If I can make a suggestion, I think you should also also write an article about how many wars capitalist countries had against each other afther WWII and how many wars socialist countries had against each other in the same timeframe. Just to debunk the marxist mythology about "MUH...capitalism cause wars!!!111"
I’m a believer is the democratic peace theory. I don’t think it’s because of the causal effect of democracy, but I think it’s that a society that can sustain democracy is generally small-l liberal enough to avoid war. Palestinian society and Weimar society failed to sustain democracy, elected Hamas and H*tiler respectively.
By "avoid war", I mean that we aren't fighting any massive land wars with Canada and Mexico. A superpower fighting wars on the other side of the world shouldn't really count.
The way I see it, we don't keep fighting with Mexico because Mexico knows it would absolutely lose any war with us. That hasn't changed over all the "long time" since.
The US has fought very few wars that involve conscription and are in the public consciousness of the American people. And certainly has not fought wars against any other fairly liberal states, which is what DPT would hold.
You can change "avoid war" to "avoid a war which is in the public consciousness, and is against a similarly small-l liberal state".
Saying that South Korea's wealth and freedom is a "success" of the American Empire seems like a bit of a stretch. There is perhaps some truth to it, but not as much as you suggest. I say that because for decades after the Korean War the South was neither democratic nor wealthy in the way it is today. Syngman Rhee's leadership was brutal, repressive, and resulted in the poverty of millions. South Korea did not elect a leader until 1987, 34 years after the war. While today things are obviously different it is not at all clear what role the American Empire played in that success (at least from your article) considering how South Korea was closely allied with the US throughout the Cold War yet remained oppressed and impoverished throughout much of that time.
Most of the article is a valid criticism of the North. But who needs reminding that North Korea is run by a reprehensible and despotic regime?
I mean at the end of the day they are a sovereign country and we can't run their government for them. We can create the conditions under which liberalism and capitalism can flourish but we can't MAKE it happen. Eventually South Korea decided to follow our example and the results have been absolutely fantastic for them. They would clearly not be better off without us.
I agree but wouldn't say they followed the American example. Chun put down the pro-democracy protestors with US approval, so the pro-democracy movement of that generation became fairly anti-American. During the 2000s anti-Americanism peaked, and now Koreans like the US again, but Korean democracy was partially a rejection of the old pro-US mentality of the war generation.
Exactly. Under Park Chung-hee the ROK became more materially prosperous but more politically repressive. And American Empire was the main reason he was able to increase repression. He sent 2 army divisions and a Marine brigade to Vietnam to get leverage in relations with the US.
I personally think more repression in exchange for economic growth was worth the trade, but before Park South Korean leadership was inept at directing economic growth. The Rhee regime during the Korean War was tyrannical and corrupt as you correctly point out
If the Americans hadn't invaded Libya after they gave up their nuclear weapons, it could have set a president for more dictators to give up nuclear weapons. But you guys keep insisting that Arabs should live in a Republic even they are wholly unworthy to being citizens.
Yeah, but I think it's still a mistake. Or at least, we should have evacuated Gaddafi and not let him be killed. When dictators give up their nukes and are then killed it sets an awful precedent. While it's wrong to blame the US for overthrow of Gaddafi, and Gaddafi was a terrible person, there is still a point to be made here. He renounced terrorism and worked with us after 9/11, and we enabled the rebels to murder him.
I'm also reminded of the idea that we funded the Taliban in Afghanistan. No we didn't. That's like saying we funded ISIS in the Syrian Civil War, because we funded the Syrian rebels. It's a very similar situation. You can argue that our policy helped Taliban/ISIS and was short-sighted, and I think I would agree.
Secular dictators are generally preferable to Islamists/chaos, and the US has certainly made a lot of mistakes where we failed to internalize this fact (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Egypt). But people often exaggerate the role of the US in these sorts of things, and think that the US is some kind of Great Satan. Come on. Actors like Pakistan, Turkey, and Qatar are more to blame than the US itself, and honestly a lot of the time the US does something stupid and support Islamists it's because of these kind of Qatar-funded think tanks in DC and so on.
I don’t think the Syrian rebels were particularly moderate. Many were bad Islamists. But they’re not ISIS. Likewise the mujahideen were non-moderate Islamists. But not the Taliban.
Rather ridiculous and offensive to call Arabs a "bunch of parasites". Arab Israelis are doing well in the Israeli democracy, and have Greek-level GDP per capita. But I do agree at least that Arab-majority societies seem to do better when they are monarchies, at least for now.
The Arab monarchies doing well is largely a product of oil money. When that money runs out the world will realise how worthless these people are. Also the Arab Israelis are probably much poorer than the average secular Jew. The ultra orthodox ones are the welfare queens so I'm discounting them.
Libyans being off should not have been a NATO objective to begin with. The point was whether if he would stop interfering with the West and give up his nuclear weapons.
> I’ve sort of conflated two questions here, which are whether the US has historically been a force for good on the Korean peninsula, and whether it is a force for good today. In theory, each of these questions might have a different answer, but in practical terms virtually everyone either answers yes to both or no to both.
US intervention in Korea bears a lot of resemblance to US intervention in Vietnam. But the former is far more popular than the latter.
> Yet, considering that the North Koreans have always said they want reunification while never again invading their neighbor
The actions in the second part of that are much more important than the words in the first part.
