Walter E. Block – January 9, 2018
If I were President of the United States, or, more realistically, if Ron or Rand Paul were, and they appointed me Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of State, this is how I would deal with Kim Jong-un and the North Korean situation.
First, realize that Un’s theatrics are, from his own point of view, perfectly rational. He is not stupid. He looks at what happened to Muammar Gaddafi of Libya; murdered by mobs after kow-towing to the Great Satan. He notes the demise of Saddam Hussain of Iraq, another country that got on the wrong side of our imperialist nation; a similar dismal end befell him, too. It does not take much brain power to realize that Un’s only hope of escaping a similar fate would be, roughly, the one he has adopted: belligerence, nuclear armament, bellicosity, etc.
Here is what to do about the situation:
Withdraw some 35,000 U.S. troops from the demilitarized zone, separating North and South Korea. What in bloody blue blazes are they doing there in the first place? Is not the Korean War of 1951 yet drawing to a close?
Sign a formal agreement, a treaty, a contract, with, yes, North Korea, ending the unconstitutional, undeclared “police action” of 1950. This never should have been started in the first place. It is time, it is past time, to end it.
Stop opposing any and all attempts of the two Koreas to unify with one another, perhaps along similar lines established by East and West Germany. What business is it of the U.S. what happens in that far away land? Ordinarily, I favor as many countries as possible. Seven billion plus is my ultimate goal, one for each of us. Certainly I support the secession of Catalonia, Quebec and any other breakaway province (or state! California: best of luck to you people in this regard). But, I am willing to make an exception in this one instance. In any case, this should be up, entirely, to Koreans, and the U.S. should take its big fat thumb out of this process.
