The "International" Investigation into the Sinking of the Cheonan and the Risk of a New Korean War
On May 20, South Korea's defense ministry made public a short statement on the "international" investigation into the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on March 26, which left forty-six sailors dead. U.S. and South Korean officials, along with major Western news organizations, have been describing this statement as a "report," but since a) the authors of the document describe it as a "statement," b) the document's contents consist of several pages of description of physical evidence (visual aid supplements relating to the evidence are not included in the document but have been made available separately by South Korea's defense ministry) along with unverifiable assertions and conclusions, and c) only the 5-page document rather than a rumored 400-page version has been made public, "statement" seems a more accurate description than "report" and will be used in this article.
The Cheonan went down near the Northern Line Limit (NLL), the disputed western maritime extension of the Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South Korea. The statement on this incident, officially titled "Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS Cheonan," was produced by an investigative team called "The Joint Civilian-Military Group" (Hereafter, "JIG" is used to describe the JIG statement, document, team and investigation). It presented the conclusion that the Cheonan was sunk by a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine.
The English version of the JIG statement is five pages long (see the complete text below). Thus far, only the 5-page version has been made available to Western media. A more detailed 400-page investigative document is said to exist (language[s] unknown). Outside the governments whose representatives participated in the investigation, this longer document has apparently been circulated to China and perhaps other governments, but seems unavailable not only to the general public and the press, but even to lawmakers in South Korea.
The second statement, one page in length, presents a conclusion that North Korea sank the Cheonan by torpedo. The authorship of this second statement is not made clear. The statement itself only says that the U.S, South Korea, the U.K, Canada and Australia, but not Sweden, contributed to the second-statement findings. Moreover, the second statement describes these five countries as members of a unit called the Multinational Combined Intelligence Task Force. How this Task Force relates to the JIG investigation is unclear (more on this point below).
What is certain, however, is that based on casualties suffered the five countries are among the six main belligerent nations (Turkey rounds out the six) that fought against North Korea in the 1950-1953 Korean War. South Korea, the country's defense ministry reports, recently hosted a gathering of officers from the five countries to discuss "joint military capabilities to secure airspace on the Korean Peninsula." More than sixty years after the 1953 armistice, the five countries continue to cooperate in assessing their own joint military capabilities and those of North Korea in the event of a new conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
A White House press release has described the JIG investigative document as the work of "a team of international investigators" who provided "an objective and scientific review of the evidence." U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added that it was "a thorough and comprehensive scientific examination, and the United States and other international observers were deeply engaged." In making these statements, U.S. officials have so far failed to explain which document they have in mind, the publicly available 5-page version or the rumored 400-page version.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, in a May 24 address to the South Korean nation, talked about an investigative document based on "a thorough and objective scientific investigation" by an "international joint investigation group." With the release of the final report," he said, "no responsible country in the international community will be able to deny the fact that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea."
Major Western news organizations described "a report from international investigators" of an attack on the Cheonan (May 20 Financial Times), "an international investigation [that] has found overwhelming evidence" (Washington Post), and "an investigation by international experts" (May 30 BBC News). Some news accounts carried the comment by Yoon Duk-yong, South Korean co-leader of the investigative team, that "there is no other plausible explanation" (this is also the final line of the report): a North Korean submarine torpedoed and sunk the Cheonan.
Immediately after the 5-page statement's release, Hillary Clinton intoned "provocative actions have consequences" and "the international community" "cannot allow [North Korea's] attack on South Korea to go unanswered."
In contrast to these descriptions of the JIG document as a solid body of evidence produced by a respectable group of international experts, the analysis below will show that the 5-page statement, particularly the section that blames North Korea for attacking and sinking the Cheonan, which was produced by a group of states that were belligerents against North Korea during the Korean War and could be again if a new conflict erupts, contains inherent political bias. As a result, claims of an impartial and objective investigation should not be accepted at face value but subjected to scrutiny….
Unilateral Reunification, Pre-emption, Cheonan and China and the Risk of War
South Korea, according to its defense minister, is now seeking the "strongest resolution" at the UN Security Council to punish North Korea for the Cheonan sinking. U.S. and South Korean officials repeatedly stress that the two countries will work closely at the UN on this endeavor.
Before South Korea approached the UN Security Council, the U.S. had already proclaimed that it was leading a "united front" that includes South Korea and Japan. The three countries have been campaigning to internationalize the Cheonan incident. The goal is to force acceptance of the conclusion that the world needs to punish North Korea, whether through action by the UN Security Council or by handing the assignment to an Asian coalition of the willing, with U.S. participation.
Before holding a June 5 trilateral meeting with Japanese defense minister Kitazawa Toshimi and South Korean defense minister Kim Tae-young on the sidelines of the "Shangri-La Dialogue" Asia security in Singapore, U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates made this statement:
Attacks like that on the Cheonan undermine the peace and stability of not just the Korean peninsula, but the region as a whole…To do nothing would set the wrong precedent. The international community can and must hold North Korea accountable. The United States will continue to work with the Republic of Korea, Japan and our other partners to figure out the best way to do just that.