> Things might be fine without the US, but pulling back now would be crazy given what could realistically happen.
Not that crazy. It doesn't at all remove the option of the US returning should that seem necessary in the future.
Given that congress has to vote for the US to go to war, they would be fools to pin their hopes on our involvement without our troops already being in harms way. No one (including us) knows if the US would get involved to stop China invading Taiwan and that ambiguity makes war far more likely.
In practice, the President gets foreign policy to himself and Congressional authorization isn't that necessary. Obama never got any kind of authorization for Libya (they voted against him instead), but that didn't matter.
How did the norm of refusing to ever talk to the “bad guys” get established?
My guess would be that WW2 and the idea of unconditional surrender did a lot of the work. Especially with an alliance as unwieldy as Anglos + Soviets, and the knowledge that WW1 ended in an unhappy armistice, no one wanted to make the other allies question their commitment. Plus the way Japan continued to engage in diplomacy even as the strike on Pearl Harbor was imminent.
So the generation that established the framework for the Cold War probably held diplomacy with the bad guys in lower regard than a generation or two earlier.
During the Vietnam War the US negotiated with North Vietnam and signed a peace treaty. Nevertheless, the previous generation's thinking was still apparent, "Remember Munich. No appeasement (until we did)"
Conrad Black's biography of Richard Nixon really does a lot to support the second point of talking to evil regimes but in the context of Cold War politiking between the US, China, the Soviet Union, and everyone else in between.
Another example in the same vain of successful US foreign policy include the US alliances with Japan and Taiwan. Otherwise, specifically, Taiwan would not be a thriving democracy.
The US dissolved its alliance with Taiwan in 1979. US-Japan was a post facto attempt to correct mistaken US policy of unconditional surrender and disarming Japan
"No one knows what would have happened if the US had withdrawn from Korea in say 1985. Perhaps Kim Il Sung had mellowed in his old age, and there would have been negotiations that led to reunification, or at least peace and prosperity for both nations. Alternatively, the regime might’ve continued on the path it was on and surprised the world one morning by nuking Seoul. Of course, the South Koreans would not have stood still under those circumstances and may have tried to get nukes of their own. All of this could’ve ended in a strike by whichever side got to the bomb first, or a Cold War-like scenario of Mutually Assured Destruction that continued and made permanent the frozen peace we see today. "
North Korea didn't get nukes until 2006; South Korea tried getting them under Park Chung-Hee until the US made him stop. The US had tactical nuclear weapons in Korea until Bush Sr. and probably should've kept them as it removed its ground forces in the following years.
100%. The GOP used to understand the importance of wielding hard and soft power but it's been taken over by isolationists (again) and liberals are too soft to get it.
The concern I have is this. The correlation of forces during the Korean war were much better for the US then that today and yet all we could get was a draw. In repeat today, the US would surely lose.
SImilarly, if China *really* wants to take Taiwan, there is nothing the US can do to stop them. The US can make it expensive though, so expensive that they won't try. But if China really wants Taiwan, it seems to me they would like to enlist allies in the effort. Such allies would function to drain US resources away from the Taiwan theater. For example America is already fighting a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine that Ukraine is slowly losing. Back in late 2022 I floated an idea for how to achieve a win-win outcome with some friends who took a dim view of it. Later I tried it out on BingAI, which had just become a thing. BingAI argued strongly against it, getting what seemed like increasingly testy and then refusing to talk about it again, which really surprised be since it is a computer program. I still don't see why it was such a bad idea. See link to an April article in which I inserted mu argument.
My idea was that the EU is more than strong enough to counter Russia in Europe, and the expenditure of US power there was a waste, so we should pull out and reposition elsewhere.
With the US involved in Europe and now in the Middle East, should North Korea launch a full-scale invasion of the South at the same time that China launches an assault on Taiwan, how would the US respond?
My thinking here is China cannot really effectively employ the full power of her land forces on Taiwan because it is an island so there is an important naval component. But if China used her land power to intervene in a new Korean war as she did in the first one, America would have to make a choice, do we save South Korea or Taiwan? It seems to me that the US should not allow situations like this to arise.
The US cannot remain sprawled all over the globe like the British Empire and not expect to be taken apart as they were.
If you want to know how good an ally will be, see how they treat their current and previous allies. If the US abandons Europe it will make it impossible to forge alliances anywhere else, including Asia.
The fundamental problem with US foreign policy and interventionism is that the true costs are sneakily hidden from the voters. There is no war tax to fund these wars, there's rarely any draft to demand personal sacrifice from citizens and PRs. The obvious reason is that many of these wars would then be unpopular and voted down because they are not essential.
Maybe you’re right but it’s hard to view the US involvement in Korea as a success story when it murdered 20% of the North Korean population and destroyed 85% of the buildings. NK is a horrible place to be but it’s not clear to me that’s solely the communists’ fault.
I am not a US person. Tucker Carlson with Lex Friedman disrespecting all US war outcomes:
- so the US invaded all these countries, but where did we get a positive outcome?
- there's the Marshall plan, but 80 years down the road, look at the EU, look at Japan is it better?
- there's South Korea but look at their fertility rate vs N Korea, I am all against a regime like NK, but wouldn't it be strange if 50 years from now, SK was depopulated and NK had a much larger population?
