War and Death When Considering

War and Death

When considering the causes and outcomes of war, oftentimes it can be helpful to compare and contrast seemingly disparate cases, because this comparison can often reveal underlying processes, strategies, and assumptions that would have remained hidden otherwise. This is why, for example, one may consider the United States' more recent occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan alongside its actions in the Korean War; though these cases are separated by a substantial expanse of time, examining the causes behind these conflicts as well as the effects reveals that the conception of warfare as a means of statecraft has not changed substantially in the intervening time. This leads one inevitably to reconsider the state of South and North Korea's relationship today, because these two actors appear to be locked into the same belligerent, militaristic mindset that has characterized American military and international policy since at least the Cold War and all the way up till today. In light of the evidence, it becomes clear that the only successful path towards reunification of the Korean peninsula must depend on reciprocity and openness, rather than belligerence, restriction, and fear.

One may begins by considering the United States' occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, because although at first glance these two wars appear to represent a twenty-first century evolution of war in terms of justification, strategy, and tactics, in reality one must recognize that they in fact represent the continuation of a military mindset that has remained largely unchanged since the Korean War. The war in Afghanistan began as a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, and depended upon the Bush administration's decision to consider the attacks not as criminal acts, which had been the case with previous terrorist attacks (even orchestrated by the same people), but rather as an act of war. As such, the American government did not solely go about attempting to capture or kill the people responsible, but rather indited the government of Afghanistan for allowing these individuals to reside there relatively unmolested. Beginning with the administration's decision to consider the attacks as an act of war rather than criminal conduct, the United States ran straight towards a military option, largely ignoring any other potential means for bringing the guilty to justice. (to see just how effortlessly the American government began the war in Afghanistan, one need only consider the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which authorized the war; out of the entire Congress of over five hundred people, only a single person voted no.)

While the justification for the war in Afghanistan was in many respects defensible, even if it depended on an unprecedented interpretation of the proper response to terrorism, the justification for the war in Iraq turned out to be partially or wholly fabricated, based on intelligence provided by a politicized Intelligence Community more interested in providing the information desired by the administration rather than the most accurate intelligence. While there are still choose to disagree with this characterization, overwhelming evidence has demonstrated that the Bush administration's reasons for going to war with Iraq (weapons of mass destruction and supposed collusion between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda) were not only unfounded, but were based on selectively edited and interpreted intelligence. To see why this is the case one need not even consider the arguments put forward by those in opposition to the war or the Bush administration, because the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (under the Bush administration) actually admitted as much; in its Intelligence Community Directive 203, published in 2007, ODNI provided a set of guidelines and best practices for intelligence analysts that were explicitly designed to avoid the intelligence problems that permeated the Intelligence Community's National Intelligence Estimate for Iraq in 2002, the document ultimately used to justify the war in Iraq.

While the United States' occupation of Iraq ostensibly ended December 15th, 2011, the country is still home to serious violence, and the United States' maintains a substantial military presence, due both to its ongoing training and support mission as well as the private militaries hired by the State Department to defend its embassy in Baghdad. The Afghanistan war has not yet ended, and although there have been suggestions that it might as early as next year or as late as 2015, the actual conclusion of the war remains a distant proposition. Though the Iraq war lasted less time that the ongoing war in Afghanistan, as of 2012 it has see far more casualties. For example, while only 1,940 American service members have died in Afghanistan, 4,474 died in Iraq ("Faces of the Fallen" 2012). Of course, this pales in comparison to the number of civilians who have died as a result of both wars.

The most conservative estimates of civilian deaths as a result of the United States' occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan put the number of deaths at around 132,000, and even then this only includes "direct violence that killed civilians," such as "bombings, gunshot wounds, [and] missile strikes" (Ackerman 2011). This number does not include "indirect deaths, as occur when war crates refugees that can't find food, clean water or adequate medical care" (Ackerman 2011). The upper range of estimates put the number of civilians dead closer to a million (including direct and indirect deaths), but as with all estimates of civilian wartime deaths, these numbers can only be confirmed in general, both because war itself makes it difficult to access victims accounts and other corroborating evidence, and because the United States (seemingly intentionally) does not keep a tally of civilian deaths it has caused (Ackerman 2011). Whichever set of numbers one accepts as the most accurate, it is clear that the United States' occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in a staggering number of civilian deaths, one of the many things that have contributed to a negative perception of U.S. policy and practice throughout the world.

