North and South Korea exchange fire

A brief update that I'm sure you're all aware of: North Korea fired artillery on Yeonpyeong Island while South Korean marines were engaged in a military exercise there.  It sounds like two ROK marines were killed and they returned fire on the North with unknown effect.  So far the verbal response by the South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak has been very aggressive.  It is my opinion that South Korea should respond to this attack in the way they should have responded to the sinking of the Cheonan-- a decisive and disproportionate counter-attack (e.g. destroy North Korea's naval capabilities and/or decisive strikes on North Korea's artillery forces).  It is also my opinion that the United States should be right along side in this response to reaffirm our commitments to our South Korean allies. 

Japan's PM Hatoyama Resigns & Thoughts on US Military Presence on Okinawa

It was announced today that Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is resigning his post most likely due to his failure to uphold is promise to remove the US military presence from Okinawa.  He did try to address the issue but ultimately decided that the base would stay.  It's a reasonable question to consider if he made the decision due to pressure from the US, Japanese security concerns, or concerns specific to conditions on Okinawa itself.

The US Military Presence on Okinawa is very extensive.  According to wikipedia there are 14 seperate installations covering 233 sq. km, which is about 18% of the main island.  Of the 40,000 US personnel stationed in Japan, around 2/3 are on Okinawa.  The overwhelming majority of Okinawans are opposed to the military presence due to environmental and noise concerns, occasional crime by US servicemen, and other such factors.  I can hardly blame them... From the numbers above it would seem like you'd be hard pressed to look anywhere without seeing the US military.

Does it make sense to move the military assets?  Probably does.  The US has interest in military presence in Japan for geographic reasons... Japan commands a lot of the access to the Pacific from the Asian side.  Japanese interest lies in the US military presence reducing their own expenditure on defense to an extremely low level.  Okinawa also has some interest in the presence, I think, as I'd imagine the troops contribute a fair amount to their economy (though I don't really know that for sure).  Finally, all parties should be keenly interested in maintaining one of the world's most important military alliances, so some solution should be found.  It seems to me like the military assets should be redistributed to other parts of Japan (or throughout the Pacific Theatre).  Based on Okinawa's location, it's probably important maintain an airbase there, but it seems to me like the rest of the bases could go.

Clarification on Korea and China

I had an opportunity to talk to Dusty a bit last night regarding the escalating tensions between North and South Korea, and it became clear that I'd been unclear on what I meant by referring to China as the wildcard in the situation... I will try to clear up what I think about China's role in Korea here.

North Korea is something of a vassal state to China.  Without China's support, North Korea would almost surely collapse.  I believe most of North Korea's energy and food come from across the Yalu River.  What, then, is North Korea to China?  Well, historically it was a military and ideological ally.  When the Korean War went against the North Koreans, China invaded Korea to push back UN mandated forces resulting in setbacks and a stalemate that would eventually define the DMZ as it is today.  North Korea, ideologically speaking, in the old days anyway, was another Communist country.  On paper, I suppose, both are still Communist, though I think neither really has much to do with practical Communism anymore.  In China, Communism started its decline when Deng Xiaoping declared that "to get rich is glorious."  You can't actually be rich if you're living in a Communist state.  I'm less clear when North Korea transitioned from a Communist state to it's current status as a cult-of-personality dictator built entirely around an almost religious fanaticism for Kim Jong Il (Or his father, Kim Il Sung, before him). 

So, what's in it for China today?  That's what I keep asking myself.  The modern post-Cold War geopolitical landscape sees a single superpower (the US) with maybe three in development (EU, Russia, China).  China is no longer a Communist country, by ideology, and it seems to me they've adopted a statist, state capitalist, dictatorship-- something not entirely unlike the facist regimes before World War II.  It remains to be seen whether state capitalism is a sustainable system, or if the Chinese government can maintain its stranglehold on liberty as their populace develops wealth... But the overriding theme in Chinese decision-making seems pointed at economic and technological development.  Given that, I can't really understand why they remain committed to the continued existence of North Korea.  I understand that North Korea creates a buffer between China and South Korea, a state with a sizable American military presence and a powerful military of its own.  I understand that there are still some ideological and historical reasons for China's continued support of North Korea (not least of which should be their characterization of the Korean War as a war to repel American aggression in China)...

