A peace treaty is a formal arrangement to end war permanently. An armistice is just a temporary cessation of armed conflict. Usually, an armistice is the first step taken toward a peace treaty.
Let’s talk about the United Nations’ role in the Korean War and the fact that war is not over. We have short memories and tend to forget history, especially history that goes against the holy grail of liberal belief.
If we look at the world we see that communism as an economic system has always failed along with its less restrictive sibling, socialism. So we now see the Russian Federation, the Chinese People’s Republic, even the Cubans all embracing the free enterprise economic system and rejecting communism.
Who is the last holdout? The last hurrah of a theory that worked in the classroom but failed miserably in the real world: North Korea.
Let me confess that I lived in South Korea for three years and am a huge fan of the Korean people. The South Koreans embraced American free enterprise and democracy with both hands and in a short period of time have become what President Ronald Reagan called an economic miracle. The South did this while still being at war with the North, as is the United States and the United Nations.
Consider the fact half of the population of South Korea is within conventional artillery range of a very aggressive and very unstable North Korea. Add to the equation the North, being armed with nuclear weapons and capable of inflicting causalities greater than we found during WWII at Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Dresden and Berlin combined, with one nuclear bomb or missile. Seoul has a population larger than that of New York City, but more than twice as densely populated. If the North nuked Seoul, you could not individually count the dead in a lifetime.
One of the points Donald
Trump has made is that we need to get China to stand up and control their surrogates in North Korea, to get them to play nice with others. North Korea is very dependent on the Chinese for a wide variety of vital supplies and China could force them to join the world of civilized nations. China could even get them to sign a peace treaty with the United Nations and finally end a war that has been ongoing for over 62 years. The media tells us Afghanistan is our longest war, not true by decades.
The South Koreans are ready willing and able to assist a peaceful North Korea in entering the 21st century. Folks in the North are on average two inches shorter and have a life expectancy almost a decade less than Southerners. The difference has developed in two generations; biologically dammed near impossible but a true statistic, a result of starvation and deprivation.
South Korea is in line to pass Japan as the most developed nation in Asia, but is held back by an unpredictable neighbor with a total military strength estimated at nearly two million. We have spent billions on Iran and spent decades trying to get them to love us, to no avail. We have postponed for up to eight years Iran’s development of nuclear weapons; why can’t we spend a fraction of the time and money pressuring China to control the North?
President Clinton spent two billion dollars to get North Korea to destroy their program to develop the bomb; they took the money and used it to build the bomb. The United States has no Sword of Damocles hanging over the North Koreans’ heads, no leverage, no power over them as the Chinese do. Common sense should dictate that Mr. Trump’s plan just may work; simple, easy to execute and requiring help from the Chinese, South Koreans and the United Nations, but very doable.
We are told Mr. Trump is offering plans that are too simple and straightforward; he is guilty of that charge. Perhaps the kiss principle, keep it simple stupid, just may work.
Mrs. Clinton is wed to the old failed way of executing foreign policy; time for a change, time for a President Trump.
