“An enemy of my enemy is a friend.”
–An Arab Saying
“There are no eternal friends, nor permanent enemies, only eternal and permanent interests.”
–Lord Palmerston
Last September 2017, two heads of states — President of the United States Donald Trump and President of North Korea Kim Jong-un hurled invectives at each other and issued statements threatening to launch an attack on each other’s territories. In November, during the ASEAN Summit in Manila, President Trump said he would strike back if U.S. or its allies (Japan and South Korea) would be attacked. The spectre of a nuclear war by the two countries, one, the most powerful and the other a new nuclear power, their capitals apart by more than 10,000 kms. has given much fear and anxiety all over the world.
Let us have a brief narration of the significant events in China, the Far East, and the Pacific from the turn of the 20th century that became the underpinnings of the division of Korea after WWII in 1945; the post-war world situation in Europe; China and Southeast Asia before the outbreak of the Korean War (1950-53); and thereafter. With this backgrounder, we can see a weak state rich in minerals, strategically located but hemmed in by much stronger neighbours, became a bone of contention for power and influence, the result of which was the beginnings of WWII in the Pacific, and after the war, an object of rivalry by the world’s two Big Powers; and much later, with a rising Big Power.
Japan Opens Up to the West and Rises as a World Power. After the visits in 1853 of American ships led by Commodore Matthew Perry, Japan opened its ports to world trade and commerce. Emperor Meiji’s reign (1860-1912) was the period of Japan’s transformation from an isolationist feudal state to a western mold with its political, social and economic systems and practices. Japan became forward-looking in its foreign relations. She embarked on a rapid industrialization and eyed her closest neighbors for the needed raw materials. She wanted to become a world power and not be bullied by Westerners like Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia which had sliced off parts of Japan’s territory over which they exercised degrees of sovereignty. She adopted Prussian militarism, started organizing and equipping her armies and a navy that could rival the Royal Navy of England. At the close of the 20th century in April 1894, Japan fought China for supremacy and sphere of influence over the Korean peninsulas. After 8 months of land and naval battle, China sued for peace and conceded the Liaodong Peninsulas, south eastern Manchuria, and Formosa (Taiwan). It was Japan’s first battle and victory as an emerging world power.
Japanese Navy Defeats Russian Fleet, Annexes Korea. A decade later in May 1905, Japan, a rising naval power, decisively defeated the Russian Fleet in the Battle of Tsushima off the sea lanes between southern Japan and Korea. It was one of the greatest sea battles in modern times with some 130 ships of 20 battleships, cruisers, destroyers and other vessels engaged on both sides. Emboldened by her victories, in August 1910, Japan annexed her neighbor across the sea, the Korean peninsula, getting now a foothold from which she would embark on an invasion of China two decades later. Korea, then a unified territory and nation, experienced Japan’s harsh and brutal colonization and occupation characterized by forced labor, enslavement, mass evacuation, and repression of her language and culture — a bitter past the Korean people would never forget. In exploit, Japan took 2 million Koreans as immigrants and workers in factories and recruited 300,000 soldiers to fight her wars in China, Burma, and the Philippines in WWII. Japan’s annexation of Korea was her grand debut on the stage of building an empire. Riding on the crest of the nationalistic aspirations of colonized peoples in Asia, she pledged to free them from the white man’s burden and make them partners and beneficiaries of an East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere she had envisioned as the sole Colonizer. Due to scarcity of oil and minerals for her factories, and food for a large burgeoning population, she coveted rich resources of her weak neighbors.
Japan Builds an Empire, Invades China, Occupies Manchuria. In 1933, she invaded Manchuria, a territory northeast of China, a vast fragmented country ruled by warlords who ruled with almost absolute authority, its southern parts sliced off by western colonizers, Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia who governed like sovereign despots. For 14 years until her surrender in 1945, Japan occupied Manchuria, exploited its rich mineral resources, and governed its people with such brutality the most infamous of which was the massacre of some 300,000 soldiers and civilians and rape of 20,000 women in Nanking, the memory of which would haunt and embitter the relations of the two countries up to the present.