But on the other hand, I have to think there's a lot of upside in it for China if the Koreas were to be unified under "southern" rule.  North Korea would quickly become a growth market opportunity for any investor interested in exploting what should be rapid development of North Koreans (see East German example).  It should create positive economic growth right on China's doorstep, and one that China could participate in if they played their cards right.  I think at some point, that calculation should outweigh the geopolitical benefits of a troublesome ally (who very notably has a negative economic impact on the region) standing between you an American influence.  I hope some portions of the Chinese government are beginning to think so, as I think that's the only long-term peaceful resolution to the divide on the Korean Peninsula.

Getting a Little Scary on the Korean Peninsula

Nearly lost among headline's of Lee DeWyze's American Idol victory and (albeit significant and important) news on the BP oil spill in the Gulf, is what I think is the biggest development on the Korean Peninsula I can remember.  Almost exactly two months ago the 1200t South Korean corvette Cheonan broke in two and sank after an explosion at her stern.  46 of her 104 man crew were killed.  An investigation was performed and despite hopes to the contrary, when the wreckage was raised the presence of remnants of a North Korean torpedo have confirmed that the Cheonan was deliberately sunk by hostile action (in this case suspected to have been a torpedo delivered by a North Korean Yeono-class minisub).

This is a big deal.  It's not a case of a bit of sabre-rattling gone a little too far such as the "Second Battle of Yeonpyeong."  In that battle, or the others like it, both sides were pushing each other's buttons in disputed waters and shooting broke out.  In this case, a DPRK minisub evidently stalked the Cheonan before the decision was made to fire on the ROK corvette.  At any time in history, between any two countries, this is reasonable cause for war-- and the two countries in question in this case are already at war (still).  The weirdest part is, I can't figure what the reasoning behind it was.  Usually Kim Jong Il seems to be perpetrating a game of brinkmanship wherein he shakes something up or pushes some agreement to the point of strain and then lets ROK or the US or whomever buy him off.  In this incident I can't see what he'd be looking to gain or why any usual gain would be worth the risk of such a bold move.  It begs the question, how monolithic is North Korea? I'm not sure which is more scary, a North Korea dominated by a generally unstable and seemingly batshit-crazy Kim Jong Il, or a North Korea being fought over by several extreme factions with competing goals and resources.  One angle that's been troubling my mind ever since it was reported that his health is failing, what if he's decided he should be the one to unify Korea and he feels time running out? 

From what I can gather from the news, South Koreans are angry.  And well they should be!  Can you imagine the response from the government and the populace if some one sank a US naval vessel?  That raises the question of a response.  In my opinion, if this was "brinkmanship," then you've already gone over the brink.  Appeasing Kim hasn't ever gotten us anywhere (though it did eventually lead to North Korea conducting two nuclear tests), and if he's resorting to overt military action to try to get whatever it is he wants then you certainly cannot countenance giving it to him.

Any military response would have to be exceuted very carefully.  I'm pretty confident that any general engagement between allied ROK and US forces versus an outdated, outmoded, and probably underfed DPRK military would be very one-sided.  Such an engagement needn't necessarily be "general," as you could, through any number of mechnaisms, probably sink a North Korean sub or five without it necessarily looking like it was you-- but a strategy like that could very easily and quickly escalate into a general engagement.  The problem with a general engagement, beyond the fact that war is almost always an undesirable outcome, is that Seoul is too close to the border with the North, and DPRK artillery assets could be used to bombard Seoul for at least a short while before it would be neutralized by allied response-- and that could cause lots of damage and many civilian casualties.

In any case, it's not a war yet, but I feel like there are a lot of scenarios that could turn it into one.  I hope it can be resolved via some reasonably peaceful approach that doesn't involve appeasement... But as long as an apparent madman like Kim Jong Il is in power, the North will be unpredictable and dangerous.