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World News See other World News Articles Title: Why Is Kim Jong-un Our Problem? “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.” So President Donald Trump warns, amid reports North Korea, in its zeal to build an intercontinental ballistic missile to hit our West Coast, may test another atom bomb. China shares a border with North Korea. We do not. Why then is this our problem to “solve”? And why is North Korea building a rocket that can cross the Pacific and strike Seattle or Los Angeles? Is Kim Jong-un mad? No. He is targeting us because we have 28,500 troops on his border. If U.S. air, naval, missile, and ground forces were not in and around Korea, and if we were not treaty-bound to fight alongside South Korea, there would be no reason for Kim to build rockets to threaten a distant superpower that could reduce his hermit kingdom to ashes. While immensely beneficial to Seoul, is this U.S. guarantee to fight Korean War II, 64 years after the first, wise? Russia, China, and Japan retain the freedom to decide whether and how to react, should war break out. Why do we not? Would it not be better for us if we, too, retained full freedom of action to decide how to respond, should the North attack? During the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, despite John McCain’s channeling Patrick Henry—“We are all Georgians now!”—George W. Bush decided to take a pass on war. When a mob in Kiev overthrew the pro-Russian government, Vladimir Putin secured his Sebastopol naval base by annexing Crimea. Had Georgia and Ukraine been in NATO, we would have been, in both cases, eyeball-to-eyeball with a nuclear-armed Russia. Which brings us to the point: The United States is in rising danger of being dragged into wars in half a dozen places, because we have committed ourselves to fight for scores of nations with little or no link to vital U.S. interests. While our first president said in his Farewell Address that we might “trust to temporary alliances” in extraordinary emergencies, he added, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” Alliances, Washington believed, were transmission belts of war. Yet no nation in history has handed out so many war guarantees to so many “allies” on so many continents, as has the United States. To honor commitments to the Baltic States, we have moved U.S. troops to the Russian border. To prevent China from annexing disputed rocks and reefs in the South and East China Seas, our Navy is prepared to go to war—to back the territorial claims of Tokyo and Manila. Yet, our richest allies all spend less on defense than we, and all run trade surpluses at America’s expense. Consider Germany. Last year, Berlin ran a $270 billion trade surplus and spent 1.2 percent of GDP on defense. The United States ran a $700 billion merchandise trade deficit and spent 3.6 percent of GDP on defense. Angela Merkel puts Germany first. Let the Americans finance our defense, face down the Russians, and fight faraway wars, she is saying; Germany will capture the world’s markets, and America’s as well. Japan and South Korea are of like mind. Neither spends nearly as much of GDP on defense as the USA. Yet, we defend both, and both run endless trade surpluses at our expense. President Trump may hector and threaten our allies that we will not forever put up with this. But we will, because America’s elites live for the great game of global empire. What would a true “America First” foreign policy look like? It would restore to the United States the freedom it enjoyed for the 150 years before NATO, to decide when, where, and whether we go to war. U.S. allies would be put on notice that, while we are not walking away from the world, we are dissolving all treaty commitments that require us to go to war as soon as the shooting starts. This would concentrate the minds of our allies wonderfully. We could cease badgering them about paying more for their defense. They could decide for themselves—and live with their decisions. In the Carter era, we dissolved our defense pact with Taiwan. Taiwan has survived and done wonderfully well. If Germany, Japan, and South Korea are no longer assured we will go to war on their behalf, all three would take a long hard look at their defenses. The result would likely be a strengthening of those defenses. But if we do not begin to rescind these war guarantees we have handed out since the 1940s, the odds are high that one of them will one day drag us into a great war, after which, if we survive, all these alliances will be dissolved in disillusionment. What John Foster Dulles called for, over half a century ago, an “agonizing reappraisal” of America’s alliances, is long, long overdue. Patrick J. Buchanan is a founding editor of The American Conservative and the author of the book The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Ada (#0)
Which brings us to the point: The United States is in rising danger of being dragged into wars in half a dozen places, because we have committed ourselves to fight for scores of nations with little or no link to vital U.S. interests. While our first president said in his Farewell Address that we might “trust to temporary alliances” in extraordinary emergencies, he added, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” Alliances, Washington believed, were transmission belts of war. Yet no nation in history has handed out so many war guarantees to so many “allies” on so many continents, as has the United States. ======================================= Valid points all, and true. But war is a racket, as quoted by USMC MG Smedley Butler, after having received the Medal of Honor. Not once, but twice from his service in WWI. After returning from the blood and guts, he realized poor American men were dying for rich American bankers and oligarchs, and nothing has changed since. There is a wrinkle in the pastry dough now with South Korea in an actual state of emergency, having both impeached and then JAILED it's own president for corruption with S. Korea's Samsung corporation. N.K. Kim is capitalizing on this, and sees it as an open door to reaffirm his choke hold on North Korea. He himself is a rich oligarch, living like royalty and blowing up anyone daring to lift even a hint against him up with artillery cannon executions, and is actually willing and desperate enough to deploy (use and fire) nuclear weapons on S.K., Guam, and Hawaii, which he can hit all three right now with what he already has in his inventory (probably). The latest high level defector states that Kim has at least eight confirmed nuclear weapons he can deploy, and he also states he is crazy enough to launch them if he feels he may lose his kingdom, with the only hope he would drag BOTH China and Russia in on it - resulting in World War III. So on this one, we absolutely do have a horse in the pony show, sad to say there is no escaping it. U.S. Constitution - Article IV, Section 4: NO BORDERS + NO LAWS = NO COUNTRY
He is not a problem, the US government have made him a problem.
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