A “Political” Riddle Unsolved

US Presidents, ranging from the 33rd President Truman to the incumbent President Trump, and other American politicians have not solved a “political” riddle for dozens of years. It is a “scar” on the prestige of the “sole superpower” in the world that interferes with all international issues and acts as the International Judge.

 Confrontation between the DPRK and the US: the Core of the Riddle The confrontation between the two countries, which dates back to 1945, the last year of the Second World War, has lasted more than half a century. Although Korea was not a defeated nation in the war, the US occupied the southern half of the country to meet its own strategic interests. It engineered the establishment of a puppet government in south Korea and unleashed a war against the young Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The Korean war lasted from 1950 to 1953. Since it signed the Korean Armistice Agreement, the US has pursued a policy hostile towards the DPRK, constantly pressurizing and provoking it. The Pueblo Incident, the Panmunjom Incident and many other incidents brought the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of another war. In the 1990s, following the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, the Cold War ended. This led to the aggravation of the confrontation between the DPRK and the US.   The DPRK did not yield to the pressure and sanctions by the US; it built up its own strength, valiantly standing up to the haughty superpower.  

In retrospect, Truman and other Presidents of the US used a carrot and stick approach to find a “clean solution” to the Korean issue. Their decades-long policy of hostility, however, ended in a failure. This caused the DPRK to develop into a world-class military power with state-of-the-art hardware. The superpower now faces two unhappy choices–risking its own security by attacking the powerful rival or damaging its reputation by compromising with the latter. This riddle is a real headache for American politicians.

 How to Solve the Riddle

In order to find a solution to this conundrum it is necessary to fathom out the national strength of the DPRK.   The US boasts of being the “strongest” both economically and militarily. The DPRK is very small in terms of the size of territory and population, but its Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, loyally supported by all the service personnel and civilians, is endowed with outstanding wisdom and courage.

The confrontation between the two countries is, in a nutshell, a military showdown that is directly attributable to the US policy of hostility towards the DPRK. Probably, Newton’s law of action and reaction has been applied to the bilateral relations, making the latter emerge as a formidable rival with various powerful means of nuclear strike.  

The era of unilateral nuclear blackmail by the US has ended and now it is the superpower itself that faces nuclear threats from the DPRK. Conclusively speaking, the use of force is not the solution to the Korean issue because the DPRK is not like Libya or Iraq. And the carrot policy will not work in this respect. The most reasonable option for the US is to recognize the current status of the DPRK, scrap its hostile policy and make peace with the country.

It would be better for the US to seek peaceful co-existence with the newly emergent nuclear-armed nation than suffering another disgrace. Then it can maintain its position as the superpower and ensure the security of the American Empire.