Bush Hawks Furious That Asia Shuns N Korea Game Plan

by Jim Lobe

But they can also be called "isolationists" because they not only distrust and despise most multilateral institutions, but they resist any "entanglements," that is, alliances, that could constrain Washington's freedom to pursue its national interests, as the hardliners define them.

These tendencies have been clearest in Washington's rejection of the International Criminal Court (ICC), its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and construction of an untested and dubious missile defence system, as well as its insistence that it reserves to itself the ultimate decision of whether to invade Iraq or anybody else it dislikes.

Foreign policy expert Charles Kupchan argues that these two tendencies "are in reality opposite sides of the same coin" and have coexisted in U.S. diplomacy for more than two centuries. Remember George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances?"

"They share common ideological origins in America's fear of entanglements that may compromise its liberty and sovereignty," wrote Kupchan in his recent book, 'The End of the American Era.'

In practical terms they mean, 'the country should do its best to shun international engagement, but if it does engage, it should do so in a way that preserves national sovereignty" he added.

These tendencies are becoming increasingly apparent in the hawks' reactions to the supposed crisis over North Korea.

They are furious with Washington's two most important Asian allies, South Korea and Japan, for refusing to line up behind the administration's initial demands to cut off contact and aid to Pyongyang until it completely and verifiably dismantles its nuclear facilities.

Adding to their fury is the likelihood that they are now losing out to the administration's so-called "realist" faction, purportedly led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is moving to renew negotiations with Pyongyang over the terms for a verifiable agreement that may include U.S. aid and a non-aggression pledge.

The ultra-conservative Weekly Standard, whose views generally mirror those held by the civilian hawks in the Pentagon, if not the generals themselves who have their doubts, even denounced the notion of a non-aggression pledge as "reminiscent of appeasement," a reference to the West's acquiescence in Nazi Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938.

They recognize, of course, the difficulty of destroying Pyongyang's nuclear reactors with U.S. military action without risking the safety of South Korea and the 37,000 U.S. troops who have been stationed in the south since the Korean War (1950-53). But they do not see that as an excuse for letting Tokyo and Seoul, as well as Pyongyang and China, the north's main external source of fuel and food, off the hook.

Their frustration has expressed itself mainly in surprisingly radical suggestions that Washington should withdraw its troops from South Korea and even encourage Japan to go nuclear, even though either move would radically alter, if not destroy, Washington's oldest Asian alliances.

Troop withdrawal was first floated last month by the editorial writers of The Wall Street Journal, another conservative organ close to that hardline pair, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle. It followed the recent election victory of South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, who defeated the U.S.-favored candidate on a tide of anti-American protests over Bush's hard line against Pyongyang and a U.S. military court's acquittal of soldiers who accidentally killed two Korean schoolgirls with their truck.

"Perhaps in his call of congratulations, President Bush should inform Mr. Roh that the U.S. does not stay where it isn't wanted. American troops are there to protect Koreans and if they no longer feel that is necessary, we will bring them home," said the Journal.

As the crisis intensified, the hawks became more resentful of Seoul's refusal to adopt Washington's hard line. "I've been saying for a week or two now that we should pull our troops out of South Korea," said New York Times columnist William Safire, another conservative, who suggested that the very presence of U.S. troops acts as a constraint on U.S. military options.

"If we have to attack or take out a nuclear plutonium-producing facility," he asked on Meet the Press, the country's most widely watched public affairs television program, "why should we have 37,000 U.S. troops vulnerable right there?"

And Kenneth Adelman, a protege of both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Perle who serves with the latter on the Defense Policy Board, recommended withdrawing at least one-half of the U.S. troops from Korea, in a recent comment on National Public Radio.

Such a move would have two benefits, he argued: It would "challenge the South Koreans on whether our military presence is, indeed unwanted" and, more significantly, it would "show the world what Americans instinctively know... the default position of U.S. foreign policy is isolationist, not expansionist".

According to Adelman, a U.S. withdrawal would also "shake up" the region, by forcing neighboring states to take more responsibility for North Korea. That echoed an earlier suggestion by yet another hawk, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, that the administration encourage Japan to develop its own nuclear weapons as a source of leverage over China.

In addition to the notion of withdrawing U.S. troops, the hawks have used the North Korea crisis to press the case for major increases in the U.S. military budget, which is already larger than the 15 next biggest arms spenders combined. They argue that Kim timed the crisis precisely to coincide with the huge U.S. military build-up around Iraq, saying -- Rumsfeld's insistence to the contrary -- that Washington did not have the forces available to launch a credible attack on the north.

All these experts conveniently ignore the fact that most of our recent wars have been fought from the air, with minimum casualties, and we have enough air power - land- and sea-based missiles and such - to fight on a dozen fronts.

"The North Korean crisis shows the need to spend more on defence and get back to a true 'two-war' standard -- the ability to fight two conflicts at the same time," wrote yet another prominent hawk, Max Boot, a former Journal editorial writer, now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"We can't press North Korea too hard if we know we can't back up bellicose talk," he went on, suggesting that Washington add $100 billion to the current budget of just under $400 billion.

While Powell appears for now to have persuaded Bush against adopting either policy recommendation, his failure to gain an agreement leading to the dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs would almost certainly bolster the hawks' position.