Tag: Jimmy Carter

I don’t think anyone will be surprised to find out that former President Jimmy Carter tried to hold a peace conference with the North Koreans back in 1979:

The rift between the presidents of the allies at that time — Park Chung-hee and Jimmy Carter — about the size of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) was highlighted in a transcript of their talks in Seoul on June 30, 1979.

“I can’t promise that we will freeze forces levels,” Carter told Park, according to a White House document on their hourlong conversation.

Over at the Diplomat there is an interesting article published about former US President Jimmy Carter’s failed attempt to remove US ground troops from South Korea during his term in office:

With U.S. President Donald Trump once more touting his desire to withdraw the 28,500 U.S. troops currently stationed in South Korea, it is perhaps worthwhile briefly examining the last time an American president attempted to remove U.S. forces from the Korean Peninsula. U.S. President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s was ultimately stopped by congressional obstruction, the Pentagon, and the intelligence community, among others, from implementing a troop withdrawal policy he had repeatedly promised during his presidential campaign in 1976. Put otherwise, and to use 21st century Trumpian parlance: the so-called “deep state” stopped Carter from executing his plans.

During the 1976 presidential campaign — the same year two American soldiers were axed to death by North Korean soldiers in the demilitarized zone — Carter repeatedly voiced his desire to pull out the 40,000 American soldiers (out of which only 15,000 were combat troops) from South Korea, where they served as a de factotripwire to deter a North Korean invasion. For example, at a Foreign Policy Association luncheon that year Carter declared: “I believe that it will be possible to withdraw our ground forces from South Korea on a phased basis over a time span to be determined after consultation with both South Korea and Japan.”  [The Diplomat via a reader tip]

You can read much more at the link, but basically the intelligence community changed its assessment to state that North Korea had a military advantage over South Korea and removing US ground troops would only increase their advantage.  This gave opponents of Carter’s troop removal plan the backing they needed to oppose and eventually stop it.  President Carter has always been skeptical of the assessment and how the bureaucracy circled the wagons to stop his troop withdrawal strategy.

Carter wanted to pull out the ground troops to put pressure on South Korean President Park Chung-hee to implement democratic reforms.  Carter may have failed in his quest to remove US ground troops, but he did indirectly succeed in getting Park Chung-hee removed from office.  In October 1979, Park was assassinated by the Korean CIA chief Kim Jae-gyu as part of a coup attempt against him.  After the coup attempt failed, Kim said one of the reasons for the coup was to restore the US-ROK relationship that had been so badly damaged by Park’s rule.

So are there any lessons President Trump could learn from Carter’s failed bid to remove US ground troops from Korea if he decides to do that?  I don’t think so because of how different the circumstances are.  It is clear today that South Korea has a conventional military advantage over North Korea thus muting concerns that US military leadership may have.  When former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld moved entire combat brigade from South Korea in 2004 to send to Iraq there was little pushback because of the ROK military advantage.

If President Trump does decide to remove US troops from Korea as part of a larger deal over North Korea’s nuclear weapons, I suspect there would be little pushback compared to what Carter experienced.

At 93 years old it would be pretty amazing if former President Carter ends up making a trip to Pyongyang to negotiate an end to the latest nuclear crisis:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said he is willing to go on a diplomatic mission to North Korea on behalf of President Donald Trump, saying that China’s influence on the Pyongyang regime is “greatly overestimated.”

“I would go, yes,” Carter, 93, told a New York Times columnist at his home in Plains, Georgia, about whether he would go to Pyongyang for the Republican Trump administration.

According to an article published Saturday, Carter said that he has spoken with H. R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, whom he called a good friend, and said, “I told him that I was available if they ever need me.”

But so far, he has gotten a negative response.

“I’m afraid, too, of a situation,” Carter said, remarking on the concern in Washington over the bellicose exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “I don’t know what they’ll do. Because they want to save their regime,” referring to the North.

He voiced concern that the young leader Kim may try pre-emptive action if he thinks Trump would act against him, and added, “I think he’s now got advanced nuclear weaponry that can destroy the Korean Peninsula and Japan,” as well as outlying territories in the Pacific and maybe even parts of the U.S. mainland.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest of the link.

