War with North Korea: Let it Be.

                                                            




                                                                     


From Reuters:

North Korea Declares “Sacred War” on U.S. and South

“The Army and people of the DPRK will start a retaliatory sacred war of their own style based on nuclear deterrent any time necessary in order to counter the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces deliberately pushing the situation to the brink of a war,” the North’s National Defense commission said.

Eight years ago Public Occurrences began as a (pro) war blog. In the first few years American foreign and military policy dominated as completely as all-things-China do today.  The distillation of all that pixel wastage was the concept (which would be called a "doctrine" if proposed by one other than an idiot blogger) of "International Federalism." It argued for an American foreign policy analogized to the principals of the American governmental structure: limited and greatly reduced American involvement in the world, replacement of national "interest" with national "security" as the trip-wire for American military involvement, and the use of decisive force when that wire was tripped. Consistent with the first of these precepts we advocated ending alliances, such as NATO, whose raison d'etre, containing Soviet communism, had disappeared. No raison, no d'etre.  In the event, policy makers, academics, and think tank residents did not flock hither. Flocks were espied many places--most any other place imaginable, actually--but mostly these birds of strange plumage remained at their familiar roosts: NATO was expanded not disbanded and American soldiers are now committed to die in defense of Vilnius as surely as in defense of Washington, D.C.  Similarly we also advocated ending American military alliances with Taiwan, and, coming back to our point now, South Korea.  And the alliance with South Korea continued as if the world had not changed since 1953.

               

It is grievous aggravation to doctrine-proposers when the world behaves in ways predicted and the Flocks, and one's country, step in a shit puddle over which the proposed doctrine would have provided an elegant Leap.  Such was the case in 2006 when the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea (DPRK, in Flockage) took the first steps toward building nuclear weapons. Then (see post here October 15, 2006), we proposed giving in to the North's demands for face-to-face negotiations, rather than the five-party or six-party, I forget which, roundtable we were insisting upon.  If memory serves (and it may not) that's what ended up happening, face-to-face negotiations, and the crisis was avoided and we all went back to joining hands and singing We are the World. The DPRK however went back to building nuclear weapons, verifiably detonating one or more atomic bombs underground, and test launching missiles with which to deliver them, at least one of which flew over the Straits of Japan. Through this and similar stimuli in the years since 2006, aggravated doctrine-proposers stayed their keyboards and wrote about China, American tackle football, and futbol instead.

Comes now the intelligence at top.  North Korea is a pustule on the anus of mankind.  Under prevailing Flock Doctrine there is ample justification for American military action(1) on humanitarian grounds, as America intervened in Bosnia under President Clinton to worthy effect.  We International Federalists however are not down with that.  We have not evolved to the point of seeing all of mankind as one beautiful tapestry.  We are Americans. We International Federalist Americans are extremely reluctant to get America involved in any international pustule-popping unless our national security requires it. But we want to!  

And thus the intelligence at top is not unhappily received by us for if the North Koreans "start a retaliatory sacred war" and American soldiers in South Korea (where they would not be if we International Federalist Americans had had our way) are killed then the second of the Elegant Precepts above will be met and there will be other--and many--nuclear-tipped missiles flying over the Straits of Japan, but in the opposite direction (Elegant Precept Three), toward Pyongyang not from Pyongyang, where they will land and blow up and the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea with them.

Thus it will be if International Federalist Americans have their way which we won't and so we align our keyboards back toward China, which only declares war on its own people.

(1) See e.g. Christopher Hitchens, “A Nation of Racist Dwarfs,” Slate, February 1, 2010. http://www.slate.com/id/2243112