Evan+and%20Isaac


 * Plan**
 * The United States federal government should implement a phased withdrawal of its ground troops in the Republic of Korea.**


 * Observation 1 is Korean War**

The sinking of the South Korea’s ship makes war inevitable – South Korea will have to retaliate and this will escalate and draw in the US Bandow, 10 – senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to Reagan (4/18/10, Doug, “Let the Koreans Take Care of the Koreas,” [], JMP)


 * __It has been weeks since the South Korean ship Cheonan sank in the Yellow Sea__** near the disputed boundary between South and North Korea. As yet the cause is unknown--some government critics suspect a cover-up--but after raising the wreck South Korean officials said the explosion appeared to be external. Which implicates Pyongyang. If the cause was a mine, a North-South confrontation still could be avoided. The mine might have been left over from the Korean War. Or if of more modern vintage it could have broken loose from its moorings. If a torpedo was used, however, the threat of conflict rises. The Republic of Korea could **__not easily ignore a North Korean submarine stalking and sinking one of its vessels. Seoul has promised "a firm response __**," though, argues Han Sung-joo, a former ROK foreign minister and U.S. ambassador, "that doesn't mean a military reaction or an eye-for-eye response." In fact, the South did not retaliate after earlier provocations, such as the terrorist bombing of a South Korean airliner and assassination attempt against former president Chun Doo-hwan which killed 16 ROK officials. A military reprisal then could have trigger ed a full-scale war. **__Responding in kind this time also could spark a dangerous escalatory spiral__** with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. However, Seoul has spent the last decade attempting to pacify the DPRK, providing aid, allowing investment, and hosting summits. **__To do nothing would seem to be abject appeasement, undermining ROK credibility and encouraging the North to act even more recklessly in the future.__** If the word "firm" has any meaning, the South Korean government would have to do more than protest. Still, the decision, though difficult, shouldn't concern the U.S. The South has gone from an authoritarian economic wreck to a democratic economic powerhouse. With a vastly bigger and more sophisticated economy, larger population, and greater access to international markets and support than the North, Seoul long has been able to defend itself. Pyongyang retains a numerical military edge, but its weapons are old, troops are undertrained, and industrial base is shrinking. Thus, the South should be able to decide on the action that best advances its security. However, Seoul long chose to emphasize economic development over military preparedness. As a result, the ROK remains dependent on America . Some 27,000 U.S. personnel are stationed in the South. The U.S. retains formal command of all forces, American and South Korean, during a war. Seoul expects substantial U.S. air and naval support and ground reinforcement in the event of war . Which means that **__ROK retaliation against the DPRK would draw the U.S. into any conflict.__** So Washington cannot help but pressure South Korean decision-makers to act in accord with American as well as ROK interests. In fact, that's what happened in 1983, when the U.S. insisted that Seoul not retaliate militarily after the bombing attack on President Chun. The current situation also means that **__the destiny of America is essentially controlled by the North's Kim Jong-il. Ordering an attack on a South Korean ship could end up forcing Washington to go to war.__** Although the bilateral U.S.-South Korean defense treaty does not make American intervention automatic, **__it is unimaginable that an American administration would stand aside in a conflict.__** This is a ludicrous position for both the U.S. and South Korea, six decades after Washington saved a far weaker ROK from a North Korean invasion in the midst of the Cold War. Neither country is well-served by Seoul's continuing defense dependency on America. Unfortunately, the policy incongruities only are likely to worsen. The ROK desires to wield increasing influence beyond its own shores. While relying on American military forces to defend its homeland, the South Korean government is crafting its navy for more distant contingencies and deploying ground personnel in the Middle East and Central Asia. Yet Seoul found that when the enemy struck at home, assuming the Cheonan was sunk by the North, the South Korean military was ill-prepared to defend its own personnel.

The status quo is __fundamentally different__ than the past – the chance of a major miscalculation and global escalation is possible now in __five different ways__ Sanger, 10 (5/28/10, David E. Sanger, NY Times, “In the Koreas, Five Possible Ways to War,” [], JMP)

