Posted on 01/12/2004 3:49:23 PM PST by Forgiven_Sinner
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The following are excerpts from the recently released book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror by hardcore US neo-conservatives Richard Perle and David Frum. Perle is the well-connected former chairman of the US Defense Policy Board, while Frum is a former White House speechwriter. These excerpts deal specifically with Asia. Given Perle's very close relationships with senior hawks in the administration of President George W Bush, these positions probably quite accurately reflect what Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon civilians are arguing at the highest levels in the administration.
North Korea
The South Koreans, to speak plainly, favor a policy of appeasement of the North ... the top priority of South Korea's current government has been to ensure that the United States and Japan join them in appeasing Kim Jong-il. To that end, they wish to keep as many American troops as possible deployed as far forward as possible, so that Americans share their vulnerability to North Korean artillery.
In Korea, the surest way to avoid war is to prepare to fight it ... The leaders of China appreciate, perhaps better than we do, that a second Korean war would end with the destruction of the North Korean regime, the unification of the whole peninsula under a democratic government in Seoul, and an unfriendly army deployed on China's borders. China went to war in 1950 to prevent such an outcome. If China wants to avoid unification today, it will have to use its influence on its client to prevent war.
Any new agreement with the North Koreans must begin by acknowledging that North Korea cannot be trusted to honor its promises. [The authors propose a checklist:]
First no agreement is worth having if it does not provide for the immediate surrender by North Korea of all the nuclear material they are known to possess before North Korea receives a single dollar in new American aid: not a phased surrender, not an incremental surrender, but a total and complete surrender.
Second, North Korea must close its missile bases [which can be verified from the air].
Third, North Korea must submit to the permanent presence of an International Atomic Energy Agency inspection team, but a team that operates by stringent new rules. The inspectors must be based in North Korea, must be allowed to go anywhere at any time, and must be allowed to remove North Korean nuclear scientists and their families to neutral territory and interview them there.
On those terms, the United States can probably live with the risks of North Korea ... but we fear that it is unlikely that North Korea will accept such terms ... If those fears are correct, then the United States must ready itself for the hard possibility that our choices really shrink to two: tolerate North Korea's attempt to go nuclear - or take decisive action to stop it.
Decisive action would begin with a comprehensive air and naval blockade of North Korea, cutting it off from all seaborne traffic, all international aviation, and all intercourse with the South. South Korea will object, but it needs to be made to understand that, as in Cuba in 1962, a blockade is its best alternative to war. Of course, North Korea's land border with China will remain open. That's good. It underscores our central contention, that the North Korean nuclear program is a Chinese responsibility, for which China will be held accountable.
Next, we must accelerate the redeployment of our ground troops on the Korean Peninsula so they are beyond the range of North Korean artillery and short-range rockets. Third, as we reposition troops, we should develop detailed plans for a preemptive strike against North Korea's nuclear facilities. Of course, it is true that we do not know where all these facilities are. But we know where the most important one is; and just as a surgeon will wish to remove a malignant tumor even if he suspects that there may be others that cannot be located, so we should not hesitate to hit the bomb factory we can find, even if other facilities may be hidden underground.
But we hope - and this hope is, we think, well founded - that a credible buildup to an American strike will persuade the Chinese finally to do what they have so often promised to do: bring the North Koreans to heel. In return, the Chinese get peace on their frontiers and a North Korean government friendly to them. It may be that the only way out of the decade-long crisis on the Korean Peninsula is the toppling of Kim Jong-il and his replacement by a North Korean communist who is more subservient to China. If so, we should accept that outcome. However menacing China may become over the long term, it is much more sane and predictable than communist North Korea has been. And a more pro-Chinese North Korea would also probably institute more rational economic policies, thereby saving millions of North Korea people from famine and misery.
China
Since the pragmatists in the Chinese Communist Party prevailed over the Maoist diehards in the mid-1970s, American policymakers have hoped that free trade, foreign investment and economic growth would transform China into a reasonable open, stable and peaceful society. Nor is it yet possible to dismiss those hopes as misplaced ... Whatever hope we may have that China will move toward greater openness through a process of economic-leading-to-political reform, we will have to deal with a deep-seated Chinese determination that their great and ancient civilization should recover its place as a great power.
Because we hope that China may still evolve into a more open society, it is important for the United States to support a policy of open trade with China, including permanent normal trade relations and China's entry into the World Trade Organization ... The United States should make it clear to the Chinese that Americans want a sustainable, friendly relationship with China, provided that the Chinese respect American values and American interests in the world and in the region - including the freedom of Taiwan. While we cannot determine the ultimate relationship between Beijing and Taipei, we can - and must - insist that the relationship be settled peacefully. [The authors go on to praise Bush for his April 2001 statement that he would do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself".]
We and the Chinese can be friendly. But a friendly relationship will not be possible if China uses its growing economic and military power to intimidate or impose its will on our Asian friends and allies. And we will find it difficult to warm to the Chinese if they are not with us in our war on terrorism or if they continue to abuse the basic human rights of their citizens.
Our Asian policy should be clearly set out:
A defense partnership with Japan, Australia and other willing Asian democracies as intimate and enduring as the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] alliance ... China should know that any attempt to bully any one of its democratic neighbors will be resisted by all of them - no ifs, buts or exceptions.
A credible military guarantee for Taiwan ... The Chinese will howl. Let them. Defensive weapons pose problems only for aggressors.
A regional defense system against ballistic missiles, possibly based on naval platforms. This would go a long way toward neutralizing North Korea's nuclear arsenal. Greater South Korean responsibility for its own defense.
South Asia
Impoverished Pakistan has become a favored destination for Saudi Arabia's poisonous philanthropy. Saudi-funded religious schools drill boys to memorize the Koran in its original Arabic, a language few of them will ever understand. They learn no trade or skills, no math, no science, no Western language - only deadening rituals and murderous prejudice. If they fail to recite correctly the texts they must learn by rote, they are beaten. They are allowed no contact with women. By the time they "graduate", they are unemployable, deformed personalities. Meanwhile, in city slums and unelectrified villages, Saudi-funded imams preach jealousy and rage to populations baffled by their country's backward slide and repeated military defeats.
Nor is the Pakistan military immune to the allure of Arab cash. Men of [President General Pervez] Musharraf's generation were already mature by the time Saudi money began to infiltrate Pakistan. They seem to have been able to accept it without being unduly influenced by it. The next generation may have other ideas - and bombs that are today Islamic in name only may some day end up as weapons of jihad.
America does not have the power to persuade subcontinental Muslims to choose tolerance and compassion over hate and jihad. But we can do our part to rescue the subcontinent's people from the poverty and conflict that have made them so receptive to fanatical versions of Islam. Nobody appreciates the importance of military power in the war on terrorism more than the authors of this book. But South Asia is one place where non-military power can do the most good ... Above all, we must liberate and protect Pakistan from the malign influence of Saudi missionaries. To those ends, we should:
Accept the subcontinent's nuclear weapons as an unwelcome but unalterable fact and drop all remaining sanctions against India and Pakistan.
Broaden our direct military-to-military relationships with Pakistan and India and also Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, to encourage the promotion of Western-oriented officers, to teach effective and humane counterterrorism tactics, and to introduce reliable controls to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into unauthorized hands.
Increase US aid to the subcontinent and focus the money on providing a more appealing education than the local Islamic colleges offer.
Promote peace by promoting subcontinental economic integration ... We should offer not only Pakistan but also Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India ... a comprehensive free-trade agreement with the United States - provided they sign the same agreement with one another.
This has a start already:
West Point duo developing military academies in Iraq, Afghanistan
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