Prior Posting: Carter’s Deal

______________________________________________________

With Carter going live on CNN to announce this deal the White House felt they had to circle the wagons with Carter in order to appear to the American public that they were still in control of the situation. You have to remember that at the time the Clinton administration was looked at as foreign policy novices after the fiasco a year prior in Somalia. The administration would have looked really incompetent if they were seen as contradicting against what their perceived negotiator Carter was putting out to the American public on CNN.

Just like that Clinton’s policy making team went from drawing up war plans to defend Korea, to deciding how to implement the White House’s version of a nuclear freeze in order to make it look like that the White House was in fact calling the shots, not Carter or the North Koreans. On June 17th in Pyongyang, Carter received the administration’s version of a nuclear freeze which was slightly different from what he had agreed to with Kim Il-sung on a day prior. Carter objected to the new conditions because he felt it was unlikely that the North Koreans would agree to them. However, the North Koreans quickly agreed to the White House’s version of a freeze thus saving the White House some face and still giving the North Koreans what they wanted.

The fact that Carter was so concerned about the North Koreans not accepting the White House’s version of a freeze just goes to show how little Carter understood of North Korean negotiation tactics. The North Koreans have long been masters at appearing to be overly emotional and for lack of a better term creating an impression of being crazy and unpredictable. However, the North Koreans are in fact quite rational with set goals and objectives they want to achieve and only created the persona of unpredictability in order to convince peaceniks like Carter that they were serious about going to war at a moments notice if they didn’t get what they wanted.

In fact I find it unlikely that the North Koreans would have immediately went to war even if the White House was successful in implementing sanctions. The North Koreans knew all to well that war meant the end of their regime and their way of life because they knew they had no chance of winning a prolonged war with the US and South Korea. For people like North Korea’s ruling elite the only thing they worry about is keeping the money coming in to finance their lifestyles and war was not the way to do this, but the North Koreans had to convince Carter otherwise which they were successful in doing.

When Carter returned to Seoul, South Korean President Kim Young-sam was not very agreeable with Carter’s deal because once again he felt that the future of South Korea was being decided by foreign powers without the consultation of South Korea, which those that know a lot about Korean history can tell you is a point that runs deep in Korean society. One point that President Kim was excited about however, was that Kim Il Sung had told Carter during his trip that he would be willing to hold a summit with Kim Young-sam in the future. This never did come to fruition due to Kim Il Sung’s death months later.

When Carter was making plans to return to the US he wanted to head straight to the White House to consult the administration. However, the White House was still privately furious at Carter and did not want him to go to Washington. Later the administration relented and Carter flew to Washington and met the White House officials but President Clinton decided to go to Camp David and only spoke with Carter by telephone. I think it is safe to say that President Clinton was still pretty pissed off at Carter for undermining his White House policies.

I think Clinton knew Carter had set a dangerous precedent in regards to dealing with countries with weapons of mass destruction by appeasing the North Koreans and in effect causing the world’s most powerful nation, the United States, to bow down and give into the demands of one of the world’s poorest and most destitute nations all in the name of freezing a nuclear program. What signal would this send to the rest of the world’s dictators? If you want respect from the US, build WMD. It is that simple.

Carter could care less though because he felt he had finally made his long lost legacy by bringing peace to the Korean peninsula, however as history has shown which I’m sure President Clinton knew would, the 1994 Agreed Frame Work collapsed in 2002 when North Korea was discovered to be continuing on with a covert nuclear program despite the agreement to build the light water reactors.

The North Korean nuclear crisis continues to this day but has recently been overshadowed by the more clear and present danger Iran which is unsurprisingly playing the same cards that North Korea played so well in 1994 that they only want nuclear energy not weapons. Much like Clinton in 1994 President Bush is preparing to refer Iran to the UN for sanctions which Iran is implying would mean war as well.

Wouldn’t it be something if Carter popped up in Tehran trying to broker another similar peace deal with the mullahs especially when it was the Iranians who ended his presidency in disgrace by sacking the US Embassy and kidnapping it’s diplomats. However, with Carter there isn’t a dictator he doesn’t like as long as it serves his own personal ego to attain the legacy he will probably never receive.

I wonder if the Iranian’s have a hotel room already booked for him?

Prior Posting: Carter Enters the Nuclear Crisis

______________________________________________________

On June 15, 1994, former President Carter and his wife Rosalyn crossed the DMZ at Panmunjom and were escorted to Pyongyang to meet Kim Il Sung in Carter’s effort to stop the march to war on the Korean peninsula. It is important to keep in mind that Carter’s trip was that of a private citizen and not endorsed by the US government.

