War or Development in Korea? Sanity Takes the Lead

International EIR January 13, 2012

War or Development in Korea? Sanity Takes the Lead, from the January 13 issue of EIR, presents the recent surge in cooperation between North and South Korea, Russia, China and elements in the US State Department, to solve the Korea problem through the process of development, even while the British, the Obama White House, and the neoconservative war hawks who guide Obama's foreign policy, try to use the death of Kim Jung-il as an opportunity for "regime change," adding Korea to the list of regional wars currently in the works.
The opening paragraphs are included below, while the full articles is attached.
Mike Billington


War or Development in Korea?
Sanity Takes the Lead
by Mike Billington

Jan. 7—Korea is once again a target for regional warfare—
not because of instability in North Korea, due to
the death of its supreme leader Kim Jong-il, but because
the financial oligarchy in the West, suffering from a terminal
financial breakdown crisis, is attempting once
again to use Korea as a possible trigger for global conflict.
As the trans-Atlantic financial empire collapses into
chaos, the chosen strategy for the British Empire is to
provoke global warfare, targeting Asia, both because
the Empire cannot tolerate continued economic development
in East, as the West disintegrates, but also because
Asia is where a majority of the world’s population
lives, and a nuclear war in Asia would satisfy
Prince Philip’s maniacal dream of reducing the world’s
population to about 1 billion people.
War against Syria and Iran is the Empire’s current
first choice for provoking such a war with Russia and
China, but the North-South Korea divide—the last remnant
of the Cold War in Asia—has long served the
Empire as a point of divisiveness and contention, especially
by keeping the United States in a state of conflict
with Russia and China.
Much to the dismay of these British warmongers
and their puppets in the United States (both President
Obama and his neo-con cohorts left over from the Bush-
Cheney regime), a combination of Russian, Chinese,
South Korean, and U.S. State Department officials has
joined forces against the warhawks, posing joint economic
development in North Korea as a basis for “peace
through development.”
The death of Kim Jong-il on Dec. 17 intersected a
period of dramatic transformation in the troubled relations
between the two Koreas. Russia, which had played
only a minor role in the Six-Party Talks launched in
2003 (with Russia, China, Japan, the U.S., and North
and South Korea), largely because of the internal crisis
in Russia, shifted gears in 2011, under the leadership of
both President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin. Moscow re-engaged in the region by
renewing its earlier proposals for gas and oil pipelines
to connect Russia with South Korea through North
Korea, and integrating the Korean Peninsula into plans
for development of the vast Russian Far East—a classic
example of the “peace through development” concept,
which is in fact the only means to successfully counter
London’s imperial “divide-and-conquer” techniques.
But crucial to this effort was support not only from
China, but also from South Korea itself, and from the
United States. Support was not to be expected from
President Obama, whose tour of Asia in November was
recognized across the region as an attempt to force a
confrontation with China, both militarily and economically.
1 But other factions within the U.S. government,
1. See Mike Billington, “Obama’s Asia Trip Had Only One Purpose:
War on China,” EIR, Nov. 25, 2011.
U.S. State Department/Michael Gross
The Clinton State Department, unlike the White House, has
consistently posed the urgency of cooperation among Russia,
China, and South Korea in solving the long-festering problem
on the Korean Peninsula. Shown: Hillary Clinton and South
Korean President Lee Myung-bak, in Washington Oct. 13,
2011.