This negative perception largely stems from two undeniable facts. Firstly, that the United States' justifications for going to war were misguided at best, and intentionally dishonest at worst, and that these justifications served to support a military endeavor interested not in doling out justice or liberating oppressed peoples, but rather with securing American military and economic goals in the Middle East (regardless of any stated intentions). The second off-putting fact is the realization that despite whatever nominal movements are made towards securing the population and aiding civilians, the high number of civilian deaths forces one to consider that the United States and its military as a whole does not care about civilian deaths, or cares only as much as reports of civilian deaths can simultaneously erode public support for the war while inspiring new generations of dissidents, insurgents, and terrorists (Ackerman 2011). Taken together, these two facts have eroded the United States' international standing. However, it must be noted that the international perception of the United States as a result of its military action has not been entirely negative, because a number of countries have supported the efforts, either materially or ideologically (for the most part this support stems from the United States' usual allies, such as Israel and the United Kingdom).

While the causes and effects of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars might appear to be exclusive to a particular moment in American history and a particular administration's foreign policy goals and practices, in reality they demonstrate a contiguity with the American approach to international relations since at least the Korean War. Firstly, just as the United States' actual interest in Iraq had little to do with its stated interest, so too was the Korean War not simply a war between North and South Korea, but rather a kind of semi-proxy war fought between the United States and the Soviet Union as part of their Cold War. The Korean War began in 1949, "on the remote, inaccessible Ongjin Peninsula," and "the absence of independent observers has meant that both Korean sides have claimed ever since that they were attacked first" (Cumings 5). Although the animosities which precipitated the Korean War can be traced back even further, over the course of 1940-50, both sides began amassing their forces, with the United States assisting the South and the Soviet Union assisting the North (Cumings vii, 6). The war then progressed through three largely distinct phases: "the war for the South in the summer of 1950, the war for the North in the fall and winter of 1950, and China's intervention, which soon brought about a stabilization of the fighting along what is now the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, even though a form of trench warfare went on for another two years" (Cumings xviii). The war ended in 1953, but only with an armistice, and not an official peace agreement, so the two countries remain technically at war to this day.

The Korean War was important to both the United States and the Soviet Union, because it represented the first real conflict of their respective political ideologies following the substantial redrawing of the globe in the aftermath of World War II. This is not to suggest that either the United States or the Soviet Union were necessarily desiring this conflict, because "based on the scattered evidence now available from Soviet archives," Stalin was "wary and reluctant" in his support of the North, and only finally agreed to offer military equipment and advice when it became clear that China would intervene should the Soviet Union fail to offer support (Cumings 144). Likewise, the United States was hesitant in the face of South Korean entreaties to assist with a proactive invasion of the North, definitively stating that "Washington would not come to the aid of [the South] unless it were attacked without provocation" (Cumings 145). Recognizing this reveals that although the Korean War was a proxy war in the sense that either side was supported and partially controlled by external actors, there were serious internal divisions between the North and South which made the Korean War not a rapid and unexpected event, but rather "a culmination, a denouement, that took the internal struggles to a new a decisive level" (Cumings 146).

However, this should not diminish the sense that the course of the Korean War itself was the result of the United States' and Soviet Union's intervention and assistance, because although the war was motivated by longstanding differences between the North and South, it seems almost impossible that the war would have played itself out the way it did, let alone occurred, without the shadows of these two world superpowers looming over the peninsula. That this is undoubtedly the case is evident when one considers that both the North and the South were only confident enough to increase their respective provocations because they knew their respective benefactors would intervene. As discussed above, both the United States and the Soviet Union were reluctant to assist short of an unprovoked attack, creating a kind of perverse incentive for both the North and South to antagonize the other into attacking. Thus, both North and South were emboldened by the support they expected from their benefactors, and so actually had little incentive to downplay their respective animosities.

In a sense one can view the United States' and Soviet Union's interest in the Korean peninsula as focused not on Korea itself, but rather China. For the United States, South Korea (along with Japan) represented an important foothold in the far East, and following China's Communist revolution, the country was likely wary of Communism gaining any more ground. Similarly, the Soviet Union was wary of China's influence, even though they ostensibly shared the same organizing philosophy. Far from expressing excitement at the idea of a second Communist power, Stalin was wary Chinese assistance to the North might represent a power shift from which the Soviet Union could not recover, and as such agreed to help when Kim Il Sung intimated that if the Soviet Union did not offer assistance, "Mao Zedong […] will always help Korea" (Cumings 144). In some respects the consequences of the Korean War proved the apprehensions of both the United States and the Soviet Union correct, because Chinese intervention in the latter years of the war cemented a close relationship between North Korea and China that continues to this day, a relationship that represents a continual thorn in the side of both American and Russian foreign policy (although in the latter case to a much lesser extent).

