Ave, Joshua!

Joshua Stanton reminds us that President Moon Jae-in, despite his surprisingly adept handling of the pandemic with South Korean borders, is nevertheless not a good-faith actor on the world stage. Read Joshua's latest post at One Free Korea here. The first two paragraphs of Joshua's post ought to set the mood:

I really think South Korean President Moon Jae-in wants to bail Kim Jong-un out more than I want my next breath. Even before he was sworn in, he called for the reopening of Kaesong and other joint projects to ease the burden of U.S.-led sanctions. Once in office, he called for major investments in North Korea until a call from the Treasury Department scared his bankers away. He turned a blind eye to purchases of North Korean coal, and probably to the smuggling of luxury goods, into and through South Korean ports, and failed to seize the ships involved (as mandated by U.N. resolutions). He sent fuel and machinery to Kaesong and failed to report the shipments to the U.N. When he was found out, [he] argued that Kaesong doesn’t really count as North Korea (page 151, table 13, paragraph 13).

Meanwhile, Moon lobbied Washington and the U.N. relentlessly for sanctions exemptions, despite Kim Jong-un making neither concessions nor progress toward disarmament. He wanted to build a railroad through North Korea (he won an exemption for a survey only). Most recently, he has tried to use tourism as a sanctions dodge, despite suspicions that the only viable venue for that now, [Geumgang], is under the control of U.N.- and U.S.-sanctioned Bureau 39. Now, Moon’s nominee to become the next Minister of Unification, Lee In-young, has the next big idea for how to bail Kim Jong-un out.

Later in his post, Joshua—who I think is a Never Trumper—goes after Trump for "micromismanaging North Korea policy personally." This has been a long-running theme in Joshua's posts since Trump took office. Joshua was initially willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, but it soon became obvious that Trump, whatever his supposed diplomatic coups (such as physically stepping over the DMZ into North Korea for a brief moment), hasn't done anything to move the needle. In terms of North Korea policy, Trump is a failure just like his predecessors, both Democrat and Republican.

And I agree. Trump's actions vis-à-vis North Korea amount to just a tiny bit of style and no real substance. Trump shook Kim Jeong-eun's hand—so what? Did anything come of this? Not a thing. Upshot: the options and scenarios considered by previous US administrations over the years remain viable today. The way I see it, Trump ought to just continue with sanctions pressure, but he should be better about punishing sanctions violations than Obama, Dubya, and Clinton. There's no need to make any further progress than that. Squeeze Kim out and play the long game: that's the best option in a menu of bad options. It's like performing a long, slow rear naked choke on an opponent in the octagon: effects aren't apparent early on, but given enough time, the opponent will eventually wilt with a minimum of violence.

Joshua concludes:

As Donald Trump has proven in his usual fashion—though inadvertence and ineptitude—there is no win-win between the United States and North Korea. In our zero-sum struggle to slow a global metastasis of proliferation, Moon has chosen sides, and we are not the side he has chosen. Do you want to ask why the alliance between the United States and South Korea is falling apart? There’s a lot you could blame Trump for. Just don’t forget to blame Lee In-young, and his boss, too.

I give Trump a lot of credit for turning the US economy around, pre-pandemic. I agree with Trump's federalism in the handling of the COVID-19 crisis: he's left the bulk of the work to state governors, as he should, for that's consistent with the federalist stance. I agree with Tim Pool that most accusations against Trump amount to wild-eyed attempts at fake news because the news media carry water for the Democrats, and the Democrats have been taken over by the loony far left, thus making reasoned dialogue impossible. I think Trump's current move to draw down US forces in Afghanistan is worthy of applause: the US needs to be less interventionist everywhere, and this latest move is consistent with Trump's overall anti-war, pro-economy posture.

All that being said, Trump is a dead fish when it comes to the Korean peninsula. Recently, over at ROK Drop, there was a post about how Trump may be planning to draw down the US troop presence here; I think that's a good idea. I've long contended that the US military needs to get out of Korea: we're not appreciated here, and a "tripwire" force is utterly unnecessary given the US's war technology, which allows for global force-projection in a short amount of time. These days, I think we don't even need military bases.

Of course, pulling back from interventionism won't stop certain idiots from continuing to bray that America is an empire!—even though, compared to the obviously imperialistic behavior of China, we most certainly are not. Not even close. But before I wander too far off-point, let me reiterate that Trump's Korea policy has been one of the biggest nothingburgers of his administration. Doing something decisive, like clamping down hard on North Korea while also pulling all US troops out of South Korea, would be a welcome change in policy. I contend that a Pax Americana doesn't need to exist in East Asia. I doubt I'm alone in thinking this way; let's not treat Asians like big children: let's give them room to breathe and to solve their problems in their own way. If this means a nuclear-armed, remilitarized Japan and a nuclear-armed South Korea, then so be it.