After reading The Proud Tower, it dawned on me that the US created industrial arms race in 1880 that led to the two world wars and communism in Russia (https://polsci.substack.com/p/the-strategic-importance-of-maritime). In The Menace of the Herd, Procuste at Large, Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn made the point that democracy leads to Ochlocracy, and that this whole Wilsonian push for parliamentarian democracy in nationalistic states was unstable and meant less freedom and more coercion (https://polsci.substack.com/p/ochlocracy).
But you have to allow other actors some agency it's not just the US, it's a balance of forces and actions.
It is hard to do counter-factual history. It is a fact that the interventions were followed by a period of well-being in Europe and Japan, and in Korea. After that, the track record of the US has changed for the worst. Since 91, the US foreign policy has turned out even bellicose, self-interested in bad faith, twisted by domestic issues and captured by special interests.
We hear Cold War policymakers criticize the change. Former ambassador Jack Matlock, who says the US implemented the Brezhnev doctrine of economic coercion and military action. The leaders are voicing self-aggrandizing propaganda like being the indispensable nation at the end of history: "But if we must use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand and we see further into the future than other countries, and we see the danger which lies in wait for us all."
-- Madeleine Albright
Kagan's explained in paradise and power that the US should only abide by the "rules of the Jungle" and implement "double standards". The Federal govt started to spy and monitor its own citizens and enforce unprecedented financial sanctions against its allies from the increase in federal power it got from the backlash of 9/11.
Given the track record in Iraq and Libya, it would appear rational for all States to develop nukes and significant anti-air capability. Going through the charade of weapons inspection always leads to sanctions, a no-fly zone, and eventually bombardment.
Not talking to hostile countries is the stupidest policy I've ever heard about in foreign policy. This leaves entirely too much power in the hands of the unelected who may have any number of incentives to keep their dealings secret. It's not as if I believe the CIA or other players don't speak through back channels. Why would we give up the power to understand exactly what they want to achieve and to psychologically understand them better? It's dumb.
I'm half-Korean and my father was stationed in the country twice as a US Army officer, and I must say Korea actually is evidence against US Empire's success. The number of US forces there is a fraction of what it once was, and they aren't there to "prevent a new invasion from the North." They're a token force there so that the Army doesn't feel left out of the Indo-Pacific as it tries to justify its budget. The only thing the ROK Army is short on is attack helicopters. The US presence should be restricted to the Air Force, and the US should provide a nuclear deterrent. Otherwise, the ROKs should be given command of combined operations as they requested because their conventional capabilities far surpass the DPRK's.
Secondly, South Korea wanted to keep fighting in 1953 until it captured the entire peninsula just as the North did. However, the US and China wanted an end, so the US secretly agreed to let the PLA attack ROK forces to force a ceasefire. So much for standing with allies and muh credibility.
Thirdly, South Korea was almost as repressive as North Korea for decades. Look up Yushin constitution. It was benign in the sense that it used industrial policy to rapidly modernize the economy, but it's inaccurate to portray it as necessarily more morally acceptable than its counterpart until the 1980s.
Fourth, according to Pew Research a majority of South Koreans and Japanese see the US as a threat to their country despite being allies. The reason is probably the worry that a hawk like Trump will provoke North Korea. This would unleash not a second Korean war but a Northeast Asian war because Japan would immediately be targeted for hosting the bulk of US forces. South Korea under Democratic administrations has tended to take a softer line on inter-Korean relations, and most Koreans think the US approach is too hardline.
Finally, South Korea's prosperity is due in part to its intervention in Vietnam. The US gave a lot of money to the ROK for helping to defend South Vietnam, but Washington eventually pulled the plug on the latter. Was it wrong for America to backstab South Vietnam? Most people say no, which seems inconsistent with supporting South Korea for most of the Cold War
#1 The US ground presence in SK is a tripwire. It exists so that if SK is overrun, there will be something like 30k dead or captured Americans, which forces a strong and immediate response from Washington. That carries a certain deterrent weight that verbal commitments to provide air support (like the one that Congress reneged on in Vietnam in '75) do not.
#2 I haven't heard this, don't know how true it is. But assuming it's true, perhaps it's a little Machiavellian, but if your junior ally is being irrational and wanting to prolong a bloody stalemate, I'm not sure what the right move is. I'd probably be more direct about it: "Fine, then your boys are going on the front lines and we'll hang in the rear with the gear."
#3 I suppose I'm skeptical, but I'll confess I haven't read much about how life differed under the two regimes in the first few decades. Based on the usual pattern, even if on paper you had zero rights in both, I would guess that North Korea was more committed to a totalitarian, Stalinist level of oppression. The mere fact that SK's authoritarian regime was brought down, while NK's wasn't, is evidence that SK was less of a police state. Unless they're Nazi Germany, most right-wing authoritarian regimes are basically gangsters. They're corrupt, cruel, and arbitrary but lack the all-encompassing daily oppression and taste for autogenocide of Communist regimes. They also tend to have a less effective secret police; even the Gestapo, by reputation, was much less effective than the NKVD.
#4 Yeah, this same dynamic existed in Europe during the Cold War. How firmly to play the game of chicken: softer "better red than dead" Europeans vs. harder "better dead than red" Americans. If the world had ended, the Euro approach would be right, but since it didn't, it seems the Americans were. I'd say the same thing here.
