Volume 4, No. 4-5, April-May 2003

While the US vultures are ready to pounce upon Iraq in violation of the world opinion and all international laws another poor State of the world is desperately seeking ways to keep itself safe from the impending onslaught of the US war juggernaut. North Korea, declared by the US imperialism as another member of the "axis of evil", is terrified fearing that it is the next in line in the US hit list. These fears are not unfounded. The US has embarked upon a worldwide war campaign to assert its control and hegemony over the peoples and countries without which it cannot maintain its number one position and the only super power status. Presently, even when the US is desperately involved in the Persian Gulf, it is blaring out open threats to countries and movements it considers inimical or a hindrance to its Hitlerite ambitions. There are dozens of such countries which fall in the category of "either…or" and face the threat of US military adventure. Among them North Korea fears the most and has become proactive to thwart the US designs in a quite daring way. North Korea, despite its willingness to become a part of the world imperialist system, is still considered a pariah state as far as the western big powers are concerned. While the other two of the "axis", Iraq and Iran, are able to count on some support from the western countries, especially in the EU, which have oil interests in the Gulf, the North Korean State stands alone and can get a bit of the support from its "traditional allies", Russia and China, which now have become more business like than friends after the setback to socialism. In spite of the heightened aggressiveness of the US in recent times these two North Korean allies have not been as forthcoming as had happened in Korean War in 1950-53. But this is another story as those were the days of revolution and self-sacrificing revolutionary solidarity. Now N. Korea almost stands alone. Russia and China have been appeasing the US imperialists asking N Korea not to backtrack from its international obligations and commitments.

North Korea, in a sense, feels alone and abandoned and hence is assuming a seemingly bellicose posture to air its fears and grievances in an increasing hostile situation. It has adopted a proactive role to draw the attention of the world to its predicament.

Ever since the US declared N Korea a part of the "axis of evil" the latter had reasons to be on guard to save itself from the US belligerence and wrath. Two years ago, the US had categorically identified the north-east Asian region, to which the Korean peninsula belongs, as a strategic area of US’s strategic military interests. In spite of the declared end of the "Cold War" period, the US said that it would cover this region by Theatrical Missile Defence (TMD) system as a part of the Nuclear Missile Defence (NMD) system its intends to launch for itself. The Korean Peninsula lies at a strategic position from where the US can threaten China and Russia from a close point in the east. While European powers like France and Germany had opposed the NMD system as a unilateral attempt of the US to protect itself only while leaving its European allies in the lurch the TMD system was vehemently opposed by Russia, China and North Korea as it was solely meant to threaten them. An addition, it was also a message to North Korea that despite bowing to the US pressures and having reached agreements with the US (in 1994) and with South Korea (in 2000) and despite the establishment of economic and trade relations with Japan, its worries about the US and Japanese imperialist designs were far from over.

After the Korean Summit in 2000, though the US had stopped referring to North Korea as a "rogue state", it still considered it ruled by a despot and wanted a multi party system like the one in the southern part of the peninsula to best serve its imperialist interests. This was to be achieved through dismantling the bureaucratic state structure of the North, which in all probability would be the end of the North and unification under the leadership of the South. But the northern leadership went on to emulate the Chinese experience on how to dismantle the state controls and at the same time remain in power through one party rule. The US continued to hound North Korea and curtail the "aid" it had promised in the 1994 bargain agreement. But after 9/11 in 2001 the US decided to impose its will worldwide through the force of arms and declared North Korea a part of the "axis of evil". N Korea came on the pre-emptive target list of the so-called US’ war on terrorism. From then on the North Korean regime has been continuously criticized as a source of evil and nuclear proliferation though it had long abandoned its nuclear programme and had dismantled or closed the nuclear plants that produced weapon grade plutonium. The UN inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were deployed there to keep a watch on these while new ones were started (with economic and technical assistance from Japan and the US and overseers from South Korea) with an alternate technology that would not produce plutonium as a by product. In a sense, the whole of North Korean nuclear programme had come under the direct control of the US. The North Korean State even capped its missile programme in the bargain and had stopped experiments in missile launching and further development. No doubt, this arrangement was a compromise on the national security of the North Korean State; yet the US was far from satisfied, as it needs total submission up to the point of dismantling of the North Korean State. And it was not honouring its commitments (money for developing non-plutonium producing nuclear plants and alternate energy resources) made in the 1994 agreement under one pretext or the other. This was enough to remind North Korea that in spite of its coming into the fold of world imperialist system after abandoning socialism it was still an outsider and a pariah State. The world media even stepped up its propaganda which portrayed Kim Jong-il as a despot and schizophrenic person who was unable to feed his own people. This propaganda came amid increasing reports of starvation in North Korea and wheat shipments from the US though the grain aid was part of the overall agreement in 1994.

