Denuclearization of Kazakhstan as Model for North Korea

In a March 25, 2012 opinion piece in the New York Times, with respect to the Iranian nuclear program, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev wrote:

With independence, we became the world’s fourth-largest nuclear power. One of our first acts as a sovereign nation was voluntarily to give up these weapons.

We must understand that it is not easy for countries to give up their nuclear arsenal or to renounce the intention of developing their own weapons. The truth is that if just one nation has nuclear weapons, others may feel it necessary to do the same to protect themselves. This is why nuclear proliferation is such a threat to the security of us all and leads to greater risk of an illegal, dangerous trade in weapons and material.

The real intent of Iran’s nuclear program is causing concern across the world. Recognizing the right of all responsible members of the international community to develop peaceful atomic energy under the safeguards promoted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Kazakhstan has used its close diplomatic relations with our neighbor across the Caspian Sea to urge Tehran to learn from our example.

I am convinced that openness and the development of peaceful relations with neighbors will increase rather than diminish Iran’s status and influence, help lower tensions in the Middle East, and make it easier to find fair, lasting solutions to the problems in that region.

With our neighbors, we implemented the idea of establishing a nuclear-weapons-free zone in Central Asia. We propose to use this experience to raise the number of such zones worldwide, including in the Middle East. We also need to demand legal guarantees from nuclear states that they will not use these weapons against those without them.

I would like to say this to all countries: Kazakhstan’s experience shows that nations can reap huge benefits from turning their backs on nuclear weapons. I have no doubt that we are a more prosperous, stable country, with more influence and friends in the world because of our decision.[1]

President Nazerbayev’s analysis with respect to Iran applies with equal effect to North Korea.  A nuclear North Korea is a “threat to the security of us all and leads to greater risk of an illegal, dangerous trade in weapons and material.” 

On April 24, 1995 Kazakhstan became nuclear weapons free.[2]  On the 20^th anniversary of Kazakhstan becoming nuclear-weapons free, Kazakh foreign minister Erian Idrissov wrote:

Kazakhstan is now recognized globally as a passionate campaigner for peace and nuclear disarmament. It is also a date which continues to be celebrated by our citizens who know all too well the terrible damage that nuclear weapons cause.

Kazakhstan is among the few countries that have suffered most from the human and environmental devastation of nuclear testing. The Semipalatinsk site, in the north of our country, for more than four decades was the scene of more than 450 nuclear explosions in the air, above and under the ground. Many were held when little was known about the long-term impact of radiation with precautions often either non-existent or rudimentary.

But over time, the terrible effects became all too clear. Many thousands of people have died from radiation diseases. Hundreds of children have been born with disabilities.

This history explains the determination of Kazakhstan and its citizens to campaign for a permanent end to nuclear testing and, in the long run, a nuclear weapon-free world. We don’t want another country or its people to suffer such a terrible fate.

We hope our country’s history and example can provide encouragement to other nations to turn their back on these terrible weapons and make our world and futures safer.

It is clear that North Korea has opted for nuclear security to ensure its survival.  But as the experience of Kazakhstan shows, nuclear weapons are not needed for security.[3] 

Denuclearization of North Korea, if ever, should follow the model of Kazakhstan with a security guarantee to North Korea like that given by the United States to the Soviet Union on Cuba in 1962 Cuban missile crisis. 

Moreover, given Kazakhstan’s proposal for nuclear-weapons-free zones in Asia[4], and Foreign Minister Idrissov’s assertion that ‘country’s history and example can provide encouragement to other nations to turn their back on these terrible weapons and make our world and futures safer”[5] the Kazakh’s would respond favorably to American requests for Assistance in this regard.

The United States ought to engage Kazakhstan to assist American goal of the denuclearization of the Korea Peninsula, and Kazakhstan would be willing to assist the United States in this effort. 

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[1] Nursulatan Nazarbayev, “What Iran Can Learn from Kazakhstan”, New York Times, March 25, 2012 (accessed on December 19, 2016)

[2] Erian Idrissov, Kazakhstan:  Nuclear Weapons Free for 20 Years”, The Diplomat, April 24, 2015;   http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/kazakhstan-nuclear-weapons-free-for-20-years/ (accessed on December 19, 2016)

[3] Ibid.

