Critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and even many sympathizers, have complained since the beginning that the protesters are only shouting about what they are against, rather than making any coherent, positive proposals. Unfortunately, they have a point.
In response, I propose a plan for the democratic regulation of capital, consisting of the following policies:
Raise the capital gains tax. – This will not only provide more revenues for social spending, it will redirect capital from destabilizing short-term speculation and into productivity-enhancing, long-term fixed capital investment. Also, investors should be audited more frequently and rigorously.
Raise upper-income taxes. – The millionaires benefit more from the services government provides, so they should pay more.
Better regulation. – Expand government regulation of speculative finance, and enforce existing laws more strictly. Direct the regulation through the Justice Department, which is directly accountable to the President and Congress, rather than through independent and quasi-independent commissions like the SEC and the FTC.
More stimulus spending. – President Obama's original stimulus plan, which has since been pared down under Republican broadsides, was woefully inadequate. We need to put more of our people to work, preferably on socially constructive projects like building schools and clinics, rather than on military spending and business-friendly public works projects.
Bail out the little people. – We need a nationalization policy, like Japan and Sweden. Create a formal procedure whereby broke, too-big-to-fail banks and businesses will be placed completely under government control as a condition of aid. The government will replace corrupt and incompetent executives and determine whether the bankrupt company should be rescued or gradually dissolved. Another condition of assistance will be to prioritize the welfare of employees, homeowners, and small investors. Profits will be automatically reinvested, and executive bonuses and severance packages strictly forbidden.
Capital controls. – Currency speculation should be heavily taxed and regulated. The government should regulate the value of the dollar through diplomatic negotiations with other major economic powers.
These demands could be slapped together under a pithy slogan that might fit on a placard. I suggest something like “Capital for the people!”
Of course, there would have been political limitations on all these measures even in much more progressive eras. The rightward tilt in political sentiment – which may have recently bottomed out, but has not completely dissipated – as well as the inevitable lobbying power of big business, unfortunately make full enactment of this program impossible. Such is the Laodicean temper of our times.
Nonetheless, as Teddy Roosevelt said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
Friday, December 9, 2011
Book Review: Rise of the Vulcans
James Mann’s Rise of the Vulcans, a journalistic history of the careers of the major players in George W. Bush’s wartime cabinet, is an indispensable resource for anyone concerned with understanding recent US foreign policy. Most of the big names are covered, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powel, Richard Armitage, Condoleeza Rice, and others.
Mann’s account is terse, evenhanded, and nuanced. It portrays its subjects with unerring insight and balance. Donald Rumsfeld is shown as having evolved from a Vietnam dove into a fairly consistent hawk; Richard Armitage is described as a relatively nonideological moderate; Colin Powell, while moderate on social issues, is seen to have been quite conservative and aggressive on foreign policy issues.
Along the way, Mann reveals a variety of personal and ideological alliances and schisms within the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration. There was, as has often been the case in conservative administrations, a gap between realists and neoconservatives.
Just as pertinent, however, are the personal characteristics and relationships of the Bush advisers. For example, the alliance between major Republican insider Rumsfeld and long-time lieutenant Cheney is shown to have been a decisive factor in drawing together, over the course of several administrations since that of Richard Nixon, the bellicose elements that would to a great extent define the Bush Presidency.
Rumsfeld is portrayed as a combative personality not afraid, even as a relatively young man, to butt heads with eminences such as Kissenger, while Cheney is depicted as a discreet and effective bureaucratic manipulator. Arrayed, one could say, against the Cheney / Rumsfeld axis was that of Powell / Armitage, both career soldiers with very narrow conceptions of the proper use and deployment of American military power.
Powell was clipped and professional in most of his dealings, politely voicing disagreements with his colleagues while ultimately remaining loyal to whichever president he served under. Armitage was something of a romantic, willing to take risks for his cause. Condoleeza Rice was a cool and professional presence, positioning herself carefully between warring factions.
Thus, some of the major divisions within the Bush Administration are interpreted as personal differences and bureaucratic power struggles as much as differences of opinion. Mann’s depiction of the intersection of the personal and the political, of the influence of daily human interaction on bureaucratic wrangling and policy formation, is perhaps one of his most important contributions. His account shows just how deeply political viewpoints are bound up with character and perception, and how personality conflicts can shape weighty affairs of state.