USUALLY, there is a familiar cycle to Korea crises. Like a street gang showing off its power to run amok in a well-heeled neighborhood, the North Koreans launch a missile over Japan or set off a nuclear test or stage an attack — as strong evidence indicates they did in March, when a South Korean warship was torpedoed. Expressions of outrage follow. So do vows that this time, the North Koreans will pay a steep price. In time, though, the United States and North Korea’s neighbors — China, Japan, South Korea and Russia — remind one another that they have nothing to gain from a prolonged confrontation, much less a war. Gradually, sanctions get watered down. Negotiations reconvene. Soon the North hints it can be enticed or bribed into giving up a slice of its nuclear program. Eventually, the cycle repeats. The White House betting is that the latest crisis, stemming from the March attack, will also abate without much escalation. But there is more than a tinge of doubt. The big risk, as always, is **__what happens if the North Koreans make a major miscalculation.__** (It wouldn’t be their first. Sixty years ago, Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, thought the West wouldn’t fight when he invaded the South. The result was the Korean War.) What’s more, the dynamic does feel **__different from recent crises. The South has a hardline government whose first instinct was to cut off aid to the North, not offer it new bribes. At the same time, the North is going through a murky, ill-understood succession crisis. __**And President Obama has made it clear he intends to break the old cycle. “We’re out of the inducements game,” one senior administration official, who would not discuss internal policy discussions on the record, said last week. “For 15 years at least, the North Koreans have been in the extortion business, and the U.S. has largely played along. That’s over.” That may change the North’s behavior, but it could backfire. “There’s an argument that in these circumstances, the North Koreans may perceive that their **__best strategy is to escalate ,” says __**Joel Wit, a former State Department official who now runs a Web site that follows North Korean diplomacy. The encouraging thought is the history of cooler heads prevailing in every crisis since the Korean War. There was no retaliation after a 1968 raid on South Korea’s presidential palace; or when the North seized the American spy ship Pueblo days later; or in 1983 when much of the South Korean cabinet was killed in a bomb explosion in Rangoon, Burma; or in 1987 when a South Korean airliner was blown up by North Korean agents, killing all 115 people on board. So what if this time is different? Here are five situations in which good sense might not prevail. An Incident at Sea Ever since an armistice ended the Korean War, the two sides have argued over — and from time to time skirmished over — the precise location of the “Northern Limit Line,” which divides their territorial waters. That was where the naval patrol ship Cheonan was sunk in March. So first on the Obama administration’s list of concerns is another incident at sea that might turn into a **__prolonged firefight. Any heavy engagement could draw in the __** __U__nited __S__tates, South Korea’s chief ally, which is responsible for taking command if a major conflict breaks out. What worries some officials is the chance of an **__intelligence failure in which the West misreads North Korea’s willingness and ability to escalate. __** The failure would not be unprecedented. Until a five-nation investigation concluded that the Cheonan had been torpedoed, South Korea and its allies did not think the North’s mini-submarine fleet was powerful enough to sink a fully armed South Korean warship. Shelling the DMZ American and South Korean war planners still work each day to refine how they would react if North Korea’s 1.2 million-man army poured over the Demilitarized Zone, 1950s-style. Few really expect that to happen — the South Koreans build and sell expensive condos between Seoul and the DMZ — but that doesn’t mean the planning is unjustified. In one retaliatory measure last week, South Korea threatened to resume propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers at the DMZ. In past years, such blaring denunciations, of Kim Jong-il’s economic failures, were heard only by North Korean guards and the wildlife that now occupies the no-man’s land. Still, the threat was enough to drive the North’s leadership to threaten to shell the loudspeakers. That, in turn, could lead to tit-for-tat exchanges of fire, and to a threat from the North to fire on Seoul, which is within easy reach of mortars. If that happened, thousands could die in frenzied flight from the city, and investors in South Korea’s economy would almost certainly panic. American officials believe the South is now rethinking the wisdom of turning on the loudspeakers. A Power Struggle or Coup Ask American intelligence analysts what could escalate this or a future crisis, and they name a 27-year-old Kim Jong-un, the youngest of Kim Jong-il’s three sons, and the father’s choice to succeed him. Little is known about him, but his main qualifications for the job may be that he is considered less corrupt or despised than his two older brothers. One senior American intelligence official described the succession crisis this way: “We **__can’t think of a bigger nightmare than a third generation of the Kim family” running the country with an iron hand __**, throwing opponents into the country’s gulags, and mismanaging an economy that leaves millions starving. It is possible that on the issue of succession, many in the North Korean elite, including in the military, agree with the American intelligence official. According to some reports, they view Kim Jong-un as untested, and perhaps unworthy. “We’re seeing considerable signs of stress inside the North Korean system,” another official reported. And that **__raises the possibility of more provocations — and potential miscalculations — ahead.__** One line of analysis is that the younger Kim has to put a few notches in his belt by ordering some attacks on the South, the way his father once built up a little credibility. Another possibility is that internal fighting over the succession could bring wide-scale violence inside North Korea, tempting outside powers to intervene to stop the bloodshed. Curiously, when Kim Jong-il took the train to China a few weeks ago, his heir apparent did not travel with him. Some experts read that as a sign that the Kim dynasty might fear a coup if both were out of the country — or that it might not be wise to put father and son on the same track at the same time, because accidents do happen. An Internal Collapse America’s most enduring North Korea strategy isn’t a strategy at all; it’s a prayer for the country’s collapse. Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy hoped for it. Dick Cheney tried to speed it. The regime has survived them all. But could the North collapse in the midst of the power struggle? Sure. And that is the one scenario that most terrifies the Chinese. It also explains why they keep pumping money into a neighbor they can barely stand. For China, a collapse would mean a flood of millions of hungry refugees (who couldn’t flee south; there they are blocked by the minefield of the DMZ); it would also mean the possibility of having South Korea’s military, and its American allies, nervously contending with the Chinese over who would occupy the territory of a fallen regime in order to stabilize the territory. China is deeply interested in North Korea’s minerals; the South Koreans may be as interested in North Korea’s small nuclear arsenal. A Nuclear Provocation With tensions high, American spy satellites are looking for evidence that the North Koreans are getting ready to test another nuclear weapon — just as they did in 2006 and 2009 — or shoot off some more long-range missiles. It is a sure way to grab headlines and rattle the neighborhood. In the past, such tests have ratcheted up tension, and could do so again. But they are not the Obama administration’s biggest worry. As one of Mr. Obama’s top aides said months ago, there is reason to hope that the North will shoot off “a nuclear test every week,” since they are thought to have enough fuel for only eight to twelve. Far more worrisome would be a decision by Pyongyang to export its nuclear technology and a failure by Americans to notice. For years, American intelligence agencies missed evidence that the North was building a reactor in the Syrian desert, near the Iraq border. The Israelis found it, and wiped it out in an air attack in 2007. Now, the search is on to find out if other countries are buying up North Korean technology or, worse yet, bomb fuel. (There are worries about Myanmar.) In short, the biggest worry is that North Korea could decide that teaching others how to build nuclear weapons would be the fastest, stealthiest way to defy a new American president who has declared that stopping proliferation is Job No. 1. It is unclear whether the American intelligence community would pick up the signals that it missed in Syria. And if it did, **__a crisis might not be contained in the Korean Peninsula; it could spread to the Middle East or Southeast Asia, or wherever else North Korea found its customers.__**

Old takeouts don’t apply – US presence means that North Korea is willing to risk armed conflict that will draw in the US Bandow, 10 – Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and former Special Assistant to Reagan (5/3/10, Doug, “Taming Pyongyang,” [], JMP)

Suspicions continue to mount that North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan, a South Korean corvette which sank more than a month ago in the Yellow Sea to the west of the Korean peninsula. Policy makers in both Seoul and Washington are pondering how to respond. **__The potential__**, even if small, **__of renewed conflict on the peninsula demonstrates that today’s status quo is unsatisfactory for all of the North’s neighbors.__** The Korean War ended in an armistice nearly six decades ago. No peace treaty was ever signed; over the years the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea committed numerous acts of war, most dramatically attempting to assassinate South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during a visit to Burma and seizing the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo. Conflict was avoided because the United States, long the senior partner to the Republic of Korea in their military alliance, refused to risk igniting a new conflict. **__In recent years the DPRK’s conduct has remained predictably belligerent but constrained__**: fiery threats, diplomatic walk-outs, policy reversals, and unreasonable demands have mixed with occasional cooperative gestures as Washington and Seoul attempted to dissuade the North from developing nuclear weapons. **__North Korean relations recently have been in a down cycle. Pyongyang has walked out of the__** long-running **__Six Party talks__** and failed in its attempt to engage Washington. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has ended the ROK’s “Sunshine Policy,” which essentially entailed shipping money and tourists north irrespective of the DPRK’s conduct, causing North Korea to downgrade economic and diplomatic contacts and even recently confiscate South Korean investments. Japan’s relations with the North remain stalled over the lack of accounting over the kidnapping of Japanese citizens years ago. **__Still, for at least two decades Pyongyang had eschewed military action.__** Shots were fired between South and North Korean ships last November near the disputed boundary in the Yellow Sea, but no harm was done. **__Brinkmanship was the DPRK’s standard diplomatic strategy. Triggering a new war was not. Why the North would sink a South Korean vessel is a matter of speculation.__** More critical is the response. Now what? The issue is most pressing in Seoul. South Korean officials say the investigation continues as they seek definitive evidence that a torpedo sunk the Cheonan. The tragedy would be no less if the cause was a mine, but the latter could be dismissed as an unfortunate occurrence rather than deliberate attack. If the sinking was intentional, however, the ROK must respond. To do nothing would reward the North and encourage additional irresponsible action. President Lee Myung-bak has said: “I’m very committed to responding in a firm manner if need be.” One South Korean diplomat suggested to me that **__the South will seek Security Council condemnation of the DPRK.__** This is in line with President Lee’s promise “to cooperate with the international community in taking necessary measures when the results are out.” But even if Seoul won Chinese support for a UN resolution, **__the ROK would have to take bilateral measures. That certainly would end investment and aid, likely would prevent negotiations and possibly would entail military retaliation__****.** **__The result__** not only **__would__** mean a serious and prolonged worsening of bilateral relations and increase in bilateral tensions, but could **__end any chance__**—admittedly today very slim—**__of reversing North Korean nuclear development.__** Moreover, a military strike would entail a chance of war. **__Tit-for-tat retaliation might spiral out of control.__** The potential consequences are horrifying. **__The ROK nevertheless might be willing to take the risk. Not Washington.__** The United States is cooperating in the investigation and reportedly urging the Lee government to wait for proof before acting. But even if the DPRK is culpable, the last thing the Obama administration wants is another war. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last month: “I hope that there is no talk of war, there is no action or miscalculation that could provoke a response that might lead to conflict.” From America’s standpoint, avoiding a potentially bloody war on the Korean peninsula while heavily involved in Afghanistan and still tied down in Iraq is far more important than South Korean concerns over justice and credibility. The People’s Republic of **__China__** also **__would be a big loser in any war: refugees would and conflict could spill over the Yalu.__** The North Korean state likely would disappear, leaving a united Korea allied with America and hosting U.S. troops near China’s border. Beijing’s international reputation would suffer as its policy of aiding the North was fully and dramatically discredited. **__Japan__** would be less vulnerable to the consequences of war but **__could be the target of North Korean attempts to strike out.__** Undoubtedly, Tokyo also would be asked to contribute to the peninsula’s reconstruction. Of course, North Korea and its people would suffer the most. The former would cease to exist. That would be an international good, but **__millions of North Koreans likely would die__** or otherwise suffer along the way. War would be a tragic end to decades of hardship and isolation. What to do? Seoul needs some degree of certainty before acting. So long as the sinking might have been caused by a mine, the ROK cannot act decisively. If a torpedo attack is the most likely cause, however, winning Security Council backing would be a useful step. Then finding the right level of response, including possibly closing the Kaesong industrial park in the North or targeting a North Korean vessel for destruction, would be necessary. If it chooses the latter, the ROK would need Washington’s backing and China’s understanding. Finally, a lot of people in several countries would have to cross their fingers and say some prayers. In any case, the six-party talks would seem kaput. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the Obama administration remained committed to the negotiations despite the sinking, stating that “I wouldn’t necessarily link those directly.” Yet **__the likelihood that Pyongyang would yield its nuclear weapons while sinking South Korean vessels seems vanishingly small. Even a minimal possibility of a negotiated settlement should be pursued, but at some point the effort simply looks foolish.__** That’s the short-term. Two longer-term issues require attention, however the current controversy is resolved. First, the U nited S tates **__and ROK must reconsider their alliance relationship__**. Even on the issue of defending against the DPRK their interests differ: Seoul must satiate an angry public desiring vengeance as well as preserve its credibility in confronting the North. **__America must avoid another war at most any cost. Given the South’s level of development, it makes no sense for its defense decisions to be subject to Washington’s veto. Nor does it make any sense for the U __**nited S tates **__to risk being drawn into a war as a result of acts between other nations. These bilateral differences are only likely to grow, especially if the relationship between America and China grows more contentious. Then South Korea could find itself risking involvement in Washington’s war.__** Also involved is the ROK’s self-respect. In two years the U.S. plans on devolving operational control of the combined forces to South Korea. Yet some South Koreans fear their nation won’t be ready to lead its own defense. That Washington took military command in underdeveloped, impoverished South Korea in 1950 is understandable. To argue that America must continue doing so in 2010 is bizarre.