In his own statement, Kitazawa said that he wanted the summit to "serve as a strong message to the international community as well as to North Korea" and expressed the "hope that the three countries will be able to show our strong determination."
China, which has Security Council veto power and is North Korea's main benefactor, is the key to winning UN approval for punishment. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has talked about judging the Cheonan incident in an "objective and fair manner" and based on the facts. The U.S. and South Korea have dropped strong hints that the 5-page JIG statement is compelling and China does not need to wait. Both want China to act "responsibly."
On its own, South Korea has several times delivered the message of responsibility to China, most recently at the Singapore security summit. Interviewed by Yonhap, South Korean defense minister Kim described a meeting he had with Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of staff of China's People's Liberation Army, during the summit: "I explained to him fully for over thirty minutes what caused the Cheonan incident, what surfaced in the process of the investigation," he said. "China remains cautious, but we hope that it will reach a responsible conclusion."
On June 1, Yu Myung-hwan, South Korea's foreign minister, reportedly talked with the BBC about ways of choking off North Korea's economic life. The minister's actual words were, "If cash inflow into North Korea is restricted, I think it will lower the possibility of nuclear weapons development and deter belligerent behavior," but talk of sanctions or increased economic isolation rarely considers the damaging implications for the people of North Korea.
If cut off from the global cash system, North Korea and its population of 23 million could experience enormous economic suffering (unless rescued by China). Without cash (North Korea's access to credit is virtually non-existent), importing and exporting would become almost impossible, resulting in total economic isolation. The effect of such a situation on the life of the nation is imaginable by referring to the 10-year oil embargo on Iraq during the 1990s, which had devastating consequences (as measured by various UN and NGO surveys) for the health and everyday survival capabilities of Iraqi society, with children found to be particularly vulnerable.
A cash cut-off would come atop a dense legal thicket of international restrictions on trade and commerce, well summarized by Michael Yo in the Asia-Pacific Journal, that already makes North Korea perhaps the most economically blockaded country in the world. This matrix consists of residual Cold War-era unilateral U.S. anti-economic and business development policies, U.S. extraterritorial law that forces companies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere to choose between doing business in North Korea or in the far more profitable U.S. market, and U.S. pressure on international lending institutions to deny financial and economic development aid to North Korea.
Regime change in Pyongyang is also open to discussion. In his May 24 special address on the Cheonan incident to the South Korean nation, President Lee Myung-bak called North Korea the "most belligerent regime in the world" and spoke of the need for that "regime to change" for the good of "the regime itself and its people." Echoes of the justifications for the March 2003 U.S./UK-led invasion of Iraq are unmistakable.
Lee continues to promote a "Grand Bargain," in which North Korea would surrender its nuclear weapons program in exchange for economic assistance and security assurances. North Korea has so far rejected the offer, probably because U.S. policies of economic punishment and military/nuclear threats are not factored in. (1)
To apply even more pressure on North Korea, South Korea's military has raised the possibility of pre-emptive attack. Using rough English, South Korea's defense ministry website reported that on May 18, Lee Sang-woo, the head of a national security review commission established on May 9 to review South Korea's defense capabilities in light of the Cheonan sinking, discussed with commission members South Korea's "need to shift its defense policy from defense disposition to deterrence posture." Lee "added that it is important to be equipped with defensive capabilities that could completely neutralize the enemy's intention to attack, but if Seoul takes action in advance, Pyongyang would not have made provocations in the first place." In Lee's view, two considerations compel a pre-emptive ("deterrence" is the term Lee uses) posture. "First is that the South's military must develop and maintain military capabilities to make necessary decisive blow toward the enemy in peacetime. Another one is that Seoul needs to have firm will to use such capabilities if necessary." Under a switch to a pre-emption posture, the best method for destroying key targets in North Korea, Lee said, is "aviation and naval power."
In North Korea, the threat of pre-emptive aerial attack is likely to be regarded as a provocative and cruel reminder of the "unknown war," Korean historian Bruce Cumings' term for the Korean War, one largely forgotten in the West but certainly not in Korea. As Cumings wrote in 2004, "What was indelible about it was the extraordinary destructiveness of the United States' air campaigns against North Korea, from the widespread and continuous use of firebombing (mainly with napalm), to threats to use nuclear and chemical weapons, and the destruction of huge North Korean dams in the final stages of the war. Yet this episode is mostly unknown even to historians, let alone to the average citizen, and it has never been mentioned during the past decade of media analysis of the North Korean nuclear problem."
A few days after the remarks by Lee Sang-woo, the defense ministry website made the threat of pre-emptive destruction from the air more pointed by reporting on a meeting of officers from the U.S, South Korea, U.K., Canada and Australia (Korean War belligerents and members of the Task Force that found North Korean responsible for the Cheonan sinking) to, in the words of an unidentified participant, "check and reinforce joint military capabilities to secure airspace on the Korean Peninsula."