There are only two minor criticisms that might be lodged against Mann’s history. One is that, while the cabinet members are treated with great detail, the man they serve is all but absent. We get at most a few glimpses of George W. Bush, and what we do see lacks some of the work's characteristic nuance.
Most of this limited portrayal seems to lend credence to popular stereotypes of Bush as an intellectual lightweight and spoiled socialite ruled by powerful personalities, particularly eminence grise Richard Cheney. Perhaps such a portrayal is perfectly accurate, but we simply do not see enough of the President to be able to tell.
Moreover, the reader is missing information about someone who must, even if the worst rumors about the President are true, play some sort of crucial role in the political and personal differences within his Cabinet. Is it appropriate to discuss Cabinet members without discussing the President they serve?
The second issue is somewhat larger in import. From time to time a curious tension seems to arise among Bush's Vulcans, or even within individual personalities, between, on the one hand, an evangelical endorsement of democracy that employs naked force as its means, and on the other, a willingness to support dictatorships whenever expedient. One might also meaningfully speak of a tension between the desire to spread democracy and the nakedly geopolitical goal of permanently maintaining American military hegemony, two ends that may not be compatible.
The tension between these policies is often addressed, but never satisfactorily explained. It seems a crucial point for understanding the motivations behind the Bush Administration’s foreign policy.
The original justification for the war in Iraq was, of course, to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. When it became evident that Hussein lacked any such weapons, the chief rationale was changed to the desirability of creating a democracy in Iraq.
Which of these goals is more important to neoconservatives? Were they always both equally important? Was there a genuine shift in rationale within the Administration, or merely an expedient one?
One final issue might be raised. Though the rise and influence of neo-conservatism is a constant theme throughout this book, we never really get a full grasp of the intellectual debate between neoconservatism and other conservative philosophies.
We get some idea of the experiences that lead its advocates down the neoconservative path, but not on the nature or evolution of the ideas themselves or the debates they spawned. This, however, is likely a task better suited to intellectual history.
Mann’s account is terse, evenhanded, and nuanced. It portrays its subjects with unerring insight and balance. Donald Rumsfeld is shown as having evolved from a Vietnam dove into a fairly consistent hawk; Richard Armitage is described as a relatively nonideological moderate; Colin Powell, while moderate on social issues, is seen to have been quite conservative and aggressive on foreign policy issues.
Along the way, Mann reveals a variety of personal and ideological alliances and schisms within the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration. There was, as has often been the case in conservative administrations, a gap between realists and neoconservatives.
Just as pertinent, however, are the personal characteristics and relationships of the Bush advisers. For example, the alliance between major Republican insider Rumsfeld and long-time lieutenant Cheney is shown to have been a decisive factor in drawing together, over the course of several administrations since that of Richard Nixon, the bellicose elements that would to a great extent define the Bush Presidency.
Rumsfeld is portrayed as a combative personality not afraid, even as a relatively young man, to butt heads with eminences such as Kissenger, while Cheney is depicted as a discreet and effective bureaucratic manipulator. Arrayed, one could say, against the Cheney / Rumsfeld axis was that of Powell / Armitage, both career soldiers with very narrow conceptions of the proper use and deployment of American military power.
Powell was clipped and professional in most of his dealings, politely voicing disagreements with his colleagues while ultimately remaining loyal to whichever president he served under. Armitage was something of a romantic, willing to take risks for his cause. Condoleeza Rice was a cool and professional presence, positioning herself carefully between warring factions.
Thus, some of the major divisions within the Bush Administration are interpreted as personal differences and bureaucratic power struggles as much as differences of opinion. Mann’s depiction of the intersection of the personal and the political, of the influence of daily human interaction on bureaucratic wrangling and policy formation, is perhaps one of his most important contributions. His account shows just how deeply political viewpoints are bound up with character and perception, and how personality conflicts can shape weighty affairs of state.
There are only two minor criticisms that might be lodged against Mann’s history. One is that, while the cabinet members are treated with great detail, the man they serve is all but absent. We get at most a few glimpses of George W. Bush, and what we do see lacks some of the work's characteristic nuance.
Most of this limited portrayal seems to lend credence to popular stereotypes of Bush as an intellectual lightweight and spoiled socialite ruled by powerful personalities, particularly eminence grise Richard Cheney. Perhaps such a portrayal is perfectly accurate, but we simply do not see enough of the President to be able to tell.
Moreover, the reader is missing information about someone who must, even if the worst rumors about the President are true, play some sort of crucial role in the political and personal differences within his Cabinet. Is it appropriate to discuss Cabinet members without discussing the President they serve?