Boosting deterrence has only increased likelihood of conflict Armstrong, 10 – Professor of history and director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University.. (Charles, 5/26/10, CNN, “The Korean War never ended” [])

On the other hand, there is a real danger of this war of words escalating into a shooting war. With well over a million Korean troops facing each other across the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South, along with 29,000 U.S. troops in the South, and North Korea now armed with nuclear weapons, the consequences of a renewed Korean War would be catastrophic for the Korean peninsula and the entire Northeast Asia region. The Cheonan incident has reinforced U.S.-South Korean and U.S.-Japanese cooperation in deterring the North. But **__deterrence can look like provocation from the other side, and in such a tense and volatile environment, a slight miscalculation can lead to disaster. Anger and outrage may be understandable, but cooler heads must prevail. Millions of lives are at stake. Rather than lead to deepening confrontation, this tragedy may be an opportunity to re-engage North Korea in talks __** to scale back and ultimately eliminate its nuclear program, and to promote security and economic cooperation with its neighbors. North Korea has never admitted to acts of terrorism in the past, and we cannot expect it to acknowledge responsibility and apologize for the sinking of the Cheonan as a precondition for such talks. Instead, the international community should take advantage of Kim Jong Il's stated willingness to return to multilateral negotiations, suspended since 2008, as a way of reducing tensions on the Korean peninsula. It is time to end the Korean War, not start it anew.

North Korea has nothing to lose - this makes them irrational and more likely to miscalculate in the future Righter, 10 – Worked for the Far Eastern Economic Review and Newsweek in Asia, as development and diplomatic correspondent of The Sunday Times. (Rosemary, 5/25/10, Times Online, “It’s risky, but this time North Korea must pay” [])

It is the lack of obvious motive for this unprovoked attack that has most rattled nerves. The order almost certainly came direct from the ailing “Dear Leader ”, who was later seen promoting the military unit that carried out the attack. But if Kim’s purpose was to impress the North’s immiserated citizenry by giving the South a bloody nose, it sits ill with Pyongyang’s official denial of all responsibility. If it was pique, as seems more likely, at the South’s near-destruction last year of a North Korean warship that had violated the tense maritime boundary, so destructive and unlawful a riposte is disturbingly suggestive of a regime that, reckoning it has nothing to lose, could make still greater miscalculations in the future. The sunshine policy was designed to ensure that North Korea never quite reached this danger point.

Now the impacts:

North Korean aggression and nuclearization will cause escalatory nuclear conflict which destroys the environment and economy, causing extinction Hayes & Hamel-Green, 10 – *Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, AND **Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development act Victoria University (1/5/10, Executive Dean at Victoria, “The Path Not Taken, the Way Still Open: Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia,” [])**


 * The international community is increasingly aware that cooperative diplomacy is the most productive way to tackle the multiple, interconnected global challenges facing humanity, not least of which is the increasing proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Korea and Northeast Asia are instances where risks of nuclear proliferation and actual nuclear use arguably have increased in recent years. This negative trend is a product of continued US nuclear threat projection against the DPRK as part of a general program of coercive diplomacy in this region, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, the breakdown in the Chinese-hosted Six Party Talks towards the end of the Bush Administration, regional concerns over China’s increasing military power, and concerns within some quarters in regional states (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) about whether US extended deterrence (“nuclear umbrella”) afforded under bilateral security treaties can be relied upon for protection. The consequences of failing to address the proliferation threat posed by the North Korea developments, and related political and economic issues, are serious, not only for the Northeast Asian region but for the whole international community. At worst, there is the **__possibility of nuclear attack__**1, whether by **__intention, miscalculation, or merely accident , leading to the resumption of Korean War hostilities. __ **On the Korean Peninsula itself, key population centres are well within short or medium range missiles. The whole of Japan is likely to come within North Korean missile range. Pyongyang has a population of over 2 million, Seoul (close to the North Korean border) 11 million, and Tokyo over 20 million.** __Even a limited nuclear exchange would result in a holocaust of unprecedented proportions.__ **But the catastrophe within the region would not be the only outcome. New research indicates that even a limited nuclear war in the region would rearrange our global climate far more quickly than global warming. Westberg draws attention to new studies modelling the effects of even a limited nuclear exchange involving approximately 100 Hiroshima-sized 15 kt bombs2 (by comparison it should be noted that the United States currently deploys warheads in the range 100 to 477 kt, that is, individual warheads equivalent in yield to a range of 6 to 32 Hiroshimas). The studies indicate that the soot from the fires produced would lead to a decrease in global temperature by 1.25 degrees Celsius for a period of 6-8 years.3 In Westberg’s view: That is not global winter, but the nuclear darkness will cause a deeper drop in temperature than at any time during the last 1000 years. The temperature over the continents would decrease substantially more than the global average. A decrease in rainfall over the continents would also follow… The period of nuclear darkness will cause much greater decrease in grain production than 5% and it will continue for many years...hundreds of millions of people will die from hunger …To make matters even worse, such amounts of smoke injected into the stratosphere would cause a huge reduction in the Earth’s protective ozone. 4 These, of course, are not the only consequences. Reactors might also be targeted, causing further mayhem and downwind radiation effects, superimposed on a smoking, radiating ruin left by nuclear next-use . Millions of refugees would flee the affected regions. The direct impacts, and the follow-on impacts on the global economy via ecological and food insecurity, could **__make the present global financial crisis pale by comparison . __ **How the great powers, especially the nuclear weapons states respond to such a crisis, and in particular, whether nuclear weapons are used in response to nuclear first-use, could make or break the global non proliferation and disarmament regimes. There could be many unanticipated impacts on regional and global security relationships 5, with **__subsequent nuclear breakout and geopolitical turbulence, including possible loss-of-control over fissile material or warheads in the chaos of nuclear war, and aftermath chain-reaction affects involving other potential proliferant states.__ **The Korean nuclear proliferation issue is not just a regional threat but a global one that warrants priority consideration from the international community.**


