Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Thursday, 7 September 2017

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au

You are being lied to about North Korea—there is a diplomatic solution

In remarks to his party room, Malcolm Turnbull has reportedly echoed US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley’s statement that “North Korea is begging for war”.

No, it’s not. North Korea is “begging” for the USA and South Korea to stop conducting their military exercises that are not just provocative, but are intended to disrupt North Korea’s planting and harvest periods.

North Korea also wants to deter any Anglo-American regime-change schemes.

China and Russia strongly disapprove of North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, but they have reiterated that North Korea’s standing offer of a “freeze for a freeze”—that it would freeze its nuclear weapons program if the USA and South Korea freeze their exercises—is a reasonable request.

North Korea is being compared with the Cuban missile crisis. Well, that crisis wasn’t resolved by chest-beating, but by insightful back-channel diplomacy, which included John F. Kennedy agreeing to remove NATO missiles from Turkey, in a way that saved face.

The ball is in the USA’s court. Nikki Haley is a darling of the neocons, such as Senator Lindsey Graham, who has driven the regime-change agenda in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The fate of those nations has convinced North Korea that the only way it can defend itself is to fast-track its development of a nuclear deterrent. When China raised the “freeze for a freeze” option in the UN Security Council on 4 September, Haley called the offer “insulting” and declared that the USA would never “lower” its “guard”. This is typical neocon lying: the USA ending the exercises is not lowering its guard, it’s getting out of North Korea’s face.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on the other hand, has been the voice of reason in this crisis, assuring North Korea that the USA has no interest in regime change. Tillerson’s message is being undermined by neocons like Hayley, and by the Turnbull government when it echoes neocon propaganda. Education Minister Simon Birmingham did that in the 5 September Telegraph when he attacked Sydney University lecturer Tim Anderson for organising a “learning and solidarity” visit to North Korea to report on the other side of the crisis. (Anderson is a courageous academic who did more than most to expose the truth that the USA, UK, and France explicitly sided with al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists in Syria to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.) In a statement that could have been cut and pasted from identical claims about Saddam, or Gaddafi, or Assad, Birmingham ranted: “It’s one thing to foster debate at university but you cross the line when you back an evil dictatorship that murders its citizens and is posing an increasing threat to global security.”

These are statements to justify war, not to find a peaceful solution.

A new approach—the BRICS

North Korea’s latest nuclear test coincided with the opening of the BRICS Summit in Xiamen, China. In a 6 September article in the CEC’s Australian Alert Service, “BRICS builds platform to solve world crises”, Elisa Barwick reported that the new international order based on cooperative economic development, epitomised by China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), being promoted by the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa—has the greatest potential to properly resolve the North Korea crisis.

Following is an excerpt of the AAS article:

The pathway to peace on the Korean Peninsula, promoted by China and Russia, won support in Xiamen. BRICS, with its perspective for mutually beneficial development, can become a mechanism for resolving international conflicts.
When it has worked previously, the Korean peace process has hinged on economic development, which can again be proposed within the framework of the BRICS, and the BRI. With a long-running drought, North Korea is likely facing a serious food shortage this winter, which can be treated as either a pathway to negotiate, or a means to provoke. North Korea is forced to divert manpower from farming, to respond to US military exercises during planting and harvest, so a suspension of exercises would be a major economic incentive for the North.
In an article published in BRICS press outlets ahead of the summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Northeast Asia was “balancing on the brink of a large-scale conflict”, and that merely applying pressure on Pyongyang will be a “dead end”. Instead, he wrote, there needs to be a direct dialogue involving all parties, without any preconditions.
The Moon Jae-in government of South Korea is pushing for an economic-cooperation component to the dialogue, with Reunification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon announcing 25 August that South Korea is keen to reopen the Kaesong Industrial park—a joint South-North project located in North Korea.
Likewise, on 31 August Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Col. Ren Guoqiang told reporters that “military means cannot be an option for resolving this issue”. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying has stated unequivocally that the US-South Korea exercises and deployment of US missile defences in South Korea just “intensify tensions”. Instead, we have to be “innovative and inventive”, said Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzya. On 2 September he told reporters that the UN Security Council needs to adopt a resolution comprising a diplomatic framework to resolve tensions on the Korean Peninsula, including “steps to bring the parties to the negotiating table”.
In a 28 August article published on the website of US-Korea Institute 38 North, [Executive Director of the Russian National Committee for BRICS Research Georgy] Toloraya suggested the USA adopt a long-term strategy for political and diplomatic solutions, with denuclearisation “as the long-term goal, not an immediate issue”. He suggested that Russia convene a “working group on peace and security mechanisms” as it did under the previous Six Party Talks.
While strongly condemning the North Korean nuclear test, the BRICS Summit declaration emphasised that the situation “should only be settled through peaceful means and direct dialogue of all the parties concerned”.

Australia should be backing the pathway for peace, not once again encouraging a disastrous war. Specifically, this means that Australians should demand the Turnbull government pressure the USA to find a way to agree to end the military exercises in exchange for a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and to get behind the BRICS’ efforts to find a long-term peaceful resolution.

Click here for a free copy of the CEC’s full-colour pamphlet, The World Land-Bridge—Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards All Men, on the importance of Australia collaborating with BRICS to establish a new international economic order based on cooperative economic development.

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