The second issue is somewhat larger in import. From time to time a curious tension seems to arise among Bush's Vulcans, or even within individual personalities, between, on the one hand, an evangelical endorsement of democracy that employs naked force as its means, and on the other, a willingness to support dictatorships whenever expedient. One might also meaningfully speak of a tension between the desire to spread democracy and the nakedly geopolitical goal of permanently maintaining American military hegemony, two ends that may not be compatible.
The tension between these policies is often addressed, but never satisfactorily explained. It seems a crucial point for understanding the motivations behind the Bush Administration’s foreign policy.
The original justification for the war in Iraq was, of course, to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. When it became evident that Hussein lacked any such weapons, the chief rationale was changed to the desirability of creating a democracy in Iraq.
Which of these goals is more important to neoconservatives? Were they always both equally important? Was there a genuine shift in rationale within the Administration, or merely an expedient one?
One final issue might be raised. Though the rise and influence of neo-conservatism is a constant theme throughout this book, we never really get a full grasp of the intellectual debate between neoconservatism and other conservative philosophies.
We get some idea of the experiences that lead its advocates down the neoconservative path, but not on the nature or evolution of the ideas themselves or the debates they spawned. This, however, is likely a task better suited to intellectual history.
Gay Life In Seoul
Originally Published in the Korea Times, October 23, 2009.
On Fridays and Saturdays after the sun goes down, gay residents begin to trickle into Itaewon from all over Seoul and parts beyond. They are Korean and foreign, businessmen and university students, English teachers and soldiers, mostly but not exclusively young men.
They come to socialize, open about their sexuality in the only place that allows it in a still highly conservative, Confucian society. Social space has classified them as outsiders, along with foreigners of whatever sexuality and the sometimes disreputable businesses that cater to them.
It has cordoned them into grimy alleys that worm behind the flickering neon and the newly refurbished facades of Itaewon's main drag, into clubs that seem to have been carved out of worn brick and cinderblock structures eerily redolent of 20th-century Seoul's poverty and war.
``Some people protect gay people and love them,'' said a 23-year-old bartender who asked to be identified by his English name, Nathaniel. Nathaniel, with artfully coiffed hair and posh attire, works at Queen, one of the most prominent and enduring of Itaewon's gay bars.
Queen is large, bright, well-maintained and tastefully decorated. Its core clientele is comprised of gay men and their straight female friends, though others are welcome as well. ``Especially straight girls... Some straight women in Korea like gay men, but no straight men. It is sad,'' he said.
Despite the hopes expressed by many young Korean gay people, there has been little direct change in public discourse on the issue of sexual minorities, only gathering momentum on the fringes of society.
Membership in gay student unions, for example, has steadily increased since the early 1990s, and the legal system has become steadily more supportive of sexual minorities, as with the Korean Supreme Court's 2006 decision allowing post-operative transgendered people to legally change their sex.
Gays are receiving more attention from the entertainment industry, as well. For instance, movies with same-sex content, such as ``Wang Ui-namja,'' ``Brokeback Mountain,'' or recently, ``Hello My Love,'' all gathered significant controversy as they ran their course.
The off-screen attention, however, has sometimes been negative, as with the coverage of gay television actor Kim Ji-Hoo's suicide in 2008. Gays in Korea also face potential ostracism at work and in most venues of public life, outside of a few cosmopolitan industries such as fashion, the arts, and cosmetics.
In yet another sign of Korea's well-known generation gap, there has been a growing consciousness of, and less frequently, acceptance of, homosexuality among Korea's tech-savvy youth. Many young gays are impatient for the increased freedom they know exists in the West and even Japan, and express a desire to travel and even live abroad.
``Tokyo is famous. Kyoto is too,'' Nathaniel reported. ``Many Korean people live in Hokkaido.''
Japan, close to home, with a large Korean population already, is a popular destination among Korean gays.
``Why would you go to Korea and not Japan?'' was a question that puzzled You-jeong about his Western customers. The 20 year-old, whose bold demeanor is belied by his slender build and tastefully colorful attire, tends bar at SoHo, down the road from Queen.
``Korea is a very conservative society. I would like to live in Tokyo,'' he said. The cosmopolitan outlook of many younger, urban Koreans is voiced even more strongly by young gays like You-jeong. ``I like Korean men, Japanese men, Western, all kinds. I just care about the person.''