#5 "Was it wrong for America to backstab South Vietnam?" Yes. Saying otherwise is mostly sour grapes. But IF failing to provide air support in '75 was acceptable, it would be because the effort was hopeless. Protecting SK clearly wasn't hopeless, since the Korean War was won in a far shorter period than the US involvement in Vietnam, and SK continues to exist.
#1 The tripwire would still be in place if you leave air bases. The US gave ARVN control of all former US bases in Vietnam, including the naval base at Cam Ranh bay and all air bases
#2 It is true. The US didn't even plan to defend Korea intially; see Acheson line. The US intervention was a choice by Truman to salvage his image. America accepted a stalemate and let the ROKs get hit until they came to the same position.
#3 Don't be skeptical because my mother, grandparents, and uncles all lived at that time. So I have primary sources. I agree rightist autocracies are comparatively benign (as I noted about economic development), but it took multiple decades for democratization.
#4 The US approach killed the Agreed Framework with North Korea, which got nukes within less than a decade of it being thrown out. South Korea does most of the heavy lifting on economic engagement with North Korea, so US policy should be more in sync with the ROK's so there's not a constant mishmash
#5 South Vietnam was no less hopeless than "the impossible country" to borrow Park Chung-hee's label for Korea. The US remains in Korea after 70 years of stalemate. The US should've left air bases in Vietnam and not cut off ammunition supplies and fuel. ARVN had to ration ammo and ground most vehicles and aircraft. Keeping the USAF and leaving ground fighting to ARVN would've worked as it did during the 1972 offensive. Moreover, the US never won the Korean War (it's ongoing). It accepted a stalemate. The Vietnam War became a stalemate in 1972 when the ARVN held the line against the PAVN without US ground forces. A peace treaty was signed in January 1973, and the US entirely withdrew. It would be like of the US had entirely withdrawn from Korea in 1953 and stopped sending military aid
Dunno ... I always thought we had a "large" force in S.K., but 28,000 is only the population of a large town. But the point about a "tripwire" is correct given US politics. There's a substantial fraction that is generally against any foreign engagement, but if a "large" group of Americans get slaughtered, they will howl for revenge. "Once wars begin, a significant element of American public opinion supports waging them at the highest possible level of intensity."
I don't know why you put large in quotation marks when my statement was "The number of US forces there is a fraction of what it once was...They're a token force..." Never used the term large or small
Clearly you "dunno" that it's not large because you never bothered looking at how many there once were or the current composition or the number compared to the ROK Armed Forces. There are about 20,000 US soldiers (many of whom are support troops, cooks, etc.) and around 8,000 airmen. For comparison, the ROK Army has hundreds of thousands of active duty soldiers in country in addition to its Marine Corps, Air Force, and reservists. Furthermore, the trip wire isn't to affect public opinion. It's so there's a forward presence to deter military action. It's not intended to affect public sentiment since the US-ROK treaty's legally commits the US to defend the ROK. Defense posture isn't based on a hedging strategy to possibly swing public opinion in some undefined future event. It's based on deterrence so that no losses ever occur.
> I don't know why you put large in quotation marks ...
What I wrote was "I always thought we had a "large" force in S.K. ...". I put "large" in quotations because that was the concept-tag I had attached to my thoughts about the US's force in S.K., the quotation marks indicating that was the word I mentally used, and also to emphasize a certain vagueness in my assessment.
Well in relative terms it's not large at all. The ROK Army active duty is 90% the size of the entire US Army and is entirely concentrated in Korea. Reserve forces make the imbalance even more massive. USFK is a drop in the bucket. Korea has its own defense industry with its own tanks, which are better suited to defending their country than America's bulky Abrams tank. Korea has over 2,000 tanks; for comparison, there are only four NATO countries with 1,000 or more. The US had to receive artillery from Korea because Korea has larger stockpiles. Key point: the US Army was transitioned into a counter-insurgency force during the 2000s and early 2010s, whereas the ROK Army has always been a conventional army designed to defend the homeland. The US role is more to provide a nuclear umbrella and the THAAD than to provide a conventional deterrent or to fight a second Korean war.
Treaties aren't worth the paper they're written on if public sentiment turns against it. An old-school foreign policy realist leader fully understands that actually, no, treaties are important and need to be upheld even if the people hate it, but a populist leader could just as easily tear one up to the sound of cheering. Less extremely, actual prosecution of such a war could be bogged down because it's being held hostage by domestic politics. Blood is thicker than paper.
That seems unrelated because I wrote that air bases are a trip wire that give credibility to the treaty. The trip wire's function isn't to shape public opinion; it's to deter military threats by adding credibility to the treaty so that war doesn't occur at all
If I can make a suggestion, I think you should also also write an article about how many wars capitalist countries had against each other afther WWII and how many wars socialist countries had against each other in the same timeframe. Just to debunk the marxist mythology about "MUH...capitalism cause wars!!!111"
I’m a believer is the democratic peace theory. I don’t think it’s because of the causal effect of democracy, but I think it’s that a society that can sustain democracy is generally small-l liberal enough to avoid war. Palestinian society and Weimar society failed to sustain democracy, elected Hamas and H*tiler respectively.
