RELIGION or POLITICS ??? About North Korea, did you Know?

Hello friends, and a happy TGIF to you all. I continue with the second section about North Korea from yesterday, and of course it comes from the Newsletter IMPRIMIS, published by Hillsdale College, and written by Sung-Yoon Lee, ass't professor from Tufts University.


     It is granted that it is possible a peace treaty might be conducive to reconsiliation between the two Koreas and stability in the region; but this will be the case only if it does not lead to calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea.   What is more likely is that such a treaty would cause all sides -- not only North koreans, but South Koreans and Americans, too -- to question the need for a continued U.S. presence in Korea.   And thiswould in turn advance a top priority on the North Korean state;   the complete and irreversible removal of US troops from South Korea.   Considering the size of North Korea's military and its stocks of both conventional and nuclear  weapons, the results would likely be disastrous.

      The presence of US troops in South Korea has been and remains the greatest deterrent to North Korean adventurism and a disruption of the current and longstanding peace on the Korean peninsula.    And to repeat an important point:   the absence of a formal peace treaty no more threatens this peace than the absence of a post World War Two peace treaty between Moscow and Tokyo threatens the peace between Russia and Japan.

      But does Korea even matter, from America's strategic point of view?   Consider the lessons of four other wars in and around Korea in the 60-year period leadingup to l950;   the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95)m the First Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the Second ino-Japanese War (1937-45), and the Pacific War (1941-45).    In each of these, Japan was the principal actor, driven by a desire to change the geopolitical setting in its favor.   And taken together, these earlier conflicts powerfully reinforce the lesson of the Korena War itself:  a power vacuum in Korean War itself;   a power vacuum in Korea is an invitation to aggression.

      By defeating China in 1895, Japan won Taiwan as its first colony and effectively ended the centuries-old Chinese world order.   By defeating Russia in 1905, Japan won international recognition of its "paramount political, military and economic interests in Korea", as enshrined in the Treaty of Portsmouth.   By 1937, Japan was in full control of its Korean colony and prepared to utilize the Korean peninsula as a supply base and military platform for invading China.    Lacking strategic interests in Northeast Asia, the U.S. stood by as Japan gobbled up Korea and advanced into Manchuria.    But Japan's military successes peaked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1041, and it was defeated in August 1945.    By then, the geopolitical importance of Korea was not lost on the victorious allies,  who paritioned the peninsula at the 38th Parallel .

That does it for this week. I will be some of you didn't know about Japan and it's wars with China and

Russia. Well now you can tie in your history before Pearl Harbor and why and how Japan got too big

for it's britches.  Do you suppose history will repeat itself with, you know who?   And I don't mean

China.  As always, time will tell.       See y'all monday.      Cheers      CJ