Japan Attacks U.S., WWII Starts in the Pacific. Finally, Japan challenged U.S. domination of the Pacific, with a treacherous and surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, a U.S. territory, on 7-December-1941, simultaneously attacking British Malaya and the Philippines, a U.S. colony. The sudden attack impelled the U.S. to abandon her isolationist stance and forthwith declare war against Japan and the Axis Powers led by Germany and Italy. Encountering no heavy resistance, Japan successively invaded and occupied many Southeast Asian countries and islands. (At this time, war was raging in Europe after Germany invaded Poland on 1-September-1939 starting WWII; France had fallen, 300,000 British soldiers escaped capture and death through Dunkirk, France; and crossed the English Channel as German Panzer divisions assaulted and bombarded Stalingrad.)
Japan’s Demise, Atomic Bomb Hastens Her Surrender. For 3 years Japan basked in her imperial glory and dominance. But soon overreach, big losses in aircraft carriers, fighter aircrafts, battleships, and limited resources took their toll. The U.S. control of the skies and sea lanes, superior air and naval power, weapons and industrial might, doomed Japan to inevitable defeat. By end-1944, she began losing conquered territories in the Pacific, including the Philippines. Told by Allies to surrender unconditionally as set forth under the Potsdam Declaration, Japan refused, determined to defend her homeland. It was not until two atomic bombs were dropped on the first week of August 1945 on her populous cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that hastened Japan’s surrender on 2-September-1945. With her surrender, Japan lost her conquered territories in China namely Formosa (Taiwan) and Manchuria; British colonies Malaya (Malaysia), Burma (Myanmar); Singapore; Dutch East Indies (Indonesia); French colonies Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam; U.S. colony Philippines; and other Pacific islands.
It was the first time in the history of mankind that such a powerful and destructive weapon was ever used in war. It resulted in the instant death of some 120,000, the figure to reach 200,000 Japanese in the next five years and 50,000 more burned, wounded, maimed and crippled for life physically and mentally. The cities were flattened to the ground and all that was left were a few standing steel frames and broken concrete structures. The world had not seen such destruction and devastation so horrible and terrible to imagine or describe.
U.S. and Soviet Union Divide Korea. After the war in 1945, the victorious allies principally led by U.S. and Soviet Union divided Korea along the 38th parallel into spheres of influence and control, the North under Soviet hegemony and control, and the South allied to U.S. and the west. The North became communistic and adopted a one party rule government, while the South became democratic and embraced free market economy and capitalist practices of the west. (The Soviet Union declared war only hours after the first atomic bomb was dropped on 8-August-1945. As planned, she invaded her neighbor to the east, China, to fight the Japanese Imperial army that had occupied Manchuria since 1933. To secure her flanks on the east, the Soviet Union signed with Japan a Pact of Neutrality on April 1941. France had fallen and the German armies were poised to attack, and did invade Russia in June. The entry of Soviet Union in the war sealed Japan’s fate. She was left with no powerful broker for a negotiated peace with the Allies.)
A Weakened Japan. Under a Constitution crafted during a post-WWII government overseen by General Douglas McArthur, WWII Supreme Commander of the Allied Pacific and de facto ruler of Japan (1952-1955), Japan renounced war as a means of settling international disputes. Since then, Japan’s armed forces have been organized and equipped solely for self-defense, maritime missions, and prohibited from acquiring and building offensive equipment and weapons such as bombers, aircraft carrier, battleships, battleships, and attack missiles. The situation made Japan vulnerable to threats and actual attacks by North Korea, and thus became more dependent on the U.S., her former enemy, for the defense of her territory and survival of her people. These threats became real and frightening after North Korea hurled missiles over Japan’s northern islands in August 2017, and warned to pulverize them.
Today, Japan has regained her imperial glory not by arms but through trade and export of her products. Toyotas, Sonys, Hitachis, teriyaki and sushi, and other popular products have conquered far more territories and gained wide acceptance by nations than her vaunted dream of an Asian Pacific empire. South Korea and Japan are now allies against a common enemy — North Korea. They are uneasy bedfellows as the Korean people from both South and North have not forgotten the bitter and cruel experience under Japan’s harsh and brutal colonial rule. Ironically, U.S. and Japan, enemies in WWII, became allies 5 years later in the Korean war, and are strong allies until today.