 * North Korea will use bioweapons**
 * ICG, 9 (6/18/09, International Crisis Group, “North Korea’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Programs,” [], JMP)**


 * This report examines North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities in the context of its military doctrine and national objectives. It is based on open source literature, interviews and unpublished documents made available to Crisis Group. Companion reports published simultaneously assess the DPRK’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities and what the policy response of the international community should be to its recent nuclear and missile testing.[1] North Korea’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missiles pose serious risks to security.** __Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities are the greatest threat, but it also possesses a large stockpile of chemical weapons and is suspected of maintaining a biological weapons program.__ **The Six-Party Talks (China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the U.S.) had been underway since August 2003 with the objective of ending the North’s nuclear ambitions, before Pyongyang announced its withdrawal in April 2009, but** __there is no direct mechanism for dealing with its chemical weapons and possible biological weapons. The North Korean leadership is very unlikely to surrender its WMD unless there is significant change in the political and security environments.__ **The Six-Party Talks pro­duced a “Statement of Principles” in September 2005 that included a commitment to establish a permanent peace mechanism in North East Asia, but the structure and nature of such a cooperative security arrangement is subject to interpretation, negotiation and implementation. Views among the parties differ, and no permanent peace can be established unless North Korea abandons all its WMD programs. The diplomatic tasks are daunting, and diplomacy could fail. If North Korea refuses to engage in arms control and to rid itself of WMD, the international community must be prepared to deal with a wide range of threats, including those posed by Pyongyang’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities.** __Unclassified estimates of the chemical weapons__ **(CW)** __arsenal are imprecise, but the consensus is that the__ **Korean People’s Army** __(KPA) possesses 2,500-5,000 tons,__ **including mustard, phosgene, blood agents, sarin, tabun and V-agents (persistent nerve agents).** __The stockpile__ **does not appear to be increasing but** __is already sufficient to inflict massive civilian casualties on South Korea.__ **The North’s CW can be delivered with long-range artillery, multiple rocket launchers, FROGs (free rocket over ground), ballistic missiles, aircraft and naval vessels. North Korean military doctrine emphasises quick offensive strikes to break through enemy defences in order to achieve national military objectives before the U.S. can intervene effectively on behalf of its South Korean ally. However,** __the North’s conventional military capabilities are declining against those of its potential foes, so the leadership is likely to rely on asymmetric capabilities for its national security objectives. This strategy poses a significant danger because it risks deliberate, accidental or unauthorised WMD attacks or incidents.__


 * That spread globally within six weeks – outweighs nuclear war**
 * Levy, 7 (6-8-07, Janet Ellen, The American Thinking, “The Threat of Bioweapons,” [], JMP)**


 * Immediately following 9-11, an anthrax attack originating from letters containing anthrax spores infected 22 people, killing five. After almost six years, the case has not been solved.** __Intelligence analysts and academics report that North Korea has developed anthrax, plague, and botulism toxin and conducted extensive research on smallpox, typhoid and cholera.__ **A world-renowned bioweapons expert has confirmed that Syria has weapons grade smallpox resistant to all current vaccines developed under the cover of legitimate veterinary research on camelpox, a very closely related virus. The researcher further reports that Syria is suspected of testing the pathogen on prison populations and possibly in the Sudan. Although there are close to 50 organisms that could be used offensively, rogue nations have concentrated their bioweapons development efforts on smallpox, anthrax, plague, botulinum, tularemia and viral hemorrhagic fevers. With the exception of smallpox, which is exclusively a human host disease, all of the other pathogens lend themselves to animal testing as they are zoonotic, or can be transmitted to humans by other species.** __Biological weapons are among the most dangerous in the world today and can be engineered and disseminated to achieve a more deadly result than a nuclear attack.__ **Whereas the explosion of a nuclear bomb would cause massive death in a specific location,** __a biological attack with smallpox could infect multitudes of people across the globe. With incubation periods of up to 17 days, human disseminators could unwittingly cause widespread exposure before diagnosable symptoms indicate an infection and appropriate quarantine procedures are in place.__ **Unlike any other type of weapon,** __bioweapons__ **such as smallpox** __can replicate and infect a chain of people over an indeterminate amount of time from a single undetectable point of release. According to__ **science writer and author of The Hot Zone, Richard** __Preston, "If you took a gram of smallpox__**, which is highly contagious and lethal, and** __for which there's no vaccine available globally now, and released it in the air and created about a hundred cases, the chances are excellent that the virus would go global in six weeks__ **as people moved from city to city......**__the death toll could easily hit the hundreds of millions.....in scale, that's like a nuclear war."__ [**1]** __More so than chemical and nuclear research, bioweapons development programs lend themselves to stealth development.__ **They are difficult to detect, can be conducted alongside legimate research on countermeasures, sheltered in animal research facilities within sophisticated pharmaceutical corporations, disguised as part of routine medical university studies, or be a component of dual use technology development. Detection is primarily through available intelligence information and location-specific biosensors that test for the presence of pathogens.** __Biological weapons have many appealing qualities for warfare and their effects can be engineered and customized from a boutique of possibilities.__ **Offensive pathogens are inexpensive compared to conventional weapons and small quantities can produce disproportionate damage. They have unlimited lethal potential as carriers and can continue to infect more people over time.** __Bioweapons are easy to dispense through a variety of delivery systems from a missile, an aerosol or a food product.__ **They can be placed into a state of dormancy to be activated at a later stage allowing for ease of storage.** __Pathogens are not immediately detectable or identifiable due to varying incubation periods__ **and can be rapidly deployed, activated and impossible to trace. The technology to develop biological agents is widely available for legitimate purposes and large quantities can be developed within days.**


 * Extinction**
 * Ochs 2 – MA in Natural Resource Management from Rutgers University and Naturalist at Grand Teton National Park [Richard, “BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS MUST BE ABOLISHED IMMEDIATELY,” Jun 9, http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html]**


 * Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE. Ironically, the Bush administration has just changed the U.S. nuclear doctrine to allow nuclear retaliation against threats upon allies by conventional weapons. The past doctrine allowed such use only as a last resort when our nation’s survival was at stake. Will the new policy also allow easier use of US bioweapons? How slippery is this slope? Against this tendency can be posed a rational alternative policy. To preclude possibilities of human extinction, "patriotism" needs to be redefined to make humanity’s survival primary and absolute. Even if we lose our cherished freedom, our sovereignty, our government or our Constitution, where there is life, there is hope. What good is anything else if humanity is extinguished? This concept should be promoted to the center of national debate.. For example, for sake of argument, suppose the ancient Israelites developed defensive bioweapons of mass destruction when they were enslaved by Egypt. Then suppose these weapons were released by design or accident and wiped everybody out? As bad as slavery is, extinction is worse. Our generation, our century, our epoch needs to take the long view. We truly hold in our hands the precious gift of all future life. Empires may come and go, but who are the honored custodians of life on earth? Temporal politicians? Corporate competitors? Strategic brinksmen? Military gamers? Inflated egos dripping with testosterone? How can any sane person believe that national sovereignty is more important than survival of the species? Now that extinction is possible, our slogan should be "Where there is life, there is hope." No government, no economic system, no national pride, no religion, no political system can be placed above human survival. The egos of leaders must not blind us. The adrenaline and vengeance of a fight must not blind us. The game is over. If patriotism would extinguish humanity, then patriotism is the highest of all crimes.**


 * Withdrawing __ground troops__ solves risk of a wide conflict**
 * Stanton, 10 – U.S. Army Judge Advocate in Korea from 98-02 and practicing attorney in Washington, D.C. (4/12/10, Joshua, The New Ledger, “It's Time for the U.S. Army to Leave Korea,” [], JMP)**


 * Proceeding against the advice of my cardiologist, I must concede that for once, Ron Paul is actually on to something. The ground component of U.S. Forces Korea, which costs U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars a year to maintain,** __is an__ **equally** __unaffordable political liability on the South Korean street. We should withdraw it.__ **Every Saturday night off-post brawl is a headline in the muck-raking Korean press, for which the American soldier is inevitably blamed, and for which angry mobs perpetually demand renegotiations of the Status of Force Agreement to give Korea’s not-even-remotely-fair judicial system more jurisdiction over American soldiers.** __The South Korean people do not appreciate__ **the security** __our soldiers__ **provide. The way some of them treat our soldiers ought to be a national scandal. Many off-post businesses don’t even let Americans through their front doors.** __The degree of anti-Americanism in South Korea is sufficient to be a significant force protection issue in the event of hostilities.__ **South Korea does not have our back. South Korea made much of the fact that it sent 3,000 soldiers to Iraq, where they sat behind concrete barriers in a secure Kurdish area of Iraq, protected by peshmerga, making no military contribution and taking no combat casualties. Their contribution to the effort in Afghanistan has been negligible, which is more than can be said of their contribution to the Taliban (previous President Roh Moo Hyun reportedly paid them a ransom of up to $20 million in 2007 to free South Korean hostages who took it upon themselves to charter a shiny new bus to bring Christianity to Kandahar). South Korea has been an equally unsteady ally against China.** __The American security blanket has fostered a state of national adolescence by the South Korean public.__ **Too many of them (some polls suggest most) see America as a barrier to reunification with their ethnic kindred in the North. Maybe nothing short of a North Korean attack on the South can encourage more sober thinking by South Koreans about their own security, but I suspect a greater sense of self-reliance and even vulnerability might. During my service in Korea, as U.S. taxpayers subsidized South Korea’s defense, South Korea subsidized Kim Jong Il’s potential offense with billions of dollars in hard currency that sustained the very threat against which we were ostensibly helping to defend. South Korea never made North Korea’s disarmament a condition of this aid. Instead, that aid effectively undermined U.S. and U.N. sanctions meant to force North Korea to disarm. What does South Korea have to show for this colossal outlay now.** __Because South Korea, now__ **one the world’s wealthiest nations,** __expects__ **up to 600,000** __American soldiers to__ **arrive** __protect it__ **from any security contingency,** __successive South Korean governments actually cut their nation’s defense rather than modernizing it and building an effective independent defense.__ **Consequently, South Korea still has a 1970-vintage force structure, designed around a 1970-vintage threat, equipped with 1970-vintage weapons. This is partly the legacy of ten years of leftist administrations, but it’s also the legacy of military welfare that allowed South Korea to defer upgrading its equipment, building a professional volunteer army, and organizing an effective reserve force to deal with security contingencies. Worst of all,** __South Korea diverted billions of dollars that should have been spent on modernizing its military into regime-sustaining aid to Kim Jong Il__**, to be used, as far as anyone knows, for nukes, missiles, artillery, and pretty much everything but infant formula. To this day, South Korea continues to resist accepting operational control over its own forces in the event of war. The U.S. Army presence in Korea is an anachronism, defending against the extinct threat of a conventional North Korean invasion.** __The far greater danger is that if Kim Jong Il assesses our current president as weak, he will choose more limited or less conventional means to strike at our soldiers and their families.__ **Given the reported presence of Taliban operatives in Seoul, he might even plausibly deny responsibility for an attack. Thus, while I don’t go so far as to accept the Princess Bride Doctrine (”never get involved in a land war in Asia”),** __I do not believe it is [not] wise for us to have our forces within easy artillery range of Kim Jong Il, such that he may freely choose the time, place, and manner of our involvement__ **I offer two qualifications here. First,** __this is not to suggest that we unilaterally abrogate the alliance with South Korea. Our air and naval installations in Korea provide useful power-projection capability and are far more secure__**, ironically, than our many scattered and isolated Army posts. I can imagine any number of contingencies for which we’d want to have the ability to move people and supplies into South Korea in a hurry. Second, this is not to suggest that Ron Paul is not an anti-Semitic crypto-racist advocate of a thoughtlessly escapist foreign policy, and broadly speaking, an imbecile. This is just one occasion in which he inadvertently, in the fashion of a stopped clock, aligns with the correct result.**


 * US presence doesn’t deter North Korea – withdrawal will motivate China to stabilize and de-nuclearize the peninsula**
 * Erickson, 10 – Executive Director of CenterMovement.org (5/6/10, Stephen, “End the Cold War in Korea: Bring American Troops Home Before it’s Too Late,” [], JMP)**


