A funny thing happens when the United States preps its citizenry for war. It’s quite a specific process, and to catch a glimpse of what it looks like, go no further than recent news coverage of President Trump’s alarming belligerency toward North Korea. You’ll find a sense of urgency, historical amnesia, fear mongering and lunacy abound because one congressman has idiotically claimed that North Korea could smuggle a nuclear weapon into the U.S. within a bale of marijuana.
The uptick in sensationalism is no accident. Merely consider that North Korea has been testing missiles and nuclear weapons to the chagrin of the U.S. and its Southeast Asian allies for years. Two months ago, a conflict with one of the last bastions of 20th century communism was on nobody’s radar. Nothing about the government in Pyongyang has changed, yet when the media pushes a certain narrative about war, watch out, for they are the stenographers of power. They want you paying attention for a reason.
I have two general suspicions concerning why this conflict is erupting now.
The first, and less convincing argument, is that Trump is desperate to start a war. His poll numbers went up after bombing Syria, and with a Democratic Party and liberal media orgasmic over bloodshed in foreign lands, there is no strong political voice pumping the brakes. There is, though, a glaring bit of consistency between Trump and Barack Obama on the topic of Asia. Obama’s Pivot to Asia, a shift from focusing on the Middle East to focusing on Asia, dramatically increased U.S. military presence in Asia to counter China and control the region’s resources.
After years of relative solitude, Imperial Japan brutally occupied the Korean Peninsula. The Korean War followed. The U.S. bombing of North Korea is one of the forgotten slaughters of the 20th century. The country was subject to such intense bombing that the U.S. Airforce literally ran out of targets.
Dams were then bombed — a war crime — which resulted in horrific flooding. As USAF Gen. Curtis LeMay described the bombing, “we went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea.” Civilian casualties in the war reached about 3 million. This left a large scar on the North Korean psyche, which explains why the country develops its weaponry as a deterrent against another U.S. invasion.
Trump’s unpredictability is his most predictable feature.
A war with North Korea would ensure the destruction of Seoul by North Korean artillery and the endangerment of thousands of U.S. troops and their families stationed throughout Southeast Asia. Even if an actual war seems like a far-off fantasy, we cannot forget the realities of the Pivot to Asia and how the U.S. plans to reshape the region.
luwrobin@umail.iu.edu