You-jeong came out with his sexuality in high school, to his family, fellow students and everyone else in his life. He reported some confusion but little serious harassment.
Older Koreans are far more reticent to come out, or even to speak on the record, with a few notable exceptions. One of the most notable, of course, is Hong Seok-chun, the actor who lost his career when he came out in 2000. He started a business in Itaewon, the now-famous restaurant Our Place.
It became successful, and Hong opened several more Asian and Western restaurants in the district. He has since reappeared on television as a gay hairdresser on a popular soap opera and is now opening a club called My Bad.
Hong is as impressed with the pace of change in Korea as younger gays are impatient with it. ``Yes, of course, it's changed a lot,'' he said. ``These days you can meet a lot of gay people in the street and they are not shy anymore.'' Still, he admits, many stay in the closet. ``As a gay in Korea, they feel ashamed, and try to hide it from their family and things like that. They feel insecure.''
It was Hong's former boyfriend, a Dutch national, who helped him overcome his own sense of shame. ``He said, `You should know that you are a beautiful person... You have a good heart.' He changed my character.''
Moreover, parents of gay children in Korea often respond with denial and anxiety. ``I think all the parents of gay kids are worried about their kids' careers. They worry about how they will survive in this conservative society.'' Hong's own parents simply refused to accept that he was gay at first, and asked him when he would marry a woman for years after he told them.
``I think the gay issue is not that big of an issue because of what happened with me,'' among other things, Hong said. ``Still, we have to keep fighting. It takes time. But I am willing to do that, I will fight.''
Gay Koreans describe their lives less as sad than confined and secretive. The string of bars and nightclubs known to habitués as 'homo hill' and its outliers are the hub of gay life in Korea. There is also a smaller circle of bars in the Gwanghwamun area, quieter and more private, open mainly to Korean regulars and their guests. Outside of Seoul, with the exception of a handful of bars in Busan and some sites on the Internet, there is nothing.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/10/117_54131.html
On Fridays and Saturdays after the sun goes down, gay residents begin to trickle into Itaewon from all over Seoul and parts beyond. They are Korean and foreign, businessmen and university students, English teachers and soldiers, mostly but not exclusively young men.
They come to socialize, open about their sexuality in the only place that allows it in a still highly conservative, Confucian society. Social space has classified them as outsiders, along with foreigners of whatever sexuality and the sometimes disreputable businesses that cater to them.
It has cordoned them into grimy alleys that worm behind the flickering neon and the newly refurbished facades of Itaewon's main drag, into clubs that seem to have been carved out of worn brick and cinderblock structures eerily redolent of 20th-century Seoul's poverty and war.
``Some people protect gay people and love them,'' said a 23-year-old bartender who asked to be identified by his English name, Nathaniel. Nathaniel, with artfully coiffed hair and posh attire, works at Queen, one of the most prominent and enduring of Itaewon's gay bars.
Queen is large, bright, well-maintained and tastefully decorated. Its core clientele is comprised of gay men and their straight female friends, though others are welcome as well. ``Especially straight girls... Some straight women in Korea like gay men, but no straight men. It is sad,'' he said.
Despite the hopes expressed by many young Korean gay people, there has been little direct change in public discourse on the issue of sexual minorities, only gathering momentum on the fringes of society.
Membership in gay student unions, for example, has steadily increased since the early 1990s, and the legal system has become steadily more supportive of sexual minorities, as with the Korean Supreme Court's 2006 decision allowing post-operative transgendered people to legally change their sex.
Gays are receiving more attention from the entertainment industry, as well. For instance, movies with same-sex content, such as ``Wang Ui-namja,'' ``Brokeback Mountain,'' or recently, ``Hello My Love,'' all gathered significant controversy as they ran their course.
The off-screen attention, however, has sometimes been negative, as with the coverage of gay television actor Kim Ji-Hoo's suicide in 2008. Gays in Korea also face potential ostracism at work and in most venues of public life, outside of a few cosmopolitan industries such as fashion, the arts, and cosmetics.
In yet another sign of Korea's well-known generation gap, there has been a growing consciousness of, and less frequently, acceptance of, homosexuality among Korea's tech-savvy youth. Many young gays are impatient for the increased freedom they know exists in the West and even Japan, and express a desire to travel and even live abroad.
``Tokyo is famous. Kyoto is too,'' Nathaniel reported. ``Many Korean people live in Hokkaido.''
Japan, close to home, with a large Korean population already, is a popular destination among Korean gays.