The US and its imperialist allies like Japan wanted to hammer home the point that the entry of North Korea into the imperialist fold will be considered complete when it surrenders completely to the imperialist dictates and integrate into imperialist free market economy making its existence as a separate state as redundant. As this is equal to the death of the ruling revisionist forces and of the state capitalist structure as had happened in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Too much of a demand for any ruling class and its regime! (The US wants to achieve what it could not through the Korean War in 1950-53 and had to lose more than fifty-three thousands of its troops against the joint onslaught of the Korean and Chinese forces). The North Korean leadership has been resisting this so it continued to be branded as a "totalitarian Stalinist State" though it has nothing in common with communism or Marxism.

The North Korean leadership is only trying to salvage its rule when it declares to come out of the Non Proliferation Treaty and the 1994 agreement it concluded with the US rightly accusing it that by not honouring the agreements the US has backed out from the commitments it made making the agreement redundant and nullified. The North Korean protest is in the context that despite its entry into the imperialist world system it is being hounded and its security and existence threatened. It is accusing the US of curbing its right to national defence. It is important to again remember here that the North Korean regime had itself compromised its national security when it joined the NPT in 1985 at the behest of the revisionist Soviet Union and tolerated its further erosion when it exchanged this right for money in the 1994 agreement. The North Korean leadership does not have to go deep into history to learn what imperialism is. Just recollecting the immediate past would have made it quite clear when it bravely fought the US to safeguard its revolution and independence. But now the revisionist ideology has blinded them and they expect imperialism to treat them as equals and respect their independence and sovereignty. The things which are won and secured through great sacrifices are never to be compromised and bargained for and cannot be maintained through yielding and cringing. Present North Korean leadership has only learnt a bit and not whole of the lesson yet.

Nevertheless, as a State North Korea has the right to demand that others respect its sovereignty and independence. It has not only restarted its 5 megawatt nuclear reactor which will produce bomb grade plutonium but has also taken hold of the locked up plutonium rods that were under the seals of the IAEA and the UN. It has also expelled the UN inspectors though at the same time declared that its nuclear programme will remain for peaceful purposes. It is an irony of the present times that only the third world countries declare that their nuclear programmes are for peaceful purposes while the big powers never conceal their intentions and ambitions to dominate the world through nuclear blackmail and terror. For them these are meant to launch real nuclear wars while they feverishly restrict others to acquire such capabilities even for self-defence. Of course, the poor and oppressed countries have to make such weapons as deterrence against the big powers that the big powers don’t allow and have found a way to force them through the NPT.

North Korea says that when it faces war threat by the US imperialism it has the sovereign right to defend itself by all means especially when the US forces stationed in the bases in South Korea have nuclear arms at their disposal. It is not out of context to remember here that during the previous Korean War the US administration contemplated the use of nuclear arms against North Korea and revolutionary China, which was fighting side by side with the revolutionary Korean forces against the US aggression. Korea believes that the US nuclear weapons are a real threat to its existence. Fearing a pre-emptive strike from the US it has demanded that the US agree to a mutual non-aggression pact. This is too justified a demand of a weak and beleaguered nation to be digested by the imperialist belly. This Korean demand, if acceded, would mean the end of the state of war that has come to stay after the 1953 armistice for the last fifty years between North and South Korea. This would also mean that the there would no longer be any need for the US forces to be stationed in South Korea. The 1953 armistice, in the legal sense, is only a suspension of the war. There is no peace treaty between the two warring States and the US is there under the pretext that it is defending South Korea under the ‘UN mandate’. North Korea wants an end to the US presence in the peninsula to achieve peace for itself. But the strategic location of the Korean peninsula allures the US to place its armed forces there by naked bullying if hook and crook technique does not help. And now when the US is on a worldwide war juggernaut; no logic, no sense will prevail upon it except the insatiable spirit of imperialist brigandry. So what North Korea desires the US upsets.

The North Korean demand, which has acquired a heightened significance in the present world situation, only highlights its fears and anxieties vis-à-vis the US imperialist designs and, at the same time, is an attempt to underscore its precarious position and an effort to thwart a possible US attack through heightened political initiative. It is a demand that is meant to secure peace for itself, a commitment from the US not to attack it under this pretext or the other. Though it says that in a nuclear showdown it will win in the end its efforts are directed towards avoiding such an eventuality, an attempt to bind the US legally and politically not to aggress upon it. But the imperialist mind does not listen to others’ needs; it is such a blind and exterminating power which can only understand the language of force.