Let us now review the global situation and significant events prior to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.
Post-WWII World Situation and the Cold War. At the end of WWII in Europe with the surrender of Germany on 7-May-1945, the U.S. and Soviet Union began to have their very serious and major differences. Germany was divided into East Germany under Soviet domain and control, and West Germany under U.S. and the Allies. The Soviets erected a wall in Berlin into zones of jurisdiction for the two Powers, which prevented Germans in the east from fleeing to the west. Countries in central and eastern Europe fell under Soviet Union domination and became communist. The Soviet Union’s challenge to U.S. domination, influence, and supremacy in world affairs climaxed to a near nuclear exchange during the Cuban missile crisis of 1963.
(By 1991, Soviet Union had dismembered; its satellite countries separated and became republics; central and eastern European countries freed from Soviet hegemony shook off communism and adopted west European type of economy and government; the Berlin wall was toppled and Germany was once again reunited. What remains of the vast Soviet Union that stretched from the Urals to Asia in the Pacific, was Russia of the Tsars, and turned its back on Leninism-Marxism, embraced free market economy, capitalism and multi-party democracy.)
China Turned Communist, Southeast Asia Imperilled. In another part of the globe, China in the Far East, communism had taken hold. China, a U.S. ally in WWII against Japan, was torn by a civil war that started in the 1930s between the Nationalist government of General Chiang Kai Sek and the communist armies led by revolutionary leader, Mao Tse Tung. (They had a temporary truce during the war and united to fight the Japanese who have occupied Manchuria.) By 1949, Mao had consolidated his power over China and unified its once fragmented country. The Nationalist Kuomintang government, written-off by U.S. as irretrievably lost to communism, was driven off to the tiny island of Taiwan. In Southeast Asia, communism was getting inroads and subverting the governments of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya (Malaysia), Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, and French Indo China (Vietnam). With countries in eastern Europe under Soviet Union domination and control, China turned communist and many governments of Southeast Asia under peril, U.S. President Harry Truman announced his doctrine of ‘containment of communism,’ the policy that would guide U.S. direct involvement in North Korea (1950-53) and Vietnam, from the late 60’s to the mid 70’s, and in other parts of the globe.
The Korean War (1950-53). This was the situation in central and eastern Europe. and in east and southeast Asia and the Pacific when on 25-June-1950 about 75,000 troops from North Korea invaded South Korea crossing the 38th parallel. Forthwith, the UN Security Council organized a coalition force principally led by the U.S. which contributed a large air, and naval and ground personnel totalling of 200,000 soldiers, commanded by General Douglas McArthur. (The Philippines contributed three combat battalions of 7,000 military personnel equipped and supplied by U.S. and fought side by side with the Americans. Since the defense of Bataan in WWII in 1942 against the Japanese invading army and during the Korean war, the Philippine army has had no experience in conventional war where both sides engage in wide open battlefield in mass formations involving ground, air and naval arms, employing tactical maneuver and firepower to destroy each other’s capacity and will to fight.)
U.S. Signs Defense Pacts with Philippines and Japan. Fearing a raging conflict between the two Koreas might spill overseas and involve the Philippines and Japan over the presence of American military forces on their territories, their governments saw the an urgent need for protection from U.S. On 30-August-1951, a year after the Korean War broke out, the governments of U.S. and Philippines signed a Mutual Defense Treaty, with the principal provision stating, “Each Party recognizes that an armed attack on either Parties in the Pacific area would be dangerous to its own peace and security and would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes.”
Obviously, the Philippines needed protection since Clark Air Base in Pampanga and Subic Naval Base in Zambales were used extensively for the training, assembly, logistic and maintenance support of U.S., and military operations in Korea. Also, the Philippines was battling a countryside communist inspired rebellion in Central Luzon. A month later on 8-September-1951 U.S. and Japan signed a Mutual Security Treaty which allowed U.S. to station American soldiers on Japanese territory for the defense of Japan and for military operations in the Far East. How valid today what British Prime Minister Lord Henry Palmerston said in 1842 before the Parliament, “There are no eternal friends, nor perpetual enemies. There are only eternal and perpetual interests.”