``Why would you go to Korea and not Japan?'' was a question that puzzled You-jeong about his Western customers. The 20 year-old, whose bold demeanor is belied by his slender build and tastefully colorful attire, tends bar at SoHo, down the road from Queen.
``Korea is a very conservative society. I would like to live in Tokyo,'' he said. The cosmopolitan outlook of many younger, urban Koreans is voiced even more strongly by young gays like You-jeong. ``I like Korean men, Japanese men, Western, all kinds. I just care about the person.''
You-jeong came out with his sexuality in high school, to his family, fellow students and everyone else in his life. He reported some confusion but little serious harassment.
Older Koreans are far more reticent to come out, or even to speak on the record, with a few notable exceptions. One of the most notable, of course, is Hong Seok-chun, the actor who lost his career when he came out in 2000. He started a business in Itaewon, the now-famous restaurant Our Place.
It became successful, and Hong opened several more Asian and Western restaurants in the district. He has since reappeared on television as a gay hairdresser on a popular soap opera and is now opening a club called My Bad.
Hong is as impressed with the pace of change in Korea as younger gays are impatient with it. ``Yes, of course, it's changed a lot,'' he said. ``These days you can meet a lot of gay people in the street and they are not shy anymore.'' Still, he admits, many stay in the closet. ``As a gay in Korea, they feel ashamed, and try to hide it from their family and things like that. They feel insecure.''
It was Hong's former boyfriend, a Dutch national, who helped him overcome his own sense of shame. ``He said, `You should know that you are a beautiful person... You have a good heart.' He changed my character.''
Moreover, parents of gay children in Korea often respond with denial and anxiety. ``I think all the parents of gay kids are worried about their kids' careers. They worry about how they will survive in this conservative society.'' Hong's own parents simply refused to accept that he was gay at first, and asked him when he would marry a woman for years after he told them.
``I think the gay issue is not that big of an issue because of what happened with me,'' among other things, Hong said. ``Still, we have to keep fighting. It takes time. But I am willing to do that, I will fight.''
Gay Koreans describe their lives less as sad than confined and secretive. The string of bars and nightclubs known to habitués as 'homo hill' and its outliers are the hub of gay life in Korea. There is also a smaller circle of bars in the Gwanghwamun area, quieter and more private, open mainly to Korean regulars and their guests. Outside of Seoul, with the exception of a handful of bars in Busan and some sites on the Internet, there is nothing.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/10/117_54131.html
The Korean Peace
Originally published Korea Times Nov. 15, 2009.
The recent rumors of a 'grand bargain' between Pyongyang and its adversaries over the North's nuclear program can only be an encouraging sign. Any step away from nuclear holocaust is a step in the right direction. However, even if such a deal wins approval from all three capitals, there is still no way to be sure that it will really stick. Most past agreements with the North have encountered a rocky, "two steps forward and one step back" implementation process. What will make this one any different?
The reason that so many agreements with the North have foundered is because there has been a state of war on the Korean peninsula since 1950. Seoul and Washington cannot provide food aid to a country with which they are technically at war. They cannot build nuclear reactors for a nation with which they are at war. In short, they cannot accomplish any substantive, enforceable agreement with North Korea because the only agreement possible among warring powers is a peace treaty. Normalization is the condition of the possibility for peace.
Talk of normalization is, of course, enormously controversial among South Koreans, particularly among the older generation, and for good reason. The price to be paid for a peace treaty is the ratification of Korea's division, an official recognition of the fact that a single people has been made two through the interference of outside powers. The closest analogy for an American, perhaps, would be to imagine California sundered from the body of his republic by China or Russia. It would be a tragedy.
Yet surely the greater tragedy would be to continue a war that no longer serves any purpose, a war that once claimed tens of thousands of Korean and American casualties, and could easily do so again. Much of the blame for the situation naturally lies with the North, the ruthless totalitarian dictatorship that insists on maintaining a clearly moribund system at the cost of thousands of its citizens' lives. However, the US has had diplomatic relations with worse regimes, and has supported worse.
If communism is obsolete, it necessarily follows that anticommunism is also obsolete. Pyongyang must realize that surrender is an option, and that this surrender need not be unconditional so long as the 1953 armistice holds, but at the same time Washington must make defeat worth its enemy's while. We have used the stick for sixty years. It hasn't worked. Let's try the carrot.