Although the casualty figures from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are shocking, especially in terms of civilian deaths, they appear miniscule compared to the Korean War. According to most accounts, "the countries involved in the three-year conflict suffered a total of more than 4 million casualties, of which at least 2 million were civilians" (Cumings 35). Of the total number of casualties, 36,940 Americans died, 415,004 South Koreans died, an estimated 2 million North Koreans were injured or killed, and around "900,000 Chinese soldiers lost their lives in combat" (Cumings 35). Of course, this does not take into account the millions which have perished as a result of the war, largely due to North Korea's depressed economy, political repression, and devastating food shortages.

One reason it is important to consider the Korean War alongside contemporary conflicts is the fact that the Korean War has been so misunderstood, and in some cases, forgotten. At the time, it was regarded in the West as a civil war, but "a civil conflict purely among Koreans might have resolved the extraordinary tensions generated by colonialism, national division, and foreign intervention;" instead, the war "solved nothing: only the status quo ante was restored, only a cease-fire held the peace" (Cumings 35). Something like this same phenomenon occurred in Iraq, were a "civil war" broke out even though that war was largely instigated and fought by external forces, whether they were the United States military of foreign terrorist groups and their supporters. Another reason this comparison is crucial is because it demonstrates how, in regards to civilian deaths, the United States' way of waging war has not changed substantially.

For example, the United States was responsible for the No Gun Ri massacre, in which hundreds of Korean refugees were machine-gunned out of the fear that the group included North Korean infiltrators (Cumings 167). The Pentagon finally acknowledged the massacre in 2001, but it described it as "an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing," even though eyewitness accounts revealed that the massacre occurred over the course of three days, wherein American soldiers, after having initially gunned down hundreds of people, periodically returned to the site "checking every wounded person and shooting them if they moved," in order "to assure themselves that there would be no survivors to tell the tale of Nogun-ri" (Cumings 166-167). The massacre was not a one-off, tragic event, but rather a single example of a theater-wide policy of firing on refugees maintained both by the United States and South Korean militaries.

Most disturbing, however, is the fact that the policy which allowed for the No Gun Ri massacre represents not so much an aberration of the American way of war as the origin of it. The American response to the revelation of the massacre was to deem it a mere necessary evil of war, rather than the result of specific actions and policies, and this attitude has characterized the American approach to civilian deaths in nearly every conflict since. Civilian deaths are tragic, yes, but are not considered anyone's fault unless that fault can be laid squarely at the feet of the opponents; for example, while the United States does not keep tallies of the civilian deaths it is responsible for (as mentioned above), it is careful to point out when civilian deaths are caused by its opponents, such as al-Qaeda or the Taliban (Ackerman 2011). This callous approach to human life has actually helped to perpetuate the animosity in the Korean Peninsula, because both the North and South have been forced to deal with the devastating consequences of the war without ever being allowed to discuss, openly and honestly, the actual character and consequences of that war. Thus, South Korea has been reluctant to confront the United States over its actions in the war out a fear of losing some support, and this reluctance has allowed the North to rather successfully argue that South Korea acts at the behest of foreign interlopers, rather than the Korean people.

Clearly, war is not a reasonable means of ever achieving the unification of the Korean peninsula, and even if there ever was a time when, as discussed above, a civil war might have had the chance of expunging some of the long-held animosities between North and South, the example of the Korean War demonstrates that this is no longer the case, because the consequences of the conflict between North and South Korea extends far beyond their respective borders. Similarly, one must recognize that the policy of restriction adopted by South Korea and the United States has not helped to diminish tensions on the peninsula, but rather only exacerbated the plight of the North Korean people by denying them food aid and other assistance while further antagonizing the North Korean government. The failure of restriction largely lies in its connection to militarism; while technically it may be considered a kind of "tough" diplomacy, it depends upon the threat of force as well as the infliction of economic (and in the case of food aid) physical pain in order to achieve its ends. Instead, the peninsula must work towards a more reasonable approach to unification that is dependent not on the threat of force but rather on shared values and a desire for peace.