January 13, 2012 EIR International

39 centered on Hillary Clinton’s State Department,
and among senior military and intelligence circles,
recognize the insanity of provoking a confrontation
with China, and have attempted to give backing to
the “peace through development”
approach promoted
by Russia and China.
Hopeful Transition
With Kim’s death, and
the rapid transition to the
leadership of his 28-yearold
third son Kim Jong-un,
the warmongers were quick
to pronounce that now was
the time to push for regime
change. Michael Green,
who served on George W.
Bush’s National Security
Council, claimed, in a
Japan Times op-ed on Dec.
26, that the new North Korean leader was responsible
for the sinking of a South Korean naval ship,
and the shelling of a South Korean island in 2010.
That line was echoed by the Heritage Foundation’s
Balbina Hwang on a PBS News Hour interview.
Green ranted that the danger of not preparing
for Libya-style “regime change” in North Korea at
this moment of transition would “outweigh any risk
that intensified preparations might pose to our diplomatic
outreach to the North.” Hwang described
the incoming North Korean leader as a “great
danger to the world.”
On the same News Hour interview, Donald Gregg, a
former career CIA official and Ambassador to South
Korea, who now directs the Korea Society in New York,
called Hwang’s claims “absolute nonsense,” and expressed
optimism that the recent appointment as Undersecretary
of State for Political Affairs of Wendy
Sherman, who was President Bill Clinton’s North
Korea Policy Coordinator, working together with her
Chinese counterpart Fu Ying, also a Korea expert,
would facilitate using the transition as a moment of opportunity
for dramatic progress on the Korean Peninsula.
‘Big Change Is Expected’
South Korean President Lee Myung-bac, who had
carefully collaborated with the Russian government
and the Russian energy firm Gazprom to bring North
Korea into cooperation on the pipeline project before
Kim Jong-il’s death, has looked at the transition of
North Korean leadership to Kim Jong-un as an opportunity
to move the project forward even more rapidly. The
South Korean President visited Russia in November to
discuss the broader implications of the pipeline deal
(just three months after Kim Jong-il met with Russian
President Medvedev in Siberia on the same subject).
Lee will visit Beijing on Jan. 9.
A source in the Korean government told EIR that
it is their government’s view that the shift toward
cooperation and development with Moscow and
Seoul under Kim Jong-il over the past year is “institutional”—
that there is no significant faction in
North Korea which does not wish to continue the
Korea Overseas Information Service
Optimism in the Koreas today is, in part, based on a commitment to
building the Pyongyang-Seoul rail connection (shown on the map), as
part of the “New Silk Road” Eurasian Land-Bridge. The photo shows
a June 2003 ceremony for linking the North-South rail line.
40 International EIR January 13, 2012
process—including a willingness to give up nuclear
weapons, over time, in exchange for aid and development.
President Lee, in a New Year’s statement, went so
far as to say, “I have expectations that this year will set
a milestone for resolving the North Korean nuclear
issue. We are ready to provide the necessary support
to ease North Korea’s security concerns and resuscitate
its economy based on what will be agreed upon at
the Six-Party Talks.” He said the situation on the
Korean Peninsula “is now entering a new turning
point . . . a new opportunity amid changes and uncertainty.”
Kurt Campbell, U.S. Assistant Secretary for East
Asian and Pacific Affairs, has visited China, Japan, and
South Korea over the past week, focused largely on the
North Korean situation. The Clinton State Department,
unlike the White House, has consistently posed the urgency
of cooperation among Russia, China, and South
Korea in solving the long-festering problem on the
Korean Peninsula. President Lee’s cooperation with
Russia has been coordinated at every step with his
American ally, working through the State Department
rather than the White House.
Russia and China
Alexander Vorontsov, head of the Institute of Oriental
Studies and of the Department for Korean and Mongolian
Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Russia’s foremost expert on Korea, published an article
in 38 North, the publication of the U.S.-Korea Institute
in Washington’s School of Advanced International
Studies (SAIS), warning against careless warmongering
by U.S. politicians.
“US conservatives,” wrote Vorontsov, “such as
Mitt Romney, are urging greater pressure on North
Korea in connection with the inexperienced Kim Jongun’s
taking charge, with regime change as the end
goal.” He counters that the reality is that “now is an
opportune time to turn the page on past conflicts and to
start cultivating contacts with the young North Korean
leader.” He argues that while Kim is young, he has
learned quickly, and that, in any case, “combining the
leader’s singular status with collectivism in top-level
decision-making is a long-standing tradition in North
Korea, though the balance between the two elements
fluctuates.” The hysterical warnings of chaos and infighting
(coming from the neo-con crowd advising
Obama on foreign policy) is “completely groundless,”
says Vorontsov—similar to the view of the South
Korean government.
Importantly, Vorontsov notes that Hillary Clinton
“has engaged in intense consultations with representatives
of the countries neighboring North Korea. In particular,
she had several phone conversations with the
foreign ministers of Russia and China.” He suggests
that there may be a “bold initiative” in the works, like
that of Clinton’s recent visit to the once-demonized
Myanmar, adding that “an analogous breakthrough in
dealing with North Korea may yet be brewing.”
Creating a Pretext
Just as President Obama’s secret advisory team on
Syria has proposed finding a “pretext” for an invasion
of that country (as explicitly stated by the Londonsponsored
“opposition” in their recent document “Safe
Area for Syria”), so the imperial forces are working to
create a pretext for a war on North Korea. The Japanese
newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun recently quoted “diplomatic
observers” claiming that the UN is about to
launch an investigation into supposed North Korean
exports of chemical weapon inputs to Syria, calling it a
case of a “close relationship between North Korea and
Syria in the development and production of weapons of
mass destruction.” The suspect shipment goes back to
November 2009!
Another “informed Western diplomatic source” told
Kyodo News that an Iranian defense delegation that
visited North Korea was pursuing “advanced centrifuge
technologies related to uranium enrichment”—not
that such arrangements would be illegal under any sane
international regulations, but the intention of such undocumented
leaks is abundantly clear.
The real target of this disinformation from British
sources is their hatred of the growing cooperation between
the East Asian nations, and especially the
“danger” that the U.S., with Obama removed from
office, would join ranks in great development projects
across Asia, as Franklin Roosevelt would have done.
Lyndon LaRouche noted in this regard that the optimism
in the Koreas today stems from the fact that all
the regional parties are involved in the process of connecting
the two Koreas with China and Russia, completing
the historic “New Silk Road” rail connection
from Pusan to Amsterdam, and cooperating on the development
of the Eurasian Far East.
mobeir@aol.com