By "avoid war", I mean that we aren't fighting any massive land wars with Canada and Mexico. A superpower fighting wars on the other side of the world shouldn't really count.
We did fight the Mexican-American war in the past. But then we won, grabbed all the territory we wanted, and didn't have to fight anymore.
Good point
Long time ago though… old order
What do you mean by "old order"?
The way I see it, we don't keep fighting with Mexico because Mexico knows it would absolutely lose any war with us. That hasn't changed over all the "long time" since.
The US has fought very few wars that involve conscription and are in the public consciousness of the American people. And certainly has not fought wars against any other fairly liberal states, which is what DPT would hold.
You can change "avoid war" to "avoid a war which is in the public consciousness, and is against a similarly small-l liberal state".
Saying that South Korea's wealth and freedom is a "success" of the American Empire seems like a bit of a stretch. There is perhaps some truth to it, but not as much as you suggest. I say that because for decades after the Korean War the South was neither democratic nor wealthy in the way it is today. Syngman Rhee's leadership was brutal, repressive, and resulted in the poverty of millions. South Korea did not elect a leader until 1987, 34 years after the war. While today things are obviously different it is not at all clear what role the American Empire played in that success (at least from your article) considering how South Korea was closely allied with the US throughout the Cold War yet remained oppressed and impoverished throughout much of that time.
Most of the article is a valid criticism of the North. But who needs reminding that North Korea is run by a reprehensible and despotic regime?
I mean at the end of the day they are a sovereign country and we can't run their government for them. We can create the conditions under which liberalism and capitalism can flourish but we can't MAKE it happen. Eventually South Korea decided to follow our example and the results have been absolutely fantastic for them. They would clearly not be better off without us.
I agree but wouldn't say they followed the American example. Chun put down the pro-democracy protestors with US approval, so the pro-democracy movement of that generation became fairly anti-American. During the 2000s anti-Americanism peaked, and now Koreans like the US again, but Korean democracy was partially a rejection of the old pro-US mentality of the war generation.
Exactly. Under Park Chung-hee the ROK became more materially prosperous but more politically repressive. And American Empire was the main reason he was able to increase repression. He sent 2 army divisions and a Marine brigade to Vietnam to get leverage in relations with the US.
I personally think more repression in exchange for economic growth was worth the trade, but before Park South Korean leadership was inept at directing economic growth. The Rhee regime during the Korean War was tyrannical and corrupt as you correctly point out
If the Americans hadn't invaded Libya after they gave up their nuclear weapons, it could have set a president for more dictators to give up nuclear weapons. But you guys keep insisting that Arabs should live in a Republic even they are wholly unworthy to being citizens.
OK fine. "NATO military intervention"
Yeah, but I think it's still a mistake. Or at least, we should have evacuated Gaddafi and not let him be killed. When dictators give up their nukes and are then killed it sets an awful precedent. While it's wrong to blame the US for overthrow of Gaddafi, and Gaddafi was a terrible person, there is still a point to be made here. He renounced terrorism and worked with us after 9/11, and we enabled the rebels to murder him.
I'm also reminded of the idea that we funded the Taliban in Afghanistan. No we didn't. That's like saying we funded ISIS in the Syrian Civil War, because we funded the Syrian rebels. It's a very similar situation. You can argue that our policy helped Taliban/ISIS and was short-sighted, and I think I would agree.
Secular dictators are generally preferable to Islamists/chaos, and the US has certainly made a lot of mistakes where we failed to internalize this fact (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Egypt). But people often exaggerate the role of the US in these sorts of things, and think that the US is some kind of Great Satan. Come on. Actors like Pakistan, Turkey, and Qatar are more to blame than the US itself, and honestly a lot of the time the US does something stupid and support Islamists it's because of these kind of Qatar-funded think tanks in DC and so on.
Tell me more about these Qatar funded think tanks.
You know, Brookings and so on. The "Blob", as it were. A real phenomenon, even if exaggerated by some reflexively anti-US types.
I don’t think the Syrian rebels were particularly moderate. Many were bad Islamists. But they’re not ISIS. Likewise the mujahideen were non-moderate Islamists. But not the Taliban.
That's what I said. America should have let the civil war play out. Arabs are a bunch of parasites that are better off ruled by a dictator.
Rather ridiculous and offensive to call Arabs a "bunch of parasites". Arab Israelis are doing well in the Israeli democracy, and have Greek-level GDP per capita. But I do agree at least that Arab-majority societies seem to do better when they are monarchies, at least for now.
The Arab monarchies doing well is largely a product of oil money. When that money runs out the world will realise how worthless these people are. Also the Arab Israelis are probably much poorer than the average secular Jew. The ultra orthodox ones are the welfare queens so I'm discounting them.
Libyans being off should not have been a NATO objective to begin with. The point was whether if he would stop interfering with the West and give up his nuclear weapons.
> I’ve sort of conflated two questions here, which are whether the US has historically been a force for good on the Korean peninsula, and whether it is a force for good today. In theory, each of these questions might have a different answer, but in practical terms virtually everyone either answers yes to both or no to both.
US intervention in Korea bears a lot of resemblance to US intervention in Vietnam. But the former is far more popular than the latter.