[4] Nursulatan Nazarbayev, “What Iran Can Learn from Kazakhstan”, New York Times, March 25, 2012 (accessed on December 19, 2016)

[5] Erian Idrissov, Kazakhstan:  Nuclear Weapons Free for 20 Years”, The Diplomat, April 24, 2015;   http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/kazakhstan-nuclear-weapons-free-for-20-years/ (accessed on December 19, 2016)

Problem of Historical Backwardness

From: Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, Vol. 1, pp. 2-3.

A backward country assimilates the material and intellectual conquests of the advanced countries. But this does not mean that it follows them slavishly, reproduces all the stages of their past. The theory of the repetition of historic cycles – Vico and his more recent followers – rests upon an observation of the orbits of old pre-capitalist cultures, and in part upon the first experiments of capitalist development. A certain repetition of cultural stages in ever new settlements was in fact bound up with the provincial and episodic character of that whole process. Capitalism means, however, an overcoming of those conditions. It prepares and in a certain sense realises the universality and permanence of man’s development. By this a repetition of the forms of development by different nations is ruled out. Although compelled to follow after the advanced countries, a backward country does not take things in the same order. The privilege of historic backwardness – and such a privilege exists – permits, or rather compels, the adoption of whatever is ready in advance of any specified date, skipping a whole series of intermediate stages. Savages throw away their bows and arrows for rifles all at once, without travelling the road which lay between those two weapons in the past. The European colonists in America did not begin history all over again from the beginning. The fact that Germany and the United States have now economically outstripped England was made possible by the very backwardness of their capitalist development. On the other hand, the conservative anarchy in the British coal industry – as also in the heads of MacDonald and his friends - is a paying-up for the past when England played too long the role of capitalist pathfinder.

The development of historically backward nations leads necessarily to a peculiar combination of different stages in the historic process. Their development as a whole acquires a planless, complex, combined character.

The possibility of skipping over intermediate steps is of course by no means absolute. Its degree is determined in the long run by the economic and cultural capacities of the country. The backward nation, moreover, not infrequently debases the achievements borrowed from outside in the process of adapting them to its own more primitive culture. In this the very process of assimilation acquires a self-contradictory character. Thus the introduction of certain elements of Western technique and training, above all military and industrial, under Peter I, led to a strengthening of serfdom as the fundamental form of labour organisation. European armament and European loans – both indubitable products of a higher culture - led to a strengthening of tzarism, which delayed in its turn the development of the country.

The laws of history have nothing in common with a pedantic schematism. Unevenness, the most general law of the historic process, reveals itself most sharply and complexly in the destiny of the backward countries. Under the whip of external necessity their backward culture is compelled to make leaps. From the universal law of unevenness thus derives another law which, for the lack of a better name, we may call the law of combined development – by which we mean a drawing together of the different stages of the journey, a combining of the separate steps, an amalgam of archaic with more contemporary forms. Without this law, to be taken of course, in its whole material content, it is impossible to understand the history of Russia, and indeed of any country of the second, third or tenth cultural class.

War as Continuation of Politics: For Whose Benefit?

The Soviets were great writers on military affairs.  The United States Air Force translated a number of Soviet military works under the series Soviet Military Thought. 

One interesting volume is ‘The Philosophical Heritage of V. I. Lenin and Problems of Contemporary War’ (Moscow, 1972). 
The authors expand Clausewitz’s dictum that ‘war is the continuation of politics by other means’:  Precisely because all wars are, and each given war is, a continuation of politics, they are essentially not only identical but are also profoundly disparate from one another, and frequently complete opposites.  This occurs because the political content of war is determined by the social character of the classes waging it, their political goals and a number of other concretely historical conditions. (p. 25).

