Bruce Cumings, North Korea Another Country (New York: The New Press, 2004), pp.1-42
12 Ibid
13 Ibid
14 Selig Harrison, Korea Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, Princeton University Press, 2003
15 Meredith Woo-Cumings, “South Korean Anti-Americanism,” Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper No. 93, July 2003
16 Don Oberdofer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, The Perseus Books Group, 2001
17 “OPLAN 5027 Major Theater War – West” GlobalSecurity.org
18 “Bush Policies Fail to Contain North Korea,” Radio Australia
19 “OPLAN 5029 Collapse of North Korea” GlobalSecurity.org
20 Leon V Sigal. “What Obama Should Offer North Korea” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
21 For a whole treaty text, go to: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/npttext.html
22 I am a real fan of wikipedia. The diagram is from the following link too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treaty#United_States-NATO_nuclear_weapons_sharing
23 See http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/161/t/288/content.jsp?content_KEY=5729
24 See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123595811964905929.html Ironically this article talks about how 4% increase in military spending budget ($533.7 billion, excluding $130 billion for Iran & Afghanistan spending) is not enough to keep US military technologically modern.
25 See http://peaceandjusticenow.org/wordpress/2010/01/participating-organizations/
26 See https://secure2.convio.net/afsc/site/SSurvey?JServSessionIdr004=8m37u7iwh5.app10b&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&SURVEY_ID=2422
27 See http://tenthousandthingsfromkyoto.blogspot.com/2010/02/abolition-flame-to-join-peace-walk-from.html
28 See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/world/asia/12korea.html
29 For a more elaborate argument and references, see Korea Policy Institute's "Case for a Peace Treaty" (2009) http://www.kpolicy.org/documents/policy/090529kpicaseforapeacetreaty.html
This article originally appeared in the March 2010 issue of Nodutdol eNews.
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