North Korea justifies coming out of the NPT and the restarting of its nuclear plant on the ground that it is being threatened by US which might launch a war of aggression over it any time after a war in Iraq. So it needs the same types of weapons for defence which the US has in its own arsenals for offence. For the time, it has declared its nuclear programme to meet its energy needs. It has put its armed forces on a high state of alert and conducted a small range missile test off the Korean coast and threatened to test long range ballistic missiles if the US refuses to come round to strike a non-aggression pact. In fact North Korea sees the Hitlerite intentions of the US as is also clear from the events around Iraq. When Iraq has opened itself for the UN weapon inspectors and is destroying its very short range Al Samoud missiles at the behest of the UN, and even when the chief weapons inspector has declared that Iraq does not have any weapons of mass destruction, the US still refuses to listen to the international opinion against war and is ready to invade Iraq at any time to effect a regime change.

North Korea does not expect that the US will refrain from attacking it. Rather, it expects an attack in the name of destroying N Korean weapons of mass destruction and for overthrowing another "despot" of the "axis of evil". A few months back the Bush administration had said that the N. Korean question would be solved peacefully. This was due to its preoccupation with the Iraq question. Bush had in mind the almost silent support of other imperialist powers on Iraq and had wanted to engage himself one by one. He expected North Korea to yield peacefully once Iraq question was settled through threat or a devastating war. But later on when the US learnt that N Korea is asking for an impossible demand of a non-aggression pact it started frowning more and more. From a ‘peaceful settlement of the question’ and promises for meeting the energy and food needs of N Korea it went on to bare its real fangs and declared that all options were "open" to coerce North Korea into submission. Bush declared, "If things don’t get done diplomatically, they will be done militarily." He also contemplated compelling North Korea to yield through UN sanctions. But N Korea declared that any sanctions would be considered an act of war against it and insisted on striking a mutual pact with the US by keeping the UN out. (The UN had already done many crimes against N Korea. It had allowed the US to invade North in 1950 and the US forces committed untold crimes against the Korean people under the UN mandate. Not only that the UN had no control over the US forces once they entered N Korea, the UN in fact was under the control of the US led imperialist countries where the US wishes and word carried the weight.)

US’s position was supported not only by Japan, Australia and France; the governments of Russia and China too advised North Korea not to offend and antagonize the ‘international community’ by its defiant actions. They also asked N Korea not to restart the nuclear reactor and to stop expelling the inspectors. The other imperialist states accused N Korea of "creating a crisis when none existed." This was clearly stated by the Australian foreign minister Downer at the time of the oath-taking ceremony of the new South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun on Feb. 25. All the powers pressurized N Korea to heed the demands of the ‘international community’.

The US remains non-committal on the demand of a non-aggression pact. If N Korea does not accept economic assistance the way the US offers, it threatens that "all options are open" for the US. The world hegemonistic ambitions of the US do not allow a non-aggression pact with N Korea. Moreover, such a pact would open up floodgates for a massive anti-US movement in South Korea whose people are already against the US military presence on their land. Though China also wants this to happen yet it is not coming in full support of the N Korean position and restricts itself to counsel both the parties that a peaceful political solution be reached between the two.

The North Korean position has earned political points for N Korea along with criticism and counsel. The N Korean demand is too just a demand that is earning the support of the people of South Korea and justice loving people worldwide. The newly installed president in Seoul had to clarify his position by saying that the US forces would remain on the Korean soil. The US too has asserted again that it will continue its military presence in the peninsula. The N Korean regime has accused the US that it is moving its forces closer to the 38th parallel and bringing in B2 heavy fighter bombers for an attack. The US has stepped up its reconnaissance flights for spying over N Korea.

Though there is no doubt about the far greater US military superiority over N Korean armed forces and in a pure military showdown the US has a very strong edge yet justice lies on the side of North Korea. While one should not have the illusion that the North Korean State will confront the US imperialists in a non-revolutionary way one must oppose the US for its jingoism against a poor and weak country of the third world. Neither revolutionary Russia nor Maoist China are there to support a weak nation against imperialism nor the N Korean State has the moral communist edge over its adversary. North Korean regime is only struggling to defend itself through striking a bargain deal with the US. Nor does Korea attract the attention of the EU countries as a lucrative economic region like the Gulf of Persia. Its significance lies only as a strategic point in the far east where US, Japanese, Chinese and Russian interests overlap. It is another international knot that acquires an explosive potential when inter-imperialist contradictions get sharpened. For the time being, this knot is not going to trigger a major conflagration of international dimensions that may directly involve other major powers. In spite of this, it will remain a contentious hot spot that will reveal much of the direction these powers may assume in future.

March 10, 2003

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