[COMMENT]  This is important because particularly in the US, the classes who direct the wars do not fight them directly – volunteer soldiers – no direct impact upon classes who direct and benefit from the country being at war.  Could a disconnect emerge between policy makers and those who fight our wars?  As most Americans do not / have not served in the armed forces, is the civil-military disconnect deeper within American society?  Soldiers are “Heroes” – paid in kudos and acclaim to keep military happy.  Now with decreasing benefits, will military remain subservient? 

[COMMENT]  For example, the problem with the Syrian civil war is the socio-economic and political conditions of the initial stages of the war, that is, the opponents of President Assad versus government forces was changed essentially by the advent of ISIS Daesh, transforming it from a just war against an oppressive government to Assad’s just war against a worse and more unjust threat.  The justice of the cause is from the point of view of the eye of the beholder.  The Syrian civil was whose character was that of a just war, became an unjust war because ISIS is worse threat.  The US and its ‘allies’ [joke] have fought or opposed Assad and Iran.  This is a fact.  But where, when, and who denied utilization of Assad and Iran by US in order to demoralize / destroy the common enemy, ISIS (Daesh)?

Militarism.  As a weapon serving the ruling classes to crush all (political and economic) movements.  (p. 65).  [COMMENT]  Why do we fight these wars?  Follow the money, i.e., whose interests are being advanced?  Who benefits from these wars?  Certainly not the US or the US taxpayers?  So far (2015) the ‘war on terror’ has cost 5K deaths / $2T and we’re still there.  How can our political leaders continue to advocate and pursue ill-defined, ambiguous goals and unwinnable wars?  Are we just mercenaries or cannon fodder for sinister interests that are manipulating us?  Our national security and interests are not threatened so why are we involved in conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia?  What are we doing there? 
Are we really military adventurists the Soviets accused us of being?  These are basic questions but seem apropos to our actions post-Soviet Union—or even before.  We invaded Grenada in 1983, Lebanon 1983, Panama 1988; Gulf War 1990-91; Haiti, 1994; Somalia 1992; Bosnia 1994-95; Afghanistan 2001; Iraq 2003; Lybia 2011; Syria 2014.  What are we doing?  Is our economic system, capitalism, the cause of war?  Is war a method of resolving antagonistic conflicts based on “private ownership relations?”  (E.g., p. 72).  Are wars for the profit of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us?  Is war class based in the United States—for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many?  Are our interventions another form of exploitation? (E.g., p. 72). 

Role and Place of Ideological Struggle in Modern Warfare

1)     The stability of troop morale depends on the conviction of the rank-and-file masses as to the just nature of the war in which they sacrifice their lives.  If they recognize the cause for which they struggle to be just, they fight with enthusiasm.  (‘The Philosophical Heritage of V. I. Lenin and Problems of Contemporary War’ (Moscow, 1972), p. 207; translated under the auspices of the US Air Force).  Lenin:  “[C]onviction as to the justness of war and recognitions of the need to sacrifice one’s life for the good of one’s brothers elevates the spirit of soldiers and forces them to endure unheard of burdens.” (Phil. Her., p. 207). 

In contrast.  The bourgeoisie attempts to pass off its own mercenary interests as the interest of all the people.  The problem is to reveal to the soldiers and the entire populace of a given country the criminal goals of the bourgeois government and incite the masses to refuse to be accomplices of the crime.  (Phil. Her., p. 207). 

[COMMENT] In the fight against ISIS and derivatives thereof, US armed forces probably suffer from a lack of ideological conviction as to the justness or importance of the fight.  ISIS on the other hand is a poster child for the above statement.  Politically, it recruits from disaffected Muslims and foreign fighters who do not share the West’s value systems or its aspirations.

2)     Lenin—Revolutionary deeds are performed by millions of individuals at a moment of special upsurge and exertion of all human capabilities, when all their consciousness, will, enthusiasm and fantasy are mobilized… their extensive _____ possesses proletarian instinct, proletarian comprehension and awareness of duty.” (Phil. Her., p. 188). [COMMENT:  ISIS – religion]  “The spiritual capability of revolutionary masses to stand and win in a savage clash with the class enemy is based on the profoundly just character of the struggle being wages by the proletariat and its army.  We can wage war because the masses know what they are fighting for …”  Imperialist armies lack this source.  (Phil. Her., p. 188).   

