{"id":9454,"date":"2019-10-07T13:08:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T13:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/?p=9454"},"modified":"2019-10-07T13:08:27","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T13:08:27","slug":"dont-solve-the-crisis-in-northeast-asia-transform-it-korea-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/2019\/10\/07\/dont-solve-the-crisis-in-northeast-asia-transform-it-korea-times\/","title":{"rendered":"“Don’t solve the crisis in Northeast Asia-Transform it!” (Korea Times)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Korea\nTimes<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon’t\nsolve the crisis in Northeast Asia – transform it\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

October 6, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emanuel\nPastreich<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States faces an unmitigated catastrophe in Northeast\nAsia today that is the result of a thoughtless trade war with China, companion\ntariff battles with Japan and South Korea, and an effort to promote China as a\nmilitary threat that have undercut a broad range of cooperative efforts. We are\nwatching in silence the metastasis of benign neglect into malignant neglect.\nAsians may be reticent to speak, but perceptions of Washington as a destructive\nforce are spreading rapidly.
\n
\nThe administration’s governance by Twitter and a new vision of “Trump\nfirst” for the international community is but the acceleration of the\ntrend toward short-term profits that has buried the tradition of\ninternationalism in the United States that is embodied in the Statue of\nLiberty, the hosting of the United Nations headquarters and our support for\nglobal treaties addressing non-proliferation, trade and terrorism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nThis crisis in Northeast Asia was not made in Pyongyang \u2015 rather, Washington’s\nmodel of greed and narcissism has found new hosts in Asian capitals.
\n
\nDo we really need to spend taxpayers’ dollars to promote a new “cold\nwar” in Asia that will most likely result in the United States being\npushed out of the region altogether, rather than restoring some lost prestige?
\n
\nAnd Japan is postulating possible military conflicts with South Korea. We have\nno time to waste before we set out in a new direction so as to avoid an\nunimaginable nightmare of an arms race and economic warfare between South\nKorea, Japan, China and other nations. Such a development could mean many\nthings, including an end of the U.S. role in the region.
\n
\nThis crisis in Northeast Asia will not be solved by a gaudy summit meeting, or\nby some act of Congress. What we need is a vision for the future of Northeast\nAsia that is transformative, one that offers palpable hope for a way forward.
\n
\nThe Japanese philosopher Ogyu Sorai wrote that there are two kinds of chess\nmasters: those who know the rules so perfectly that they can win every game\neffortlessly and those who make up the rules by which chess is played.
\n
\nThe latter approach is distinctively unfamiliar. We are accustomed to\nmaintaining the world order established at the end of World War II, not making\nup a new order. But our eroding position in East Asia cannot be turned around\nby gradual reform. We must fundamentally alter the U.S. role in East Asia.
\n
\nAnd just as we start to struggle to define an American role in Asia that is not\nconditional on the demonization of others, an answer comes to us from somewhere\nunexpected.
\n
\nThe world was rocked by a series of climate strikes, peaking with the moving\nspeech of Greta Thunberg at the United Nations’ Climate Action Summit. Tens of\nthousands of passionate youth demanded a fundamental change in all our\neconomic, political and cultural assumptions in order to save us from the\ncatastrophe of climate change. They know the consequences will be worst for\nthem.
\n
\nThat demand for fundamental change in our world offers a priceless opportunity\nto redefine the U.S. role in Northeast Asia and to resolve the confrontation\nwith China, and to encourage cooperation between Korea and Japan.
\n
\nThe U.S. must recognize that climate change itself is the primary threat in\nNortheast Asia, whether rising seas, warming oceans, spreading deserts or\nraging tropical storms. Many are dying and millions will die in the years\nahead.
\n
\nBut to achieve this fundamental shift in the concept of security requires us to\nchange all our assumptions \u2015 which is exactly what Greta demanded.
\n
\nIt means that the U.S. must move away from a military that is focused on\nplanes, ships, bullets and missiles and redefine its security mission as\nrapidly making our country free of fossil fuels, restoring forests and\nprotecting the ecosystems of oceans and rivers. Whereas the U.S. military is\none of the greatest polluters now, it could be re-engineered to devote its\nefforts to cleaning up pollution and enforcing a ban on oil drilling and the\nuse of coal.
\n
\nSuch a vision seems too fantastic to work. But the crisis is literally so great\nas to demand that we rethink everything.
\n
\nIn the case of East Asia, as the U.S. military shifts its mission to mitigating\nclimate change (planting trees, protecting the ecosystem, making sure that\nbusinesses do not destroy the Earth’s precious resources for profit) and away\nfrom conventional warfare, we will find that our military can cooperate with\nthe militaries of Japan and Korea on multiple fronts. Military-military\ncooperation with China will be a no-brainer as the militaries focus in on\nadaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nmilitary is not set up so serve such a transformative role. If anything, it\nclings to outdated ideas about security and defense. But if the military\nstarted to function in such a manner, it could implement such a shift more\nrapidly than the civilian sector.
\n
\nThe military can set up long-term budgets to develop\ntechnologies without concern for profits, it can determine that all electricity\nmust be generated by solar or wind power by next month and then make it happen.\nWe can combine American, Korean, Japanese knowhow to come up with those\nsolutions and move away from a dangerous military buildup that does nothing to\naddress climate change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Korea Times \u201cDon’t solve the crisis in Northeast Asia – transform it\u201d October 6, 2019 Emanuel Pastreich The United States faces an unmitigated catastrophe in Northeast Asia today that is the result of a thoughtless trade war with China, companion tariff battles with Japan and South Korea, and an effort to promote China as a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9296425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9296425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}