However, this mattered little to Kim Il Sung who saw Carter as a negotiator for the US government since he was at the time the highest ranking US official to ever visit North Korea. Kim Il Sung explained to Carter that North Korea only wanted to make energy not nuclear weapons. This explanation however, doesn’t explain why they were removing uranium for enrichment, but he insisted North Korea only wanted energy and was willing to give up his current nuclear program in exchange for the international community building him light water nuclear reactors that put out more energy and do not leave by products that can be used in nuclear weapons. Kim was also concerned about the placement of US nuclear weapons in South Korea.

Carter assured Kim that there was no US nuclear weapons on the peninsula or surrounding waters and that he would return to Washington and support Kim’s idea of constructing light water nuclear reactors. In exchange Kim agreed to freezing North Korea’s current nuclear activities and allow IAEA nuclear inspectors to return. Carter also agreed to prevent any attempts at implementing UN economic sanctions on the North Koreans. The North Koreans made it quite clear that sanctions meant war and Carter believed they were serious.

While the negotiations with Carter were going on, the White House was preparing their own policy concerning North Korea. This policy meeting included Secretary of State Christopher, Secretary of Defense Perry, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Shalikashvili, CIA Director Woolsey, and UN Ambassador Albright. President Clinton had already given the group the go ahead for UN sanctions on North Korea which in turn caused the group to begin exploring defense options for Korea since the sanctions may lead to war.

Two options were being explored. One was to dispatch a large force to defend South Korea with, but that would have meant that the military would have had to call up reserve units which would have tipped their hand to the North Koreans and alarmed the US public. The second option which they were working on was to create a quiet build up of a smaller force composed of one additional carrier group, warships, planes, and 10,000 additional soldiers.

Before they could complete the details for the build up, the phone rang and Carter was on the other end. He announced to the group that he had convinced the North Koreans to freeze their nuclear program in exchange for continued talks between the US and North Korea over the construction of light water nuclear reactors. Carter also mentioned that he was soon going live with a CNN team that had been allowed into North Korea with the news.

The White House was well aware of North Korea’s desire for light water nuclear reactors in exchange for ending his nuclear program, but the White House did not want to give in to nuclear blackmail and set a dangerous precedent for the future. The White House was furious over Carter’s actions in securing this deal with Kim with one member of the meeting reportedly saying that Carter’s actions were “near traitorous”.

Kim Il Sung had played a brilliant hand. He knew the White House was not going to give him what he wanted so he looked for someone that would and that person was Carter. He easily convinced Carter to agree with the deal and Kim had the country’s lone international media outlet, a CNN crew conveniently waiting for him to announce the news after the meeting giving the White House little time to react to the news.

Next Posting: The White House’s Reaction

Prior Posting: Jimmy Carter’s Interference in US Presidential Policy

______________________________________________________________

In addition to developing nuclear weapons the North Koreans were in the process of a slow but steady build up of forces on the Demilitarized Zone over the past decade. In 1994 the North Koreans had 65% of their military positioned on the DMZ compared to just 45% a decade earlier. The build up included massive amounts of artillery to include 2,400 multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) and 8,400 artillery pieces. These weapons could pound the South Korean metropolis of Seoul with 5,000 rounds of artillery every 12 hours. This is why the North Korean referred to turning Seoul into a “Sea of Fire” during this nuclear crisis.

They had been building up to the moment for years and the time had come to push the international envelope. With the end of the Soviet Union and communism in China, North Korea was not getting the free aid and good trade deals that they were used to getting from the former communist block countries. With little economic might to fall back on, playing the nuclear card seemed like a good way to get international aid and North Korea was ready to play it.

Washington began a diplomatic approach to solve the crisis but was simultaneously preparing the military option. Apache attack helicopters and PATRIOT missiles were moved into Korea for the first time along with additional Abrams and Bradley tanks. Even with these reinforcements, 52,000 US casualties and 490,000 ROK Army casualties were expected in just the first 90 days if war broke out. The economic damage would total more than one trillion US dollars. The stakes were very high and any mis-step could lead to war.

Next Posting: Carter Enters the Nuclear Crisis