[News] North Korea Issue is Not De-nuclearization But De-Colonization

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/15/north-korea-issue-is-not-de-nuclearization-but-de-colonization/ 



  North Korea Issue is Not De-nuclearization But De-Colonization

by Ajamu Baraka <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/cuxere/> - June 15, 
2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The critics had already signaled their strategy for derailing any 
meaningful move toward normalizing relations between the United States 
and North Korea. Right-wing neoliberals from CNN, MSNBC and NPR are in 
perfect alignment with the talking points issued by U.S. Sen. Chuck 
Schumer (D-NY) and the Democrat Party that took the position that 
anything short of the North Koreans surrendering their national 
interests and national dignity to the United States was a win for North 
Korea.

For much of the foreign policy community, corporate media pundits and 
leaders of the two imperialist parties, the issue is North Korean 
de-nuclearization. But for the people in Korea and throughout the global 
South, the real issue has always been the unfinished business of ending 
the war and beginning the de-colonization of the Korean peninsula.

The interrelated issues of respecting the dignity and sovereignty of the 
North Korean nation and engaging in an authentic process of 
de-colonization are precisely why the U.S.-North Korean initiative will 
fail without a major intervention on the part of the people in the 
United States demanding that their leaders commit to diplomacy and peace.

There should be no illusions about U.S. intentions. If U.S. policymakers 
were really concerned with putting a brake on the North Korean 
nuclear-weapons program, they would have pursued a different set of 
policies. Such policies would have created the necessary security 
conditions to convince the North Koreans that a nuclear deterrence to 
the United States was unnecessary.

The fact that those conditions were not created were less a result of 
the evil intentions of the North Koreans. than it reflected the need to 
maintain the justification for continued U.S. military deployment in 
South Korea and in the region. Being able to point to North Korea as a 
threat to regional security has provided the justifications for U.S. 
power projection in the region and the ever-expanding U.S. military budget.

With the growing power of China over the last few decades, the threat of 
North Korea allowed the United States to continue a physical presence 
right at the underbelly of China. That is why the “agreed framework” 
under Clinton was not implemented and then jettisoned by the Bush 
administration. It is also why the Obama administration’s so-called 
strategic patience was really about a series of increasingly provocative 
military exercises and no negotiations.

*Full Spectrum Dominance and the Psychopathology of White Supremacy*

Korea has historically played a significant role for the U.S. imperial 
project since the end of the second World ar.The emergent forces U.S. 
President Dwight Eisenhower identified as the 
military/industrial/complex are still present, but are now exercising 
hegemonic power, along with the financial sector within the U.S. state. 
Those forces are not interested in a diplomatic resolution of the Korean 
colonial question because their interests are more focused on China and 
maintaining U.S. regional hegemony in East Asia. The tensions in Korea 
have not only provided them the rationale for increased expenditures for 
various missile defense systems but also for bolstering public support 
for the obscene military budgets that are largely transferred straight 
to their pockets.

That is why the historic record is replete with the United States 
sabotaging negotiated settlements with the North, but then pointing to 
North Korean responses to those efforts as evidence of North Korean 
duplicity.

In addition to the material interests and hegemonic geopolitical 
objectives, the social-psychological phenomenon of inculcated white 
supremacy is also a factor and has buttressed imperial policies toward 
that nation for years.

For example, the psychopathology of white supremacy invisibilizes the 
absurdity and illegitimacy of the United States being in a position to 
negotiate the fate of millions of Koreans. The great “white father” and 
savior complex is not even a point of contestation because it is not 
even perceived–the rule of whiteness through the dominance of the 
Western capitalist elite has been naturalized.

Therefore, it is quite understandable that for many, the summit is the 
space where the North Koreans are essentially supposed to surrender to 
the United States. It is beyond the comprehension of most policymakers 
and large sectors of the public that North Koreans would have ever 
concluded it is not in their national interest to give up their defenses 
to a reckless and dangerously violent rogue state that sees itself 
beyond the law.

And it is that strange white-supremacist consciousness that buys into 
the racist trope that it was Trump’s pressure that brought North Korea 
to the table. The white-supremacist colonial mentality believes the 
natives will only respond to force and violence.

As U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the good old boy from South 
Carolina, argues 
<https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/11/politics/rand-paul-lindsey-graham-cnntv/index.html> 
“The only way North Korea will give up their nuclear program is if they 
believe military option is real.”

But as Kim Kye Gwan 
<https://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korea-blames-us-south-korea-military-drill/story?id=55200524>, 
North Korea’s first vice minister for foreign affairs and former 
nuclear-program negotiator pointed out in relationship to the reasons 
why North Korea stayed with the process:

    “The U.S. is miscalculating the magnanimity and broad-minded
    initiatives of the DPRK as signs of weakness and trying to embellish
    and advertise as if these are the product of its sanctions and
    pressure.”

Unfortunately, the white-supremacist world-view renders it almost 
impossible to apprehend reality in any other way. That is why it is 
inevitable that the Trump administration—like the Clinton, Bush, and 
Obama administrations—will mis-read the North Koreans.

The North Korea issue is a classic example of why it is impossible to 
separate a pro-peace, anti-war position from the issue of 
anti-imperialism. The concrete, geopolitical objectives of U.S. 
imperialist interests in the region drives the logic of regional 
dominance, which means peace, de-colonization and national 
reconciliation for Korea are counter to U.S. interests. And while we 
must support the U.S. state’s decision to halt military exercises, we 
must recognize that without vigorous pressure from the people to support 
an honest process, the possibility of conflict might be ever more alive 
now as a result of the purported attempt at diplomacy.

The nature of the North Korean state is not the issue. What is the issue 
is a process has begun between the two Korean nations that should be 
respected. Therefore, de-nuclearization should not be the 
focus—self-determination of the Korean peoples must be the center of our 
discussions. On that issue, it is time for activists in the United 
States to demand the United States get out of Korea. The peace and 
anti-war movement must support a process that will lead to the closure 
of U.S. military bases, the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the 
elimination of the nuclear threat.

In short, U.S. based activists must support an end to the Korean war and 
the start of the de-colonization of South Korea.

/*Ajamu Baraka* is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for 
Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party 
ticket. He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda 
Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch magazine. /

-- 
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