[COMMENT]  The above observation is the bottom line of why ISIS / derivatives are winning —they are in their  own neighborhoods and the US armed forces are far from home and without real focus, e.g., ‘Why we fight’ series in Word War Two.  Slogans like ‘fighting for democracy’ are just as bland and useless as were Soviet calls for proletarian sentiment.  But the theory and observations stated above correctly assess the issue.  In 2015, ISIS bases its appeal on religion and Muslim victimization. 

3)     It’s not so much that ISIS achieves military objectives – it achieves political objectives. Under a chapter titled ‘Tactical Victory, Strategic Defeat’ Col. Harry Summers recalls a conversation in Hanoi 1975, ““You know you never defeated us on the battlefield” said the American Colonel.  The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark for a moment. “That may be so,” he replied, “but it is also irrelevant.”  (On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Presidio Press, 1982), p. 1.). US does not have a resonant message to which local population can relate or rally to.  Add to this the view of US as supporter and patron of Israel – anything or anyone we support is suspect.

4)     Even a strong will which is not enlightened by elevated communist ideals [or religious, ideological fervor, etc.] may become a counterfeit jewel, for will without principles or ideals is blind.  (Phil. Her., p. 189).  [US armed forces in 2015 with respect to fight against ISIS, Al-Qaeda, etc.?]

 

 

Why is the United States involved in conflicts in which it does not understand and / or fully appreciate the internal dynamics and motivators of the different players?  The fact is that not everyone in the world thinks like Americans, nor share the same views as to what is in their best interests nor share the same aspirations in a specific sense.  Even if they do to an extent, the means to achieve these objectives may be completely at odds with the American views. 

            Moral forces in war provide legitimacy to the struggle.

 

Engels Predicts North Korea's Failure

North Korea is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key… to view its future direction.  That key is contained in Marxist dogma.

In Anti-Dühring, in discussing the Franco-German war of 1870-1871, Engels made the following observation:

[T]his war [the Franco-German War] compelled all continental powers to introduce in a stricter form the Prussian Landwehr system [militia in addition to regular army], and with it a military burden which must bring them to ruin within a few years.  The army has become the main purpose of the state, and an end in itself; the peoples are there only to provide soldiers and feed them.  But this militarism also bears within it the seed of its own destruction.  Competition among the individual state forces them, on the one hand, to spend more money each year on the army, navy, artillery, etc., thus more and more hastening their financial collapse; and, on the other hand, to resort to universal compulsory military service more and more extensively, thus in the long run making the whole people familiar with the use of arms, and therefore enabling them at a given moment to make their will prevail against the warlords in command.  And this moment will arrive as soon as the mass of the people—town and country workers and peasants—will have a will.  At this point the armies of the princes become transformed into armies of the people; the machine refuses to work and militarism collapses by the dialectics on its own evolution.   (Marx-Engels, Collected Works (International Publishers 1987), Vol. 25, p. 158).

North Korea’s Songun or “military first” policy has become the main purpose of the state, an end in itself.  The Korean Workers Party no longer controls the military but is controlled by it—violating Mao’s dictum.  “Political power grows from the barrel of a gun.  And the party must control the gun.”  Now the gun controls the party and everything else.

However, North Korea’s effort to compete militarily against South Korea, the United States and pretty much everyone else… has in fact caused its financial collapse.    Moreover, the complete militarization of the population clearly make the people familiar with the use of arms, enabling them to turn against the regime—as soon as the mass of the people will have a will. 

Our policies should be to do everything possible to enable the Korean people to have a will… To will a self is to become a self (Nietzche).    The North Korean people are intelligent, hard-working and their lives being made unnecessarily difficult by a group of militarists whose only aim is ultimately to protect their own status—at the expense of the people.  

People are people; and as Abraham Lincoln said:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

This is the information age.  Our policy objective and task is to inform the North Korean people through any and all means available of the reality of the world at large and how their own government is fooling them.  The Korean people will free themselves.