You won’t hear this in either the liberal or conservative media, but he’s perfectly sane, from his point of view, which we in America have become very good at ignoring. But the truth is, he DOES have a legitimate point.
All the media are ignoring the elephant in the room-- the Korean War. If you were born after 1950, you can be excused for not knowing this, as it is never mentioned in US History or World History classes, even in colleges. The Korean War is the longest-running war in US history, and one of the longest in WORLD history. That’s right, in world history. It started in 1950, and has not yet ended in any recognizable fashion.
Wars end in one of three ways:
-- Somebody wins. The winners force the losers to sign a treaty, or destroy them so utterly that the victor is never in doubt. Think of Rome vs Carthage, or the Greeks vs Troy.
-- There’s an armistice-- BOTH sides agree to stop fighting, with both sides claiming victory. A draw. Often, an armistice is a prelude to a treaty, but not always.
-- A cease-fire. Nothing official happens, but both sides quit fighting. The Vietnam War, for example.
NONE of these three scenarios applies to Korea. We’ve been fighting there for seventy-two years, without a break of even a single day. For comparison, the so-called “Hundred Years War” in Europe actually lasted only thirty-seven years at its longest stretch, though it did stop and start several times ov er most of a century. That’s about half as long as we’ve been fighting in Korea. World War Two lasted less than a decade, even if you count the parts we were not involved in. There are great-grandparents in North Korea who cannot remember when they were not fighting the United States.
We are occupying territory that North Korea claims, and which we took from them by force and still maintain by force. We have more than 100,000 troops in Korea. Not a day goes by without some of them being in combat. The North Koreans never signed a treaty or an armistice, and never honored any requests for a cease-fire. They are still fighting to get rid of us, and we just won’t go away.
Kim believes his is the only legitimate government for all of Korea. (I don’t agree, but I’m neither Communist nor Korean.) To Kim, this makes the South Korean government a “puppet government” of the United States. After all, they adopted our form of government, didn’t they? To Kim, we are the foreign invaders, and he is the statesman who wants to liberate his homeland!
This is not empty rhetoric or self-serving propaganda. He really believes that, and shows it by his actions. And he’s not playing a game. His goal is to force us out of South Korea, so he can liberate it from the capitalists there and unify his country.
So, what is he up to? Is he really going to nuke the US?
Briefly, the answer is, “Yes and no.” He’s not interested in starting a nuclear war with the United States. He knows we can turn North Korea into a parking lot in half an hour. He also knows that we will not do so unless actually attacked. So, he provokes us over and over, to make us look silly, foolish, and weak. This earns him popularity in North Korea. It also distracts us from his long-term objective, which is developing a nuclear retaliation capability.
Kim’s army is nearly as large as China's, and we didn’t beat them the first time around, when they were far fewer. For the past seven decades, any northern invasion of South Korea has only been prevented by our threat of nuclear attack. Kim has no defense against it. But soon, that will change, as he will be able to hit back with a nuke. It’s that nuclear retaliation capability that he’s counting on to neutralize our superiority. Then, it’ll just be our 100,000 ground troops against a million armed North Koreans.
That’s a battle Kim thinks he can win. Perhaps he cannot. But he thinks he can. We didn’t win in Korea. We sued for peace, and didn’t get it. We lost in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Syria. Do we have what it takes to fight Kim, without our nukes? When his army is ten times the size of ours? That’s what Kim is thinking. That’s his strategy, and it makes perfect sense-- to Kim.