Now is the perfect time. Whereas before about 1980, the primary obstacle to normalization was opposition from the right-wing regime in Seoul, after Reagan's election Washington became the roadblock. While newly democratic South Korea reached out to the North under Kim Dae-Jung's sophisticated Sunshine Policy, batting down its provocations while offering face-saving compromises, America's rightward lurch made any dramatic moves toward peace unimaginable even during the pragmatic Clinton years. Now that the American public has returned to sanity after eight years of cowboy diplomacy, President Obama must seize this opportunity to permanently foreclose the possibility of a civilizational crisis on the Korean peninsula.
The democratic allies have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Would Seoul and Washington be giving the North exactly what it wants by extending recognition? Certainly. What we would insist on in return would be the immediate dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program, as well as its chemical and biological stockpiles, and a bilateral drawdown of conventional forces. Trade and assistance to the North could thereafter be progressively broadened as Pyongyang curtails its human rights abuses.
No thought is more delightful, to Koreans and Americans both, than that of one Korean nation from the Yalu River to Jeju Island, peacefully reunified under a democratic government. I hope to witness that day in my lifetime. For the time being, however, we must play the hand that history has dealt us. This is perhaps the crowning irony for a country whose modern history is replete with the bitterest of ironies -- Korea cannot hope to one day make itself whole without first recognizing its division.
The recent rumors of a 'grand bargain' between Pyongyang and its adversaries over the North's nuclear program can only be an encouraging sign. Any step away from nuclear holocaust is a step in the right direction. However, even if such a deal wins approval from all three capitals, there is still no way to be sure that it will really stick. Most past agreements with the North have encountered a rocky, "two steps forward and one step back" implementation process. What will make this one any different?
The reason that so many agreements with the North have foundered is because there has been a state of war on the Korean peninsula since 1950. Seoul and Washington cannot provide food aid to a country with which they are technically at war. They cannot build nuclear reactors for a nation with which they are at war. In short, they cannot accomplish any substantive, enforceable agreement with North Korea because the only agreement possible among warring powers is a peace treaty. Normalization is the condition of the possibility for peace.
Talk of normalization is, of course, enormously controversial among South Koreans, particularly among the older generation, and for good reason. The price to be paid for a peace treaty is the ratification of Korea's division, an official recognition of the fact that a single people has been made two through the interference of outside powers. The closest analogy for an American, perhaps, would be to imagine California sundered from the body of his republic by China or Russia. It would be a tragedy.
Yet surely the greater tragedy would be to continue a war that no longer serves any purpose, a war that once claimed tens of thousands of Korean and American casualties, and could easily do so again. Much of the blame for the situation naturally lies with the North, the ruthless totalitarian dictatorship that insists on maintaining a clearly moribund system at the cost of thousands of its citizens' lives. However, the US has had diplomatic relations with worse regimes, and has supported worse.
If communism is obsolete, it necessarily follows that anticommunism is also obsolete. Pyongyang must realize that surrender is an option, and that this surrender need not be unconditional so long as the 1953 armistice holds, but at the same time Washington must make defeat worth its enemy's while. We have used the stick for sixty years. It hasn't worked. Let's try the carrot.
Now is the perfect time. Whereas before about 1980, the primary obstacle to normalization was opposition from the right-wing regime in Seoul, after Reagan's election Washington became the roadblock. While newly democratic South Korea reached out to the North under Kim Dae-Jung's sophisticated Sunshine Policy, batting down its provocations while offering face-saving compromises, America's rightward lurch made any dramatic moves toward peace unimaginable even during the pragmatic Clinton years. Now that the American public has returned to sanity after eight years of cowboy diplomacy, President Obama must seize this opportunity to permanently foreclose the possibility of a civilizational crisis on the Korean peninsula.
The democratic allies have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Would Seoul and Washington be giving the North exactly what it wants by extending recognition? Certainly. What we would insist on in return would be the immediate dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program, as well as its chemical and biological stockpiles, and a bilateral drawdown of conventional forces. Trade and assistance to the North could thereafter be progressively broadened as Pyongyang curtails its human rights abuses.
No thought is more delightful, to Koreans and Americans both, than that of one Korean nation from the Yalu River to Jeju Island, peacefully reunified under a democratic government. I hope to witness that day in my lifetime. For the time being, however, we must play the hand that history has dealt us. This is perhaps the crowning irony for a country whose modern history is replete with the bitterest of ironies -- Korea cannot hope to one day make itself whole without first recognizing its division.
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