Today, the United States, along with our allies in places like Japan and South Korea are threatened again by Communist North Korea, which now claims to be armed with nuclear weapons. This fact alone means that a military option is all but unthinkable. As many others have already stated, Iraq would never have been invaded if they actually would have had weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, the current policy seems to pin all hopes of getting the North Koreans back to the negotiating table on our friendly authoritarian trading partner, The People's Republic of China; which, incidentally, has been making renewed threats against the Republic of China on Taiwan and seems on the verge of obtaining military hardware from our other good friends in Europe. The ironic thing about this little situation is that most countries in Europe are probably more socialistic at this point than even Red China. However, China is the only nation with any influence whatsoever over Kim Jong Il.
North Korea, for those unaware, owes its continued existence to Red China and nothing else. When the United Nations (well the United States and Great Britain mostly) were on the verge of destroying the North Koreans completely, it was Red China which poured troops across the border, ultimately causing the rest of the world to back down and settle for a stalemate that has never officially ended. It is also China that keeps North Korea alive, and that barely. Communist China after all, is not really all that "Communist" anymore. If they were China would have collapsed in similar fashion to the Soviet Union. North Korea, which takes Marxism more seriously, is proof of what Communism can do to a country. China is alive today only because of capitalism and North Korea is alive today only because of China. The PRC now occupies a truly dangerous position: they have a symbolic Communist Party to maintain dictatorial control over a massive country with the largest army and air force in the world but with an exceptionally greedy capitalist economy keeping them in cash. They also have trade agreements which keep the rest of the world over a proverbial barrel no matter what they do (such as massacring students at democracy gatherings, harassing Falun Gong fitness enthusiasts or arresting Christians).
In short, China has the money, the men and the guns to do pretty much whatever they like as well as the confidence that no one will likely try to stop them. Sure, it's nice to think that the world community would hold them accountable for doing anything rash; but what was the world response to the occupation of Tibet? Their intervention in North Korea? What about their invasion of Vietnam? The Vietnamese gave them a bloody nose, but no one else lifted a finger, in spite of the fact that their invasion was in support of the notorious Pol Pot. The world took exactly the same action as it did in response to the crushing of the pro-democracy rally: absolutely nothing. Now, just as more threats are being levelled at Taiwan, we are entrusting China with the job of talking down their own half-mad Marxist flunky in Pyongyang. How could all of this have been avoided? Naturally, avoiding the Communist takeover in the first place would have been a good thing, but there was an even simpler way and that was the (now infamous) Japanese "puppet state" of Manchukuo.
Manchukuo was Japan's client state in northeast China, Manchuria to you and me, and had long been fought over by the big powers of the region: China, Russia and Japan. The Japanese occupied Manchuria and after a national assembly (assumed to have been influenced of course) requested it, Manchukuo was declared independent and placed under the nominal rule of the last Emperor of China, first as Chief Executive of the State of Manchukuo and later as Emperor Kang Teh of the Empire of Manchukuo. Of all the great "villains" portrayed to the public of World War II, Emperor Kang Teh (better known as Henry PuYi) was, along with Hirohito, the most innocent. Given the fact that he never actually held power over anyone, he never oppressed his people, he never ordered any massacres and he never invaded any neutral countries. He was in every way harmless. Even in Manchukuo his days were occupied mostly with listening to reports from his equally symbolic ministers, praying and reading Buddhist scriptures. He had done no one harm and was a threat to no one.
If only the political leaders of the time had shown less of an attitude for vengance and a little more fore-sight, things might have gone quite differently. If Manchukuo would have been left intact, perhaps even defended from the Communists by Japanese troops (it worked in Vietnam, as well as Malaysia I hear) to defend a truly independent Manchu monarchy, the world would have had the following benefits: Communist China would have been deprived of the most resource-rich and heavily industrialized region on the east Asian mainland, both China and Russia would have been geographically cut off from aiding the Communist insurgents in North Korea and the North Korean war been avoided completely or at the very least resulted in a swift and speedy victory for South Korea and the "Free World". Communist China might not have survived at all, and certainly would not have become the economic super-power they are today without their industrialized heartland of Manchuria.
This lack of foresight is one of the most dangerous flaws of republican democracy. Those in office for life, like monarchs and dictators, can make long-term plans for obtaining far-reaching objectives. Given the choice, I would prefer a monarch. The crisis in the Far East today shows what can happen when far-sighted dictators have only short-sighted presidents to challenge them. While presidents like Roosevelt and Truman were obsessed only with the (very worthy) goals of defeating Germany and Japan, Stalin was looking ahead to the conquest of the lion's share of Europe and Asia for Communism. They knew the stakes all along, which is one reason why their first order of business after declaring war on Japan was to invade Manchuria. By refusing to take a stand early on, the United States has been forced to play with the odds stacked against them ever since in the ensuing (and on-going) Cold War in the Far East. |