On June 1, Yonhapreported that "President Lee Myung-bak instructed his Cabinet Tuesday to come up with a long-term strategy for the reunification of the Korean Peninsula, despite heightened military tensions following the sinking" of the Cheonan. Based on this alone, Lee's real intentions are unclear. He is reported, however, to have said "national security has emerged as an important task since the Cheonan incident," which now requires South Korea to "draw up a strategy on security bearing reunification in mind."
The basic premise of Lee’s reunification strategy seems clear: North and South are to be reunited on South Korean (or U.S.-South Korean) terms. A joining together of equals based on dialogue, mutual decisions and jointly implemented reunification policies can hardly be what Lee has in mind as his government ends inter-Korean trade and other bilateral cooperation, moves Lee told the South Korean nation on May 24 were necessary in response to Cheonan and other alleged North Korean provocations.
At a more extreme level, open speculation by senior South Korean government officials about pre-emptive attack and measures to bring North Korea's economy to its knees conveys a willingness to, if need be, achieve reunification through turning North Korea into a wasteland.
Lee's grand bargain is another sign of reunification on unilateral terms. The bargain seems to be a take it or leave it proposition. No room exists for arriving at reunification through mutual respect and negotiations between equals. In his recent appearance at the Asian security summit, Lee proposed putting his grand bargain at the center at any resumption of Six Party (South and North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan) talks, a proposal that seems to push aside the "action for action" negotiating principle all parties initially agreed would be at the heart of the talks, a principle that led to several important Six Party diplomatic achievements between 2005 and 2008.
While Lee contemplates a one-sided vision of reunification that may include military and economic coercion, the U.S. has been helping to push the threat level even higher. On June 5, U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates warned of unspecified "additional options" under review for dealing with North Korea. The implication is a U.S. willingness to act outside the UN, using such unilateral measures as banking sanctions to punish any global financial institution active in the U.S. market that tries to do business with North Korea.
Four days after South Korea released the statement on the Cheonan sinking, Hillary Clinton described the situation on the Korean Peninsula as "highly precarious." Nevertheless, South Korea's government is moving ahead with psychological warfare operations. (2) Joint naval exercises with the U.S. in the Yellow Sea (possibly including participation by the US aircraft carrier George Washington), planned and then suspended while the UN Security Council considers South Korea's letter of protest over the Cheonan sinking, may still happen in the near future.
Responding to the possibility of a display of U.S.-South Korean military might near Chinese territorial waters, the Global Times Chinese news website printed these June 8 editorial remarks in English:
Though intended to send a threatening message to North Korea, having a U.S. aircraft carrier participating in joint military drills off of China's coast would certainly be a provocative action toward China….[A]s a key player in the North Korea issue, South Korea should try hard to reduce the anxiety on the peninsula. Seeking gains by intensifying the tension is the wrong move. Escalation of the conflict will not be conducive to solving the issue….South Korea's intentions are clear. That means it is up to the U.S. alone to decide whether or not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Yellow Sea. The U.S. should be aware of the severe consequences such a move would bring.
One other major power, and a participant in the Six-Party Talks that has been largely ignored in the discussion over the Cheonan, is Russia. The Russian news organization RIA Novostireported on June 8 that "a group of Russian Navy experts left Seoul on Monday after assessing an international investigation that found North Korea responsible for the sinking of the warship [Cheonan] in March. The Russian experts did not draw their own conclusions on the issue." An earlier RIA report stated that the group will report its findings to the Russian Defense Ministry sometime in the week ending June 12. How the defense ministry intends to handle the findings, which could include issuing a public report, is unclear.
While politics are in command of the Cheonan investigation, geopolitics and military events on the Korean Peninsula and in surrounding waters threaten to spin out of control, bringing the risk of a new Korean war.
Notes
(1) In fact, the Obama administration's April 2010 Nuclear Posture Review can readily be interpreted to mean that even if North Korea surrendered its nuclear weapons and fully accepted the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, it could still be targeted for U.S. nuclear attack (i.e., denied a "negative security assurance" or NSA from the U.S.) if it failed to meet "nuclear non-proliferation obligations" that remain unexplained in the NPR. One White House official, Gary Samore, coordinator for arms control and WMD, proliferation and terrorism, has stated those obligations could be expansive, ad hoc and unilateral. Speaking before the Carnegie Endowment on April 22, 2010, Samore said: "The point I’m making is that there are the clause in the NSA that says incompliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations is intended to be a broad clause and we’ll interpret that – when the time comes, we’ll interpret that in accordance with what we judge to be a meaningful standard." Even if North Korea complies with the NPT, the model for what can still happen is Iran, the target of a relentless US-led international campaign to weaken the country through sanctions, using as pretext unproven allegations of a growing nuclear weapons potential hidden somewhere inside Iran's NPT-compliant and UN-monitored civilian nuclear program.
(2) For example, Yonhapreported on June 9 that South Korea's military has completed installation of propaganda loudspeakers in "11 frontline areas" along the border with North Korea. The move is "part of the government's punitive measures against North Korea for sinking" the Cheonan.