The alignment and realignment of powerful states before, during WWI and WWII and thereafter confirmed that statement. In WWI (1914-1918), Japan sided with the Allies [U.S., Great Britain, France, Italy and Soviet Union] against the Central Powers [Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire of Turkey]. In WWII from 1939 to 1945 Italy and Japan sided with Germany against the Allies [U.S., Great Britain, France, Soviet Union, Turkey and China]. Five years after the end of WWII in the Korean War (1950-1953), the Soviet Union and China, both allies of U.S. in WWII, sided with North Korea against the major participants — U.S. and South Korea. (A further affirmation of Lord Palmerston’s statement is familiar: The Filipinos and Americans fought the Japanese in WWII. Today their respective countries are close friends and allies. Japan is the biggest benefactor of the Philippines in terms of economic aid and investment. U.S. is the strongest protector of Japan which received much more military assistance from her former enemy than an ally and ex-colony. That is ‘real politik.’)
By September 1951, U.N. forces made a surprise amphibious landing at Inchon Bay, west of Seoul, trapping the bulk of North Korean army south of the 38th parallel. Advancing rapidly towards the north, U.N. forces were about to reach Yalu River, the border of China and North Korea, when some 130,000 Chinese troops crossed the river to aid the beleaguered North Koreans. It was China’s support for a communist brother and reciprocity for North Korea sending 60,000 soldiers to fight Mao’s civil war against the U.S. backed Kuomintang army. The UN made a hastily organized retreat by sea and land as the well-equipped and numerically superior Chinese troops advanced rapidly and reclaimed lost territories of North Korea.
It was during this critical period that McArthur recommended the bombing of Chinese troops north of the Yalu River. He felt he could not win the war if his arms were tied and the enemy given sanctuary. But President Harry Truman and his Joint Chiefs of Staff felt that American people had just come out of WWII weary and exhausted, and would not want young American men sacrificed for a country remotely connected to their homeland. Extending the war farther into the vast China territory would widen the conflict into a land warfare that would involve a large number of American troops.
(The Soviet Union at the closing weeks of WWII deployed 1.7 million soldiers, 10,000 tanks, vehicles and 25,000 artillery pieces to fight 700,000 Japanese soldiers who had occupied Manchuria, a territory less than 1/5 of China.) Truman relieved MacArthur, an adherent of Clausewitz’ total war doctrine that posits the employment of weapons of war against the entire resources and support structure of the enemy. He was not ready for the concept of limited war, which meant a limited geographical scope, size, and magnitude of forces employed but with broad achievable political goals and U.S. strategic interests upheld. This was exemplified decades later in U.S. involvements in conflicts in Iraq, Kuwait, Syrian, Afghanistan, and countries in Latin America and Africa.
Korean War Ends in an Armistice. With U.N. and South Korean forces pushed back below the 38th parallel by the combined Chinese and North Korean troops, and American casualties rising to 40,00 dead and 100,00 wounded, American people wanted an end to U.S. involvement. Finally representatives of the U.N. coalition forces led by U.S., the North Korea Peoples Army and Chinese Volunteer Army signed an Armistice on 27-July-1953, agreed to a ceasefire, and a creation of Demilitarized Zone 2.5 miles wide along the 38th parallel. South Korea did not sign the armistice. Despite urgings from the UN, no peace settlement exists between the two Koreas. As an inconclusive war with neither victor nor loser, neither side could claim a gain in territory. Until today, no peace agreement has been signed. Technically, South Korea and North Korea are still at war. (In contrast, after North Vietnamese guerillas defeated French colonial forces in the famous Battle of Diem Diem Poe in 1954, France signed the Geneva Accord and gave up her colony. After North Vietnam forces captured Saigon in mid-1975, she annexed South Vietnam thus ending the war, and U.S. involvement in Vietnam. South Korea sent 320,000 combatants to support U.S. in Vietnam. The Philippines sent 2,000 civic action personnel, gave asylum and homes to 10,000 Vietnamese refugees, an act that endeared the Filipinos to the Vietnamese people.)
Violations of the Armistice Agreement and Arms Build-Up. Both parties in the agreement claimed the other side violated a key provision of the Armistice Agreement para. 13(b) which mandates that each side is bound not to introduce new weapons in each respective territory except on a piece-to-piece basis as replacement of existing ones.
