First things first, however.
In 1962, a Cold War curmudgeon named Fred Schwarz published a book entitled "You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists)". The idea behind the book, of course, was not that you could really trust the communists. The point was the exact opposite. Communists could not be trusted at all, on anything, especially since they were hell-bent on one overarching goal: to turn America Red.
That was the anti-communist mindset of the U.S. national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — during the entire Cold War. The notion was that it would be impossible for the United States and the rest of the free world to ever enter into a peaceful and friendly relationship with the Soviet Union (especially Russia), China, North Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, or any other communist state. That’s because, U.S. officials said, any such agreement would necessarily depend on trusting the communists. And the fact was, they steadfastly maintained, communists could never be trusted on anything.
That’s why the Pentagon and the CIA were so filled with rage against President Kennedy, who, in the months leading up to his assassination, began secretly working with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to establish peaceful and friendly relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. (See FFF’s book "JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated" by Douglas Horne.) In the eyes of the Pentagon and the CIA, Kennedy was hopelessly naïve and was taking America down the road to a communist takeover.
Now, consider the following title for another book: You Can Always Trust U.S. Officials (to be U.S. Officials). That is, you can always count on U.S. officials to lie, deceive, double-cross, double-deal, and renege on their agreements.
That problem is central to the U.S.-North Korea controversy. That’s why I have always been skeptical about the chances for success in the Trump-Kim summit. The deal that U.S. officials are offering North Korea necessarily depends on having North Korea trust U.S. officials. And the problem is: You can always trust U.S. officials (to be U.S. officials).
Trump was essentially saying to North Korea: “As part of our deal, you need to dismantle your nuclear weapons, and you need to do it first. Once you do that, I promise you that the U.S. will lift its brutal sanctions that are killing your people and will never ever initiate a regime-change operation against you. Even better, I will make North Korea rich, notwithstanding its socialist economic system.”
The U.S. position clearly poses a big problem for North Korea. The only reason it developed nuclear weapons in the first place was to deter the Pentagon and the CIA from initiating a violent regime-change operation against North Korea, just like the ones they have initiated ever since the U.S. government was converted into a national-security state after World War II. Coming to mind are Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, among others.
If North Korea were to accept Trump’s deal, it would necessarily be placing its trust in U.S. officials to keep their word and lift the deadly sanctions and not initiate a regime-change operation — after North Korea has given up the one thing that could deter a violent U.S. regime-change operation, one that would involve a massive carpet-bombing campaign by American B-52s, something that U.S. officials never cease to remind North Koreans with their periodic “military exercises” in Korea.
But that’s the rub: U.S. officials can’t be trusted to keep their word. They lie, deceive, double-cross, double-deal, and renege on their agreements.
Just ask the Russians, who U.S. officials double-crossed by breaking their word to not expand NATO by absorbing Eastern European countries after the Cold War (supposedly) ended.
Or ask anyone in Libya, whose dictator Muammar Qaddafi was double-crossed by U.S. officials by being ousted from power in a regime-change operation after he trusted U.S. officials by abandoning his nuclear-weapons program.
Or ask Iran, who has just been double-crossed by U.S. officials, who are breaking their promise to lift sanctions after Iran agreed to dismantle its nuclear program.
Indeed, ask the members of Congress, who were lied to, under oath, by none other than a CIA director, Richard Helms, who was glorified by his cohorts at the CIA precisely because he had committed perjury before Congress, as well as a director of national intelligence, James Clapper, who was never charged with a crime.
The simple fact is: North Korean officials would be stupid to trust U.S. officials. While certainly not a perfect guarantee against a U.S. regime-change operation, North Korea’s nuclear weapons are the best chance that North Korea has to deter such an operation. Giving up its nuclear weapons would be a mistake North Koreans could only make once, as Gaddafi learned and as Iran has learned.
Does that mean that there is no chance to arrive at a peaceful resolution in Korea? Absolutely not! And that brings us to how Trump, Trumpsters, and Trumpistas can still win a Nobel Prize for Peace for the president.
Let’s keep in mind something important that the mainstream media tends to forget: Fundamentally, this is not a war between the United States and North Korea. North Korea never attacked and invaded the United States. Instead, it attacked and invaded South Korea in an attempt to unify the country by force, just as President Lincoln invaded the Confederate States of America in an attempt to unify the country. The Korean War has always been a civil war between North Korea and South Korea.
The problem is that the U.S. government decided to intervene in that civil war, coming into it on the side of South Korea even though the war was none of the U.S. government’s business.
It is worth noting that the U.S. intervention was always illegal under our form of government, given that there was never a congressional declaration of war as required by the U.S. Constitution. It is also worth noting that the Pentagon had to resort to conscription — i.e., force — to secure the necessary number of American soldiers to go fight thousands of miles away from American shores in another nation’s civil war that was none of the U.S. government’s business.
In fact, let’s call the U.S. government by what it was (and what it still is): a buttinski government, one that butts into the affairs of other nations even while crying and lamenting that foreign regimes like Russia are supposedly butting into America’s affairs.
Have you ever wondered why the North Korean people hate Mr. Buttinski so much? It’s because after Mr. Buttinski butted into Korea’s civil war, it unleashed death and destruction on an unimaginable scale, much worse than would have been the case if Mr. Buttinski had never butted into the conflict. In fact, I wonder how many Americans realize that the Pentagon dropped more bombs on North Korea — 635,000 tons of explosives plus 32,000 tons of napalm — than it ever dropped in the entire Pacific theater in World War II. No village, town, hamlet, or city was considered immune. Everyone in North Korea was considered fair game because they were all considered to be gooks, Reds, commies, vermin, and animals. That’s why there is still no reluctance today to kill massive numbers of North Korean people with the ever-brutal U.S. sanctions. It’s why U.S. officials and their acolytes in the U.S. mainstream press exult whenever the U.S. sanctions start “biting” by killing more North Koreans through starvation and illness.
If you want to get a good grasp on why North Koreans hate Mr. Buttinski so much, read this article.
The best thing that could ever happen to the Korean people — North and South — and, for that matter to the American people — is for Mr. Buttinski to simply come home and leave Korea to the Koreans. It’s their war, not a war between North Korea and the United States. North Korea never attacked the United States. It never intended to attack the United States. It still doesn’t intend to attack the United States. Those nuclear missiles are intended solely to deter a U.S. regime-change operation. Once Mr. Buttinski comes home, those nuclear weapons become irrelevant.
In fact, the dark, perverse irony is that it is U.S. interventionism in the first place that motivated North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons. And now that perverse outcome of interventionism is being used as the excuse for further interventionism, just as ISIS, which the U.S. invasion of Iraq produced, has been used as an excuse for further interventionism in the Middle East.
The best chance for peace is for North Korea and South Korea to be free to reach their own deal without the interference of Mr. Buttinski. It’s their war. It’s their peace.
Is there a chance the Trump could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by bringing U.S. troops home and letting the two Koreas reach their own peace agreement? Why not? If butting into a conflict can bring a Nobel, why shouldn’t butting out do it as well?
This article was published by The Future of Freedom Foundation.
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