The Chris Moeller Archives

Yankee, go home

If you know a military member that's been stationed overseas at any time during the last ten years... or twenty years... there's a good chance that that person has been deployed to Afghanistan or the Persian Gulf as part of a war operation. We hear a lot about those assignments. But there's also a good chance that that man or woman has lived for a time in one of two other countries-- Germany and South Korea.

World War II ended in 1945. Documents were signed. It was in all the papers. But American military forces have maintained major military footprints since at the locations of both the old, dismantled Berlin Wall and throughout the Pacific. We're still holding back Communism on the Korean Peninsula even since the "police action" in Korea paused in a cease-fire in the summer of 1953. That truce represents the moment when most Americans-- because they have been continuously told-- came to believe that a three-year and never-declared "war" between North and South Korea came to an end. But its Cold War, complete with defense build-ups, trade sanctions, undercover ops and targeted violence, has continued. Thus, the presence of the American military at the edge of the Korean Demilitarized Zone for the last 65 years. We are still 23,000 servicemembers strong in South Korea. The peninsula has been more or less out of the mindset of Americans since 1953 (except for the eleven seasons M*A*S*H was on the air)-- but America, as you could probably guess, is still a major presence in the lives of North Koreans. The USS Pueblo naval ship, captured by the North Koreans in 1968 and never decommissioned by the U.S. Navy, still sits docked along the Potong River in Pyongyang, a daily reminder from the North Korean government to its people of United States ongoing war games in their backyard.

Does it ever strike you as strange that your country's military has a presence in foreign countries, but other countries don't have a similar presence in ours? We certainly do harbor fears about a lot of different peoples. We are armed under the U.S. banner inside hundreds of countries. Nothing of the military apparatus has been dismantled since the time of the early build-up of the Cold War. Nothing has even checked the growth. We have bases in Germany and South Korea, but also in Niger, Djibouti, Italy, Greece, Japan, and Kosovo, and even in countries like Cuba with which we don't offer diplomatic relations. Conversely, the Italian military is not based in part here in the U.S. The National Army of the Republic of Djibouti does not house its North American Command within our borders. The Greek armed forces don't have an installation in, say, the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Isn't that odd to you?


This has been an extraordinary weekend in geo-politics. The Olympics are on-- and during this round they're actually serving the larger purpose for which they are routinely marketed-- that is, thawing the often-chilly relationships between countries. This one could be historic. North and South Korea are joint participants in the winter games at Pyeongchang. The North-South Korea women's hockey team has game. The respective leaders in the North and South, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, agreed to have the two countries join forces on the snow and ice. Kim's sister, 28-year-old Kim Yo-jong, the first member of the ruling Kim family to cross the border into the South since 1953, was seated with the South Korean hosts at the opening ceremonies, a lunch was shared the following day, and a summit might be in the works for later this year after Kim Yo-jong passed a note to Moon on behalf of her brother.

And the United States is having none of it.

U.S. Vice President Pence was at the opening ceremonies also-- seated just a few feet away from the Koreans. He stayed seated for the passing of the North and South Korean athletes. On Wednesday, in Tokyo, he vowed renewed U.S. sanctions for North Korea. (New sets of embargoes are arriving now about once a month. The most recent were three weeks ago.) On the topic of warming relations between these ancient Asian siblings with shared customs and history, North and South Korea, the guy from Columbus, Indiana weighed in with this, "I'm announcing that the United States of America will soon unveil the toughest and most aggressive round of sanctions on North Korea ever, and we will continue to isolate North Korea until it abandons its nuclear and ballistic missile programs once and for all." Then after touching down in Seoul for the ceremonies, his message drew upon the symbolic, cooperative spirit of the locking Olympic rings: "We will not allow North Korean propaganda to hijack the message and imagery of the Olympic Games. We will not allow North Korea to hide behind the Olympic banner the reality that they enslave their people and threaten the wider region." Take that, Kim Jong-un. And take that, Moon Jae-in.

This is what the U.S. does-- and it didn't start with the Trump administration. We are not neutral players, as we often profess. In this case, we are not even weighted allies of one side against another. We are saboteurs. The military industrial complex, the one famously warned by President Eisenhower that certainly grew in size beyond even his wildest imagination, is a tiger in the basement that needs to be relentlessly fed, hemorrhaging the budget while putting us all in danger. The news media plays along as propagandist. Dennis Rodman was pilloried-- universally-- for traveling to Pyongyang and meeting with Kim last June, but now his visit looks prescient. This blog was probably the only place you read praise for Rodman at that time. His diplomatic trip, which curiously did not carry the blessing of anyone in the official American diplomatic community, did not carry that blessing because it ran afoul of our perverse motivations. Rodman did not attempt to dehumanize. He did not misrepresent. He did not traffic in paranoia. He was not intruding there on behalf of American business.

Well, now Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea, is Dennis Rodman, and what choo you all got to say about that? Pence looked the fool sitting there in the front row of the Koreans' box-- disengaged, arrogant, ignorant, sullen and severe. You can find plenty of images of this online to chuckle over. He looks like he's photo-bombing the rest of them. The Japanese president-- no fan of North Korea-- said hello to Kim Yo-jong. Pence refused to speak to her. (So he's not even a gentleman-- and he's embarrassing Midwestern Americans.) He looked like an ungrateful guest-- and probably at a certain point he was an unwelcomed one. As he left South Korea, he told reporters, "there's no daylight between the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Japan on the need to continue to isolate North Korea economically and diplomatically." But the reality seems to be that there's quite a lot of daylight there. The Koreans were literally passing notes to each other behind his back.

posted by CM @ 7:47 AM