 * On the night of March 26 the South Korean 1,200-ton warship Cheonan patrolled the boundary waters between North and South Korea. At 10:45 an explosion near the bow rocked the vessel and sank the Cheonan, taking the lives of 46 crew members with it. Although the investigation is still ongoing, the South Korean Defense Minister has declared that a torpedo is the likeliest source of the blast. North Korea appears to have destroyed the South Korean warship. Normally such an unprovoked attack would start a war, but the Korean peninsula is not a normal place. The Koreans, with their strong sense of nationalism, remain divided along the 38th parallel, with a 2.5 mile “demilitarized zone” between them. Meanwhile approximately 28,000 US troops still help guard the border. An armistice formally ended hostilities in Korea in 1953, but officially the war never ended. No peace treaty was ever signed. One year ago, the North formally and ominously withdrew from the armistice. North Korea, a tiny country with the world’s 4th largest standing army, is the most militarized society in the world. It has a standing army of 1.2 million soldiers, and a peasant militia with as many as 4 million reserves. Some 13,000 artillery pieces, dug into the hills within range of the South Korean capital of Seoul, are poised to obliterate the South’s most important city upon “The Dear Leader’s” command. Some estimates suggest that as many as one million South Koreans could die under such an assault. Then there’s the matter of North Korea’s several nuclear weapons. South Korea, officially the “Republic of Korea,” has about half as many soldiers as the North, but they are **__better trained and far better equipped.__ **South Korea is wealthy and technologically advanced. North Korea has half the population and 1/30th the economy of the South. While the rulers of the North live lavishly, famine killed a million people in the 1990s, and the United Nation’s World Food Program is worried that this year may witness the worst food shortages since then. Starving people can be dangerous people. Historically North Korea uses its military, its only strength, as leverage to obtain outside assistance. South Korea today might well be able to ultimately defend itself against the North, but the bloodshed would be horrific. A key factor in any future conflict is Seoul’s location so near the North. Experts suggest (See “Is Kim Jong-il Planning to Occupy Seoul?” ) that a recently revised North Korean military strategy consists of swiftly taking Seoul and holding the city’s millions of people as hostages. All of this begs a couple of important questions. How many more South Korean ships can be torpedoed before the South retaliates, surely starting a larger war? And, what are 28,000 American troops doing in the middle of this Korean powder keg? As the sinking of the Cheonan clearly indicates, the sparks are already flying. The permanent US military deployment in South Korea is a Cold War anachronism. There is **__absolutely no reason that a nation as advanced and prosperous as South Korea cannot defend itself from its pathetically backward northern brothers and sisters. __ **A well-known night-time satellite image taken from space shows a brilliant South and a North languishing in the Dark Ages. The US presence creates political dysfunction while it minimally protects South Korea. US soldiers on South Korean soil breed resentment. Thousands of nationalist South Korean students regularly take to the streets to protest the Americans soldiers in their country and to call for unification between North and South. South Korean and US government policies are often awkwardly out of step with each other, with America often having the far more hawkish posture, as it did during the W. Bush years. American security guarantees have perhaps sometimes led the government of the South to engage in policies of inappropriate appeasement toward the North. The threat of South Korea investing in nuclear weapons to counter the North might, for example, finally **__persuade China to put sufficient pressure of North Korea. A South Korea determined to match North Korean nuclear weapons development might paradoxically further the goal of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. Most crucially __**, from an American point of view, the US Army is stretched too thin to play much of a role in protecting South Korea. As things stand, American soldiers are little more than targets for North Korean artillery and missiles. A defense of Seoul, its re-conquest, and forcible regime change in the North are all beyond US military capabilities at this time, given its commitments elsewhere. US participation on the ground in a new Korean War would also stress the US federal budget beyond the breaking point. The United States never properly created a new foreign and defense policy when the Cold War ended. Instead, it has generally maintained its Cold War military posture, with bases and commitments strewn throughout the globe, even as new challenges since 911 have called American forces to new missions. The US military presence in Korea is a Cold War artifact that needs to be brought home before it’s too late. **

Observation 2 is Regionalism


 * US East-Asian alliance relationships are unsustainable - these nations should develop a regional security strategy - solves a laundry list of impacts**
 * Francis, 6 – former Australian Ambassador to Croatia and fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University from 05-06 (Fall 2006, Neil, Harvard International Review, “For an East Asian Union: Rethinking Asia's Cold War Alliances,” [], JMP)**


 * At the conclusion of the Second World War, the United States established bilateral military alliances in the Asia-Pacific intended to contain Soviet and Chinese communist expansion in the region. US security strategy now focuses largely on combating terrorism and denying weapons of mass destruction to so-called rogue states. It is a strategy that cannot be implemented with geographic mutual defense treaties formed to address conventional military threats. Furthermore, the United States has demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq that it is prepared to pursue its global security interests unilaterally, even at the risk of its political relations with traditional alliance partners. What happened over Iraq between the __U__nited __S__tates and its European allies could equally happen between the __U__nited __S__tates and its Asian allies over Taiwan or North Korea with serious consequences for the interests of countries in that region. East Asian powers need to develop a collective security strategy for the region that **__does not rely on the __ **__U__nited __S__tates’ participation. Prudence suggests that East Asian countries need to take the opportunity offered by the recently inaugurated East Asian Summit (EAS) to begin the process of developing an East Asian community as the first step toward the realization of an East Asian Union. This will occur only if led by a strong, proactive Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). China is now the world’s second-largest economy, almost two-thirds as large as the United States in terms of domestic purchasing power. In 2005 China overtook Japan to become the world’s third-largest exporter of goods and services. In 2004 it was the third-largest trading partner with ASEAN; the second largest with Japan, Australia, and India; and the largest with the Republic of Korea. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has estimated that in 2004, in purchasing power parity dollar terms, China’s military expenditure was US$161.1 billion, the second highest in the world. The Pentagon has estimated that in 2005 China’s military expenditure was two to three times larger than its official figure of US$29.9 billion. China’s growing economic and military strength along with the United States’ preoccupation with its new security agenda has made some East Asian countries increasingly apprehensive. Particularly since September 11, bilateral military alliances have become less relevant to US security interests, and the __U__nited __S__tates will likely reduce its military presence in the East Asian region. Parts of Asia believe that Chinese hegemonic aspirations for East Asia could emerge if the United States were to disengage from the region. Fear of China and the possibility that it harbors hegemonic aspirations were among the factors that led to the creation of ASEAN in 1967 and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1993. Engaging China in an East Asian union in the future would ensure it will pay a high price in loss of trade and investment if it acts against the interests of the union’s other members. Prospects for an East Asian Community In December 2005 ASEAN hosted an inaugural East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur. The summit involved the 10 ASEAN countries; the ASEAN+3 countries of China, Japan, and South Korea; as well as Australia, New Zealand, and India. The summit declaration of December 14, 2005, described the meeting as a forum for “dialogue on broad strategic, political and economic issues of common interest and concern with the aim of promoting peace, stability and economic prosperity in East Asia.” The declaration also noted that the summit could “play a significant role in community building in this region.” ASEAN would work “in partnership with the other participants of the East Asian Summit,” but ASEAN was to retain leadership, preventing control of East Asian community building by either the ASEAN+3 countries, which China could dominate, or the 16 EAS countries, which some felt could steer the EAS toward what would be an unwelcome “Western” agenda. It remains to be seen whether an East Asian community can emerge under ASEAN leadership. ASEAN is an association: it is not a strong regional institution with common interests and objectives. It reflects the diversity of its membership, which has traditionally preferred an unstructured organization, a consensus approach to decision making, and avoidance of controversial issues or intervention in the affairs of its members. The ASEAN Way under Challenge ASEAN’s ways, however, may be changing. Since the late 1990s ASEAN’s non-intervention principle has come under challenge. In 1997 ASEAN was faced with an Asian economic crisis triggered by currency speculators and in 1997 to 1998 with a regional pollution haze problem caused by illegal land-clearance fires in Indonesia. ASEAN’s ineffectiveness in these crises brought internal scrutiny to bear on ASEAN’s policy of non-intervention in domestic affairs. As a result, since 1999 ASEAN foreign ministers have discussed these and other transnational problems—illegal migration, terrorism, and the drug trade—that call for collective responses. They have also considered allowing ASEAN to oversee electoral and governance processes within member states. In 1999 a number of ASEAN countries defied the long-standing ASEAN position that East Timor was an internal matter for Indonesia and sent peace-keeping forces to the island to help quell the violence instigated there by anti-independence militia backed by Indonesian armed forces. In 2005 ASEAN placed public pressure on the government of Myanmar to allow an ASEAN delegation to visit Myanmar and assess what progress had been made in human rights and democratization. With the aid of the United States and European Union, ASEAN also persuaded Myanmar to relinquish its role as ASEAN chair. ASEAN’s actions in the 1990s suggest increased sensitivity to the negative effects of individual member nations on the organization’s international standing as well as the beginning of openness toward intervention in the domestic affairs of its members. Toward Realization At its December 2005 summit, ASEAN agreed to institute an ASEAN Charter by 2020 to provide what Malaysian Prime Minister Badawi has called a “mini-constitution,” a document that will establish an institutional framework for ASEAN as well as a legal identity recognized by the United Nations. The older members—Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—want ASEAN to become something more than an association. Institutionally strong and mostly democratic, they might more readily welcome a rules-governed organization similar to the European Union. Others with institutionally weak, authoritarian governments, such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam, are wary of placing their domestic policies under greater international scrutiny and favor the status quo. If the former nations prevail it will augur well for the realization of an East Asian community with the potential to evolve into an East Asian Union. An East Asian community composed of the 16 EAS participants would represent more than 60 percent of the world’s population and possess a combined GDP greater than the European Union. It could provide significantly increased trade benefits to its members, help dampen Sino-Japanese rivalry, ease the present tensions in the region over Japan’s Pacific War, encourage more cooperative attitudes toward the issue of natural resource exploitation in East Asia, promote engagement over containment, and **__prevent domination of the region by any major power . __ **The determining factor will be ASEAN’s ability to provide the leadership necessary to create a strong, independent East Asian Union.**


