PSPD in English Peace/Disarmament 2006-02-01   675

The government must stop fraud and withdraw strategic flexibility agreements with the United States

How long will the current government’s fraud involving negotiations on the Korea-US alliance re-coordination continue?

Following the Jan. 20 announcement by president Noh Moo-hyun’s government to agree strategic flexibility of US forces in Korea, government disclosed yesterday that it had already decided to participate in the PSI(Proliferation Security Initiative) which the United States had asked for Korea.

It is intolerable that the government has deceived people by covering those facts and continued to admit the US military strategy.

Noh’s government undoubtedly knows that the strategic flexibility will finally trigger a threat to the peace of Korean peninsula. Although Korean government anxiously emphasizes that the United States promised to respect the point ‘Korea will not intervene in the Northeast Asian disputes against its will’, it is evident Korean peninsula would be automatically an US military launching base when the Korea US forces carry out military intervention in peripheral areas.

However, the government is continuously tricking people by highly evaluating that the agreement between the two countries include meanings of such as Korea’s veto exercise or previous consultation on the movement of the US forces.

The government is also telling an untruth that it is not so feasible for the strategic flexibility of the US forces to be applicable in reality and that the Korea-US agreement will enforce capability of flow in by US military on the Korean peninsula.

Is it sure that the United State will really admit veto right and keep previous consultation with Korea although the consultation on the US forces’ movement out of Korea has not been well kept so far? The joint announcement preferably shows that the government failed in the flexibility negotiation to achieve its goals.

And there is no ground to say that the possibility for application of strategic flexibility by US forces in Korea is poor, considering the present situation of the on-going full-scale US military strategy for the prompt deployment of overseas US forces.

It was informed that the US defense ministry’s QDR(Quadrennial Defense Review) to be announced next month would include effective responses against mass-destruction weapons in the dimension of anti-terror war, enforcement of maneuver forces and prompt commitment of forces even in the irregular warfare.

Accordingly, the possibility for the commitment of Korea US forces in the dispute areas, with admission of strategic flexibility from Korean government, is increasingly high.

In succession of admission of strategic flexibility of US forces in Korea, the government’s decision to participate in PSI is likely not only to accelerate the subordinate relationship to US-leading world military strategy but to bring serious problems on the continued efforts to improve relationship between south and north and to reopen the deadlocked six-party talks because flexibility strategy surely aims at north Korea.

The United States is advising global- scale military cooperation by putting an emphasis on the PSI, CSI(Container Security Initiative) and RMSI, along with expanded multi-national troops to Iraq, while carrying out earnestly so-called anti-terror war.

In a word, the United States is forcibly requiring strategic flexibility of its alliances as well as its own flexibility.

However, those US initiatives will ultimately collide with prospects of Korea’s long-term development as a peaceful country, and so they are not helpful military actions. There is no reason for Korea’s participation in the US-leading initiatives.

Especially, the government’s decision to practically participate in PSI allegedly aiming at the north Korea, including anti-WMD(Weapons of Mass Destruction) drill in the Korea-US combined exercise, will preferably trouble the negotiation with the north which has been worked out in a difficult way. Moreover, the United States is pressing Korean government to take even economic sanctions against the north.

As repeatedly conformed in the negotiations on strategic flexibility and PSI, the government has thoroughly excluded it’s own people. The negotiations with the United States through interception of public opinion and approach to information naturally resulted in the subordination and obeying to the US military strategy.

It is obvious that ‘locked-room’ diplomacy without public debates and appropriate check is destined to produce limitations. The current government’s opportunism and its nearsighted policy should deserve criticism from people as negotiations are so important enough to influence the fate of Korean peninsula for a generation.

From the beginning of Pyeongtaek negotiation, People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) has pointed out the possibility that Pyongtaek would remain to be an advanced outpost for strategic flexibility and regional alliance initiative. However, the government has persistently denied to hear our advice.

PSPD makes it sure that PSPD does not have any intention to agree government’s judgment to drive out Pyeongtaek residents from their homeland and will never pay allotment expense for government policy.

More than anything else, we can not tolerate any more that our homeland changes into an outpost for supremacy involving world’s military disputes.

PSPD strongly warns that the subordinate ‘secret room diplomacy’ by the government with the United States will finally increase doubtfulness on the stationing of US forces in Korea and will endanger the Korea-US alliance in the long run.

PSPD wants to make it sure that the future of alliance between the two countries of which the government unilaterally is notifying people is definitely different from the one Korean people expects of.

PSPD can never get together with the government’s position which only seemingly advocates peaceful prosperity in Northeast Asian areas and which likes to call Korea as a balance of power in the region, as shown in the result of negotiations.

The government must oppose against US military actions which is certainly expected to deepen disputes and troubles in Korea and must withdraw any agreements supporting those problems.

Center for Peace and Disarmament

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