In 1957, the U.S. claimed North Korea put in new weapons and equipment in violation of para. 13. The U.S. said it was no longer bound by this provision and installed Honest John atomic canons in South Korea. A year later, U.S. sent in nuclear tipped Matador surface-to-surface missiles that could reach China and Russia. In response, North Korea positioned her conventional forces proximate to the Demarcation Line about 18 miles from Seoul so that in the event of an attack, civilians from the South would also be hit. She dug tunnels as entry passages of her army to the South, which the U.S. says violates the Armistice Agreement. Seeking protection from possible attack, North Korea signed in 1961 with China the Sino-North Korea Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, obligating each other to come to assist and defend in the event of an unprovoked aggression. North Korea also sought assistance from Soviet Russia and China for nuclear capability and was refused, but later was granted for peaceful use. By 1980, North Korea got assistance from other countries and started developing nuclear weapons capability. In 1999, U.S. installed Patriot missiles in South Korea, which were capable of intercepting enemy missiles. In 2006, North Korea declared it exploded its first nuclear weapon and tested six in total. In 2010, she became a full-fledged atomic power. In 2016, she exploded a hydrogen bomb. In 2017, she launched its first ICBM capable of carrying a nuclear weapon able to reach continental U.S. In response, U.S. flew B-52 bombers and Stealth fighter jets over North Korea, and held ground and naval exercises with South Korea. U.S. announced setting up in South Korea the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) systems designed to shoot down missiles within short, medium, and intermediate ranges. The arms build-up on both sides escalated into nuclear threats. Last August, North Korea hurled missiles over the northern islands of Japan and landed on the sea. In September, she threatened to send missiles over Guam, to which the U.S. warned it would strike back and destroy North Korea’s regime.
Rivalry of Big Powers. The division of Korea into North and South in 1945 was the undoing of two remaining Big Powers after WWII — U.S. and the Soviet Union (Russian Federation). A new Figure has entered the equation — China, an awakened Dragon, a rising and dominating Power, that can challenge U.S. presence in the Pacific. The U.S. needs China, the second largest economy of the world, to rein in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. China sanctioned her communist neighbor by curtailing imports of coal and other mineral ores and exports of fuel. She banned domestic banks from financing materials and equipment for nuclear weapons development.
If sanctions fail there is the danger of a Thucydides trap, as one Harvard professor calls it, named after a Greek historian who wrote in the History of the Peloponnesian War 450 B.C. that a rising power (Athens) went into conflict with an already dominant power (Sparta) as the two had opposing interests that made the conflict inevitable. Sparta was hurt tremendously, paving the rise of a new power 30 years later. The reference to ancient history may not apply. But two events, one at the turn of the 20th century and the other in a not too distant past happened that triggered the U.S. entry into war. The first was the 1898 internal explosion of the USS Maine moored in Havana Harbor that led U.S. to intervene in the Cuban people’s independence struggle against Spain; and months later involved itself in the Philippine revolution against Spain. The second was the 1964 firing on two U.S. destroyers at Tonkin bay by North Vietnamese gunboats; and led U.S. to escalate involvement in a decade-long war that ended with her departure in 1975.
Other pitfalls, that of the mind, may happen: Misreading each other’s intentions, underestimation of one’s capabilities, and inadequate risk assessment or miscalculations.
Hopefully, these missteps would not happen after President Trump’s meeting with President Xi in Beijing last November 10 on his way to Manila for the ASEAN Summit, and thereafter.
Only the two Big Powers in Asia-Pacific can lead the world in easing anxiety and fear and in de-escalating tension arising from exchanges of threats — one from a nuclear Power and another that has just become nuclear.
Books by the author:
Advocacy Even in Retirement, 2012 (Designated reference by the National Defense College of the Philippines, Public Safety College, and the Offices of Senators Gregorio Honasan and Antonio Trillanes III).
Two Stories of the Philippine February 1986 Revolution, 1986 (Filmed into a 2-hour tele-movie and shown on Channel 13).
Advocacy Through the Years (Essays and Letters, 2003-2017).