> Yet, considering that the North Koreans have always said they want reunification while never again invading their neighbor
The actions in the second part of that are much more important than the words in the first part.
> Things might be fine without the US, but pulling back now would be crazy given what could realistically happen.
Not that crazy. It doesn't at all remove the option of the US returning should that seem necessary in the future.
Given that congress has to vote for the US to go to war, they would be fools to pin their hopes on our involvement without our troops already being in harms way. No one (including us) knows if the US would get involved to stop China invading Taiwan and that ambiguity makes war far more likely.
In practice, the President gets foreign policy to himself and Congressional authorization isn't that necessary. Obama never got any kind of authorization for Libya (they voted against him instead), but that didn't matter.
How did the norm of refusing to ever talk to the “bad guys” get established?
My guess would be that WW2 and the idea of unconditional surrender did a lot of the work. Especially with an alliance as unwieldy as Anglos + Soviets, and the knowledge that WW1 ended in an unhappy armistice, no one wanted to make the other allies question their commitment. Plus the way Japan continued to engage in diplomacy even as the strike on Pearl Harbor was imminent.
So the generation that established the framework for the Cold War probably held diplomacy with the bad guys in lower regard than a generation or two earlier.
During the Vietnam War the US negotiated with North Vietnam and signed a peace treaty. Nevertheless, the previous generation's thinking was still apparent, "Remember Munich. No appeasement (until we did)"
Conrad Black's biography of Richard Nixon really does a lot to support the second point of talking to evil regimes but in the context of Cold War politiking between the US, China, the Soviet Union, and everyone else in between.
Another example in the same vain of successful US foreign policy include the US alliances with Japan and Taiwan. Otherwise, specifically, Taiwan would not be a thriving democracy.
The US dissolved its alliance with Taiwan in 1979. US-Japan was a post facto attempt to correct mistaken US policy of unconditional surrender and disarming Japan
De-facto the US is still Taiwan’s biggest ally, who sells the most weapons to Taiwan?
I'm being nit-picky and reserving ally for countries that have a treaty and partner for those that cooperate informally
"No one knows what would have happened if the US had withdrawn from Korea in say 1985. Perhaps Kim Il Sung had mellowed in his old age, and there would have been negotiations that led to reunification, or at least peace and prosperity for both nations. Alternatively, the regime might’ve continued on the path it was on and surprised the world one morning by nuking Seoul. Of course, the South Koreans would not have stood still under those circumstances and may have tried to get nukes of their own. All of this could’ve ended in a strike by whichever side got to the bomb first, or a Cold War-like scenario of Mutually Assured Destruction that continued and made permanent the frozen peace we see today. "
North Korea didn't get nukes until 2006; South Korea tried getting them under Park Chung-Hee until the US made him stop. The US had tactical nuclear weapons in Korea until Bush Sr. and probably should've kept them as it removed its ground forces in the following years.
100%. The GOP used to understand the importance of wielding hard and soft power but it's been taken over by isolationists (again) and liberals are too soft to get it.
South Korea isn't the larger country.
The concern I have is this. The correlation of forces during the Korean war were much better for the US then that today and yet all we could get was a draw. In repeat today, the US would surely lose.
SImilarly, if China *really* wants to take Taiwan, there is nothing the US can do to stop them. The US can make it expensive though, so expensive that they won't try. But if China really wants Taiwan, it seems to me they would like to enlist allies in the effort. Such allies would function to drain US resources away from the Taiwan theater. For example America is already fighting a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine that Ukraine is slowly losing. Back in late 2022 I floated an idea for how to achieve a win-win outcome with some friends who took a dim view of it. Later I tried it out on BingAI, which had just become a thing. BingAI argued strongly against it, getting what seemed like increasingly testy and then refusing to talk about it again, which really surprised be since it is a computer program. I still don't see why it was such a bad idea. See link to an April article in which I inserted mu argument.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/will-hegemonic-war-end-the-american#:~:text=It%20may%20be%20possible%20for%20the%20US%20to%20obtain%20a%20Ukraine%20settlement%20favorable%20to%20both%20Russia%20and%20Ukraine.
My idea was that the EU is more than strong enough to counter Russia in Europe, and the expenditure of US power there was a waste, so we should pull out and reposition elsewhere.
With the US involved in Europe and now in the Middle East, should North Korea launch a full-scale invasion of the South at the same time that China launches an assault on Taiwan, how would the US respond?
My thinking here is China cannot really effectively employ the full power of her land forces on Taiwan because it is an island so there is an important naval component. But if China used her land power to intervene in a new Korean war as she did in the first one, America would have to make a choice, do we save South Korea or Taiwan? It seems to me that the US should not allow situations like this to arise.
The US cannot remain sprawled all over the globe like the British Empire and not expect to be taken apart as they were.
If you want to know how good an ally will be, see how they treat their current and previous allies. If the US abandons Europe it will make it impossible to forge alliances anywhere else, including Asia.
The fundamental problem with US foreign policy and interventionism is that the true costs are sneakily hidden from the voters. There is no war tax to fund these wars, there's rarely any draft to demand personal sacrifice from citizens and PRs. The obvious reason is that many of these wars would then be unpopular and voted down because they are not essential.