 * Regionalism is currently halfhearted – only a __clear sign__ of U.S. withdrawal can motivate __sustainable__ regional security cooperation **
 * Carpenter and Bandow 4 - * Vice President of Defense and Foreign Studies at the Cato Institute, AND** Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute (Ted Galen Carpenter, 12/2004, The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations With North and South Korea, pg 160-161)DR

The security treaties with the United States and the U.S. troop presence allow the diversion of financial resources to domestic priorities. And relying on the United States for security avoids painful debates about what kind of policy those countries need to pursue. The U.S. security blanket is entirely too comfortable for Washington’s clients. Without a decisive move by the United States to take away that security blanket by a certain date, changes in the security posture of South Korea and Japan will be very slow to occur. Second, the United States should encourage the various nations of East Asia to take greater responsibility for the security and stability of their region. In limited and at times hesitant ways that process is taking place even without U.S. encouragement. ASEAN has begun to address security issues, most notably taking an interest in the disorders in Indonesia that threatened to spiral out of control in the late 1990s and that continue to pose a problem. Australia assumed a leadership role in helping to resolve the East Timor crisis. It was revealing that Canberra became more proactive after the United States declined to send peacekeeping troops or otherwise become deeply involved in that situation. 37 According to the conventional wisdom that U.S. leadership is imperative lest allies and client states despair and fail to deal with regional security problems, Australia’s actions suggest just the opposite. When countries in a region facing a security problem cannot offload that problem[s] onto the United States, they take action to contain a crisis and defend their own interests. More recently, Australia has developed a more defined and robust regional strategy. In a June 2003 speech, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer stated that Australia would not necessarily turn to the United Nations before acting in crises that could affect its security. Instead, Canberra was prepared to join— and sometimes even lead— coalitions of the willing to address urgent regional challenges. Downer spoke as Australia prepared to send 2,000 police officers and supporting military personnel to the Solomon Islands, which had experienced such an epidemic of violence and corruption that it verged on being a failed state. Earlier, Prime Minister John Howard had told Australian lawmakers that having failed states in its neighborhood threatened Australia’s interests, because such states could become havens for criminals and political extremists. 38 Perhaps most revealing, the Australian government plans to double its defense spending over the next three years with the intent of becoming a much more serious military player. 39 Third, Washington should indicate to Tokyo that it no longer objects to Japan’s assuming a more active political and military posture in East Asia. Quite the contrary, U.S. officials ought to adopt the position that, as the principal indigenous great power, Japan will be expected to help stabilize East Asia, contribute to the resolution of disputes, and contain disruptive or expansionist threats that might emerge. Washington also should use its diplomatic influence to encourage political and security cooperation between Japan and its neighbors, but U.S. policymakers must not let East Asian apprehension about a more assertive Japan dictate American policy and keep the United States in its role as regional policeman. It is reasonable to explore with Tokyo avenues of cooperation in those areas where there is a sufficient convergence of interests. That cooperation should not, however, take the form of a new alliance. Proposals to reform and strengthen the alliance are unwise. 40 They will perpetuate Japan’s unhealthy dependence on the United States even as they arouse China’s suspicions of a U.S.–Japanese attempt to contain the People’s Republic. An ongoing security dialogue and occasional joint military exercises would be more appropriate than a formal alliance for East Asia’s security needs in the twenty-first century. Elaborate, formal treaty commitments are a bad idea in general. They are excessively rigid and can lock the United States into commitments that may make sense under one set of conditions but become ill-advised or even counterproductive when conditions change. Beyond that general objection, a U.S.–Japanese alliance would be likely to create special problems in the future. Such an alliance would provide tangible evidence to those in the People’s Republic who contend that Washington is intent on adopting a containment policy directed against China. 41 The United States should retain the ability to work with Japan and other powers if Beijing’s ambitions threaten to lead to Chinese dominance of the region, but Washington must be wary of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. An informal security relationship with Japan would preserve the flexibility to block China’s hegemony, if that danger emerges, without needlessly antagonizing Beijing. America still can have a potent power projection capability with a reduced military presence based in Guam and other U.S. territories in the central and west-central Pacific.

Specially, withdrawal will cause Korea to sign onto multilateral security organizations - this causes total peace on Asia and is key to solve global nuclear war Lee, 9 – Seoul National University (December 2009, Geun, “The Nexus between Korea’s Regional Security Options and Domestic Politics,” [|www.cfr.org], JMP)

