2017 Apr 5^th

Pat Buchanan asks, “Why is Kim Jong Un our problem?” The fact that Kim has launched many missiles in our direction and in the direction of our ally, Japan, would seem to answer that question; couple that with the likelihood that Kim already has ICBMs in reserve waiting for the development of nuclear warheads means that residents of our west coast have reason to be nervous…or move to Maine.

According to Buchanan, “He (Kim) is targeting us because we have 28,500 troops on his border.” Then he writes, “If U.S. air missile and ground forces were not in and around Korea…and if we were not treaty bound to fight alongside South Korea, there would be no reason…for Kim to threaten us.”

What complete nonsense! Let’s start with the notion that our 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea pose a threat to North Korea and Kim: Just how large is the North Korean Army? The answer is about 1.25 million men under arms right now with a ready reserve force of another 7.5 million. It’s hard to see why Kim would be bothered by 28,500 U.S. troops; they constitute about 2 percent of Kim’s active troop strength.

Buchanan then points out the effect our immediate military presence and our treaty obligations with South Korea have on incurring the wrath of Kim. Of course they do; they bother him because without that ever present U.S. military strength and our treaty with South Korea, Kim would had incinerated Soul and occupied the entire peninsula long ago. North Korea nearly did that some time back when we had no military presence there. That’s why we have a military presence there now.

Buchanan talks of Russia’s wars in Georgia and Ukraine by saying that if these states had been in NATO, “We would have been eyeball to eyeball with a nuclear armed Russia.” On the other hand if those states had been in NATO Russian military action against them might never have occurred. That possibility is never mentioned by Buchanan.

Buchanan continues this riff about our treaties with “scores of nations with little or no vital link to vital U.S. interests.” Here I’m reminded of Chamberlain’s response to the occupation of Czechoslovakia just before WW 2. (“A quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” And then he found out!)

Buchanan makes a great to-do about the relative amounts NATO countries spend on defense. We sped a larger portion of our GDP on defense than does Germany, or probably any other nation… North Korea excepted. Buchanan does not understand that the United States is by far the largest supplier of arms in the world. If other countries are “encouraged” to spend more on arms where will they spend it? Some of it, perhaps most of it, will be spent right here. Indeed most of the money we spend on our arms is spent providing employment, paid for by your tax dollars, for citizens right here in this country.

This is the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about; we should have listened.