Maybe you’re right but it’s hard to view the US involvement in Korea as a success story when it murdered 20% of the North Korean population and destroyed 85% of the buildings. NK is a horrible place to be but it’s not clear to me that’s solely the communists’ fault.
I am not a US person. Tucker Carlson with Lex Friedman disrespecting all US war outcomes:
- so the US invaded all these countries, but where did we get a positive outcome?
- there's the Marshall plan, but 80 years down the road, look at the EU, look at Japan is it better?
- there's South Korea but look at their fertility rate vs N Korea, I am all against a regime like NK, but wouldn't it be strange if 50 years from now, SK was depopulated and NK had a much larger population?
After reading The Proud Tower, it dawned on me that the US created industrial arms race in 1880 that led to the two world wars and communism in Russia (https://polsci.substack.com/p/the-strategic-importance-of-maritime). In The Menace of the Herd, Procuste at Large, Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn made the point that democracy leads to Ochlocracy, and that this whole Wilsonian push for parliamentarian democracy in nationalistic states was unstable and meant less freedom and more coercion (https://polsci.substack.com/p/ochlocracy).
But you have to allow other actors some agency it's not just the US, it's a balance of forces and actions.
It is hard to do counter-factual history. It is a fact that the interventions were followed by a period of well-being in Europe and Japan, and in Korea. After that, the track record of the US has changed for the worst. Since 91, the US foreign policy has turned out even bellicose, self-interested in bad faith, twisted by domestic issues and captured by special interests.
We hear Cold War policymakers criticize the change. Former ambassador Jack Matlock, who says the US implemented the Brezhnev doctrine of economic coercion and military action. The leaders are voicing self-aggrandizing propaganda like being the indispensable nation at the end of history: "But if we must use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand and we see further into the future than other countries, and we see the danger which lies in wait for us all."
-- Madeleine Albright
Kagan's explained in paradise and power that the US should only abide by the "rules of the Jungle" and implement "double standards". The Federal govt started to spy and monitor its own citizens and enforce unprecedented financial sanctions against its allies from the increase in federal power it got from the backlash of 9/11.
Given the track record in Iraq and Libya, it would appear rational for all States to develop nukes and significant anti-air capability. Going through the charade of weapons inspection always leads to sanctions, a no-fly zone, and eventually bombardment.
Not talking to hostile countries is the stupidest policy I've ever heard about in foreign policy. This leaves entirely too much power in the hands of the unelected who may have any number of incentives to keep their dealings secret. It's not as if I believe the CIA or other players don't speak through back channels. Why would we give up the power to understand exactly what they want to achieve and to psychologically understand them better? It's dumb.
I'm half-Korean and my father was stationed in the country twice as a US Army officer, and I must say Korea actually is evidence against US Empire's success. The number of US forces there is a fraction of what it once was, and they aren't there to "prevent a new invasion from the North." They're a token force there so that the Army doesn't feel left out of the Indo-Pacific as it tries to justify its budget. The only thing the ROK Army is short on is attack helicopters. The US presence should be restricted to the Air Force, and the US should provide a nuclear deterrent. Otherwise, the ROKs should be given command of combined operations as they requested because their conventional capabilities far surpass the DPRK's.
Secondly, South Korea wanted to keep fighting in 1953 until it captured the entire peninsula just as the North did. However, the US and China wanted an end, so the US secretly agreed to let the PLA attack ROK forces to force a ceasefire. So much for standing with allies and muh credibility.
Thirdly, South Korea was almost as repressive as North Korea for decades. Look up Yushin constitution. It was benign in the sense that it used industrial policy to rapidly modernize the economy, but it's inaccurate to portray it as necessarily more morally acceptable than its counterpart until the 1980s.
Fourth, according to Pew Research a majority of South Koreans and Japanese see the US as a threat to their country despite being allies. The reason is probably the worry that a hawk like Trump will provoke North Korea. This would unleash not a second Korean war but a Northeast Asian war because Japan would immediately be targeted for hosting the bulk of US forces. South Korea under Democratic administrations has tended to take a softer line on inter-Korean relations, and most Koreans think the US approach is too hardline.
Finally, South Korea's prosperity is due in part to its intervention in Vietnam. The US gave a lot of money to the ROK for helping to defend South Vietnam, but Washington eventually pulled the plug on the latter. Was it wrong for America to backstab South Vietnam? Most people say no, which seems inconsistent with supporting South Korea for most of the Cold War
#1 The US ground presence in SK is a tripwire. It exists so that if SK is overrun, there will be something like 30k dead or captured Americans, which forces a strong and immediate response from Washington. That carries a certain deterrent weight that verbal commitments to provide air support (like the one that Congress reneged on in Vietnam in '75) do not.
#2 I haven't heard this, don't know how true it is. But assuming it's true, perhaps it's a little Machiavellian, but if your junior ally is being irrational and wanting to prolong a bloody stalemate, I'm not sure what the right move is. I'd probably be more direct about it: "Fine, then your boys are going on the front lines and we'll hang in the rear with the gear."
#3 I suppose I'm skeptical, but I'll confess I haven't read much about how life differed under the two regimes in the first few decades. Based on the usual pattern, even if on paper you had zero rights in both, I would guess that North Korea was more committed to a totalitarian, Stalinist level of oppression. The mere fact that SK's authoritarian regime was brought down, while NK's wasn't, is evidence that SK was less of a police state. Unless they're Nazi Germany, most right-wing authoritarian regimes are basically gangsters. They're corrupt, cruel, and arbitrary but lack the all-encompassing daily oppression and taste for autogenocide of Communist regimes. They also tend to have a less effective secret police; even the Gestapo, by reputation, was much less effective than the NKVD.