Korea’s Option of Multilateral Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia The idea of multilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia is not a recent one. Since 19 88, Korea has advocated regional security cooperation, and in 19 94 , Korea officially proposed the Northeast Asia Security Dialogue (NEASED) at the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). Serious discussion of multilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia started in 2005 during the Six Party Talks to resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. In fact, the Six Party Talks have been an important generator of innovative ideas, and participants in the Six Party Talks have gradually realized the importance of a multilateral security mechanism in Northeast Asia, even if they do not share identical interests in such a mechanism.6 From Korea’s perspective, a semi-regional arrangement like the Six Party Talks produces five main benefits.7 First, a multilateral security arrangement in Northeast Asia composed of the United States, China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, and South Korea will provide insurance to the concerned parties that the agreements struck at the Six Party Talks will not be violated by the participants. Cheating and lack of trust are among the fundamental problems in solving the Korean nuclear crisis, and a multilateral binding of agreements can help solve the problems by increasing transparency and the transaction costs of violating the agreements. Second, a multilateral security arrangement in Northeast Asia is fundamentally a global security arrangement, as it includes all the global powers except the __E__uropean __U__nion. The United States and China unofficially form the Group of Two (G2), Japan is an economic superpower, and Russia used to be the leader of the Eastern bloc. The high concentration of superpowers in Northeast Asia poses a threat to Korea because **__an outbreak of great-power conflict in the region will definitely devastate Korea, if not the world. Therefore, Korea has reason to promote a multilateral security mechanism that increases transparency among global powers and functions as a confidence-building measure. __** Third, voluntary or involuntary betrayal by the __U__nited __S__tates has preoccupied many Koreans and security experts. Some Koreans felt betrayed when the United States agreed to the division of the Korean peninsula. The Park Chung-hee government felt abandoned when the United States withdrew a significant portion of U.S. soldiers from Korea, and was taken aback by rapprochement between the United States and China. Many Koreans got upset when the United States supported the authoritarian Korean government and kept silent during the Kwangju massacre in 1980. They again felt betrayed when it was rumored that the Clinton administration planned air strikes against North Korea without informing South Korea. And they were upset with the unilateral foreign policy stance of the George W. Bush administration, including its decision to pull the second infantry division out of Korea. A multilateral security arrangement in Northeast Asia will mitigate the security concern of Korea when the __U__nited __S__tates either voluntarily or involuntarily defects from its commitment to Korea. Fourth, multilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia is necessary to **__establish a peace system on the Korean peninsula and ultimately unify Korea. __** Many Korean people doubt that the major powers, including the United States, want the unification of the Korean peninsula. Korea wants to deal with these powers transparently through a multilateral security cooperation mechanism. Fifth, seeing the latest global financial crisis and the rise of China, many Koreans recognize the need to adjust Korea’s external strategy to the changing geoeconomic world. Making exclusive ties with the __U__nited __S__tates may be a high-risk investment in a past hegemon, while exclusive ties with China would be a high-risk investment in an uncertain future. In this transitional period for geoeconomics, multilateral security cooperation is an attractive partial exit option for Korea. A multilateral security mechanism in Northeast Asia appeals to Korea, so **__if voice and loyalty in the U.S.-Korea relationship do not reveal positive correlations, then Korea will pay more attention to multilateral regional options.__** Moreover, **__if the U.S. capability and credibility in delivering its security promises to alliance partners are questioned, there will be fewer veto powers in Korean politics against a multilateral security mechanism in Northeast Asia, particularly when such an option still maintains a loose form of the U.S.-Korea alliance. __**

Accelerating U.S. withdrawal is key to catalyze multipolar cooperation Espiritu, 6 – Commander, U.S. Navy (3/15/06, Commander Emilson M. Espiritu, “The Eagle Heads Home: Rethinking National Security Policy for The Asia-Pacific Region,” [], JMP)

Can the U.S. live with the risk of an unstable Korean Peninsula? The obvious answer is “no.” It is clear that a stable Korean peninsula is more beneficial to the United States. Clearly North Korea is a major player to determining whether the Korean Peninsula remains stable. One would argue as long as the current regime of Kim Jung Il remains in power and continue to pursue WMD (i.e. Nuclear weapons) there will be a **__permanent unstable scenario in the region. __**62 On the other hand, as long as the __U__nited __S__tates remains in the region and continues to be forward deployed in South Korea, that the U.S. is contributing to such instability in the region. According to Revere, if there is an unstable region (Korean Peninsula), the U.S. goals become harder to achieve.63 Should an unstable Korean Peninsula exist, this could possibly lead to conflicts in the region, most obvious between the Koreas ; promote unhealthy economic competition in the region, whereas more developed nations (Japan, China) do not provide any form of economic assistance to the Koreas; and more dangerously a weapons/arms race (maybe to include more nuclear weapons in the region) to maintain a power balance. In order to strengthen regional stability, the U.S. would need to succeed in countering terrorism, enhancing economic prosperity, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, promoting democracy, and addressing transnational issues.64 At what cost and risks is the U.S. willing to accept in order to achieve stability in the region? Conclusion The United States cannot live with the risks involved in an unstable region. The Korean Peninsula and the East-Asia Pacific region are home to many of the economic giants worldwide. Additionally, with the rising cost of economic commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. must rethink alternatives to bring stability in the East-Asia Pacific region more specifically, the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. must continue to pursue peace and stability using all elements of national power certainly using **__less emphasis on a military solution. __** Additionally, the U.S. must selectively engage the Koreas to bring stability to the Korean Peninsula by pursuing a combined strategy of isolationism and off-shore balancing. Diplomatic, Informational, and Economic solutions take time. Perhaps by using other countries particularly in the region would be beneficial to the __U__nited __S__tates but also to the other countries as well. Strategic positioning of U.S. troops not only around the Korean Peninsula but throughout the world is the key to pursuing the National Objectives. By pursuing a stable Korean Peninsula without heavy U.S. involvement is beneficial both internationally and economically. Accelerating the withdrawal of U.S. troops, could lead to a multi-polar balance of power in the region. 65 Obviously, this would require a significant change in foreign policy and power position in the region; it would certainly cause other nations to reconsider their national security strategy. All in all, in a speech given by James A. Kelley, stated that “Regional stability remains our overarching strategic goal and provides the underpinnings for achievement of other key goals and objectives.”66 Finally, as stated in the 2006 QDR, “Victory can only be achieved through the patient accumulation of quiet successes and the orchestration of all elements of national and international power.” 67 Perhaps by completely withdrawing all U.S. troops from South Korea could potentially lead to one of these successes and bring stabilization to the region without heavy U.S. involvement. It is possible by taking the “let them work it out” (the Koreas) approach would certainly be advantageous to the U.S. The time is now for the Eagle to head home.

That’s key to solve terrorism, Taiwan Conflict, territorial disputes, disease, and environmental degradation Nanto, 8 – Specialist in Industry and Trade Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division for Congressional Research Services (1/4, “East Asian Regional Architecture: New Economic and Security Arrangements and U.S. Policy,” www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33653.pdf)

A stronger regional security organization in East Asia could play a role in quelling terrorism by violent extremists. Since terrorism is a transnational problem, the United States relies on international cooperation to counter it. Without close multilateral cooperation, there are simply too many nooks and crannies for violent extremists to exploit.101 Currently, most of that cooperation is bilateral or between the United States and its traditional allies. While the ASEAN Regional Forum and ASEAN + 3, for example, have addressed the issue of terrorism, neither has conducted joint counter-terrorism exercises as has the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Neither organization as a group, moreover, has joined U.S. initiatives aimed at North Korean nuclear weapons (e.g., the Proliferation Security Initiative). Meanwhile, tensions continue across the Taiwan Strait, and disputes over territory and drilling rights have flared up between China and Japan and between Japan and South Korea. (For the United States, there is a growing possibility of nationalist territorial conflicts between two or more U.S. allies.102) The North Korean nuclear issue remains unresolved; North Korea has conducted tests of ballistic missiles and a nuclear weapon; and the oppressive military rule in Burma/Myanmar continues. Added to these concerns are several regional issues: diseases (such as avian flu, SARS, and AIDS), environmental degradation, disaster mitigation and prevention, high seas piracy, and weapons proliferation. Memories of the 1997-99 Asian financial crisis still haunt policy makers in Asian countries. These are some of the major U.S. interests and issues as the United States proceeds with its policy toward a regional architecture in East Asia. Since this policy is aimed at the long-term structure of East Asian nations, it can be separated, somewhat, from current pressing problems. A metric by which any architecture can be evaluated, however, is how well it contributes to a resolution of problems as they now exist or will exist in the future.

The US will retaliate against a terrorist attack - leads to global nuclear war Speice 6 (Patrick, JD Candidate at the College of William and Mary, “NEGLIGENCE AND NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION: ELIMINATING THE CURRENT LIABILITY