Donald Kirk
Certain parallels between the North-South confrontation on the Korean peninsula and the response to the Hamas attack on Israel are more than a little disquieting.
Just as the Americans sent an aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford, to the Mediterranean coast of Israel, so they sent another carrier, the Ronald Reagan, and a B52 bomber to South Korea. Their visits make a symbolic point: U.S. forces can deal with crises on widely separated fronts. That is less than totally certain, however, when you consider the worsening build-up of arms everywhere.
Victor Cha, Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, summarized the gravity of the problem during a talk in Seoul to introduce his latest book, “Korea: A New History of South and North,” co-authored with Ramon Pardo of King’s College, London. Rail traffic across the 18-kilometer-long Tumen River border between North Korea and Russia, he observed, had vastly increased in recent weeks.
Whatever was beneath the tarpaulins covering the freight cars was hidden, said Cha, but the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, was making good on promises he made to Russian President Vladimir Putin to ship artillery shells and other munitions for the Russians’ war in Ukraine. And the Russians no doubt were repaying the favor with gear the North Koreans need to put a satellite into orbit and to upgrade their basic arsenal, including an air force that dates from the Soviet era.
No one quite expects war to break out in the near future between U.S. and Russian forces in Ukraine, or between the U.S. and North Korea, or between the U.S. and Iran and the Iran-armed Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, but Cha and Pardo make clear the unpredictability of the future, at least as far as North Korea goes.
“Against all odds, the small, isolated regime has survived while bigger counterparts have collapsed,” they write. “But at the same time, North Korea is resilient until the day that it is not.”
The element of surprise dominates the parallels and links between conflict from eastern Europe to the Middle East to East Asia.
Might China go to war to recover the “lost” island province of Taiwan, despite frequent air and naval exercises in surrounding skies and waters? Wouldn’t Chinese President Xi Jinping prefer to improve frayed ties with the U.S. while exercising a restraining influence on North Korea?
Maybe so, but the potential for conflict strains relations and raises sensitive questions everywhere. As of this past July, the war since its start had cost the U.S. a stupendous $46.6 billion — security assistance ($18.3 billion), weapons and equipment ($23.5 billion) and grants and loans for weapons and equipment ($4.7 billion). Next in line is Israel, getting $3.8 billion from the U.S. this year — and maybe more, to make good on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to destroy Hamas in Gaza.
In this handout image provided by the South Korean Defense Ministry, The submarine USS Annapolis (front), U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan (C) and South Korean and Japan warships seen during a combined trilateral anti-submarine exercise on September 30, 2022 in East sea South Korea.South Korean Defense Ministry via Getty Images
Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and Hamas’s assault on southern Israel have cost thousands of lives. Obviously, it’s necessary to defend Ukraine, just as Israel must destroy Hamas.
Both these struggles could go on for a long time. Israeli forces may rampage through Gaza in coming days and weeks, but then they will face the danger not only from Arab countries, with which the Israelis have been trying to form decent relations, but also from Iran and Turkey and others colluding against them.
As it has done since its founding in 1948, Israel may weather the storm, but that’s to say nothing of the storm clouds forming over Asia. The United States formed a defensive line from alliances in Northeast Asia with Korea and Japan, down through strengthened ties with the Philippines and, miraculously, rosy relations with Vietnam, whose Hanoi regime inflicted the most humiliating defeat in American history in the Vietnam War.
The U.S. network extends “down under” to Australia, anchor of AUKUS, the Australia, United Kingdom, U.S. alliance, and on to India, included in what’s called the Quad, a non-military grouping with military overtones that also includes Australia and Japan.
Nothing is guaranteed, though. India prides itself on “neutrality” and counts on Russia not only for nearly half of its oil but also for armaments ranging from tanks to planes to ships — all vital for defense against China, nibbling away at its northern borders.
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, moreover, is upset with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s charge that India engineered the assassination of a Sikh terrorist on Canadian soil. Try as they might to convince the Indians otherwise, the Americans are suspected of having passed on secret intelligence on the alleged plot to the Canadians.
It is as though the world were on the brink. Any spark could blow up the elaborate framework that’s balancing forces in a delicate standoff. The Hamas onslaught in Israel, and the overwhelming Israeli response, show just how easily the sparks can explode into a limited war — and then, God forbid, into a much greater conflagration that nobody wants.
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