#4 Yeah, this same dynamic existed in Europe during the Cold War. How firmly to play the game of chicken: softer "better red than dead" Europeans vs. harder "better dead than red" Americans. If the world had ended, the Euro approach would be right, but since it didn't, it seems the Americans were. I'd say the same thing here.
#5 "Was it wrong for America to backstab South Vietnam?" Yes. Saying otherwise is mostly sour grapes. But IF failing to provide air support in '75 was acceptable, it would be because the effort was hopeless. Protecting SK clearly wasn't hopeless, since the Korean War was won in a far shorter period than the US involvement in Vietnam, and SK continues to exist.
#1 The tripwire would still be in place if you leave air bases. The US gave ARVN control of all former US bases in Vietnam, including the naval base at Cam Ranh bay and all air bases
#2 It is true. The US didn't even plan to defend Korea intially; see Acheson line. The US intervention was a choice by Truman to salvage his image. America accepted a stalemate and let the ROKs get hit until they came to the same position.
#3 Don't be skeptical because my mother, grandparents, and uncles all lived at that time. So I have primary sources. I agree rightist autocracies are comparatively benign (as I noted about economic development), but it took multiple decades for democratization.
#4 The US approach killed the Agreed Framework with North Korea, which got nukes within less than a decade of it being thrown out. South Korea does most of the heavy lifting on economic engagement with North Korea, so US policy should be more in sync with the ROK's so there's not a constant mishmash
#5 South Vietnam was no less hopeless than "the impossible country" to borrow Park Chung-hee's label for Korea. The US remains in Korea after 70 years of stalemate. The US should've left air bases in Vietnam and not cut off ammunition supplies and fuel. ARVN had to ration ammo and ground most vehicles and aircraft. Keeping the USAF and leaving ground fighting to ARVN would've worked as it did during the 1972 offensive. Moreover, the US never won the Korean War (it's ongoing). It accepted a stalemate. The Vietnam War became a stalemate in 1972 when the ARVN held the line against the PAVN without US ground forces. A peace treaty was signed in January 1973, and the US entirely withdrew. It would be like of the US had entirely withdrawn from Korea in 1953 and stopped sending military aid
Dunno ... I always thought we had a "large" force in S.K., but 28,000 is only the population of a large town. But the point about a "tripwire" is correct given US politics. There's a substantial fraction that is generally against any foreign engagement, but if a "large" group of Americans get slaughtered, they will howl for revenge. "Once wars begin, a significant element of American public opinion supports waging them at the highest possible level of intensity."
I don't know why you put large in quotation marks when my statement was "The number of US forces there is a fraction of what it once was...They're a token force..." Never used the term large or small
Clearly you "dunno" that it's not large because you never bothered looking at how many there once were or the current composition or the number compared to the ROK Armed Forces. There are about 20,000 US soldiers (many of whom are support troops, cooks, etc.) and around 8,000 airmen. For comparison, the ROK Army has hundreds of thousands of active duty soldiers in country in addition to its Marine Corps, Air Force, and reservists. Furthermore, the trip wire isn't to affect public opinion. It's so there's a forward presence to deter military action. It's not intended to affect public sentiment since the US-ROK treaty's legally commits the US to defend the ROK. Defense posture isn't based on a hedging strategy to possibly swing public opinion in some undefined future event. It's based on deterrence so that no losses ever occur.
> I don't know why you put large in quotation marks ...
What I wrote was "I always thought we had a "large" force in S.K. ...". I put "large" in quotations because that was the concept-tag I had attached to my thoughts about the US's force in S.K., the quotation marks indicating that was the word I mentally used, and also to emphasize a certain vagueness in my assessment.
Well in relative terms it's not large at all. The ROK Army active duty is 90% the size of the entire US Army and is entirely concentrated in Korea. Reserve forces make the imbalance even more massive. USFK is a drop in the bucket. Korea has its own defense industry with its own tanks, which are better suited to defending their country than America's bulky Abrams tank. Korea has over 2,000 tanks; for comparison, there are only four NATO countries with 1,000 or more. The US had to receive artillery from Korea because Korea has larger stockpiles. Key point: the US Army was transitioned into a counter-insurgency force during the 2000s and early 2010s, whereas the ROK Army has always been a conventional army designed to defend the homeland. The US role is more to provide a nuclear umbrella and the THAAD than to provide a conventional deterrent or to fight a second Korean war.
Treaties aren't worth the paper they're written on if public sentiment turns against it. An old-school foreign policy realist leader fully understands that actually, no, treaties are important and need to be upheld even if the people hate it, but a populist leader could just as easily tear one up to the sound of cheering. Less extremely, actual prosecution of such a war could be bogged down because it's being held hostage by domestic politics. Blood is thicker than paper.
That seems unrelated because I wrote that air bases are a trip wire that give credibility to the treaty. The trip wire's function isn't to shape public opinion; it's to deter military threats by adding credibility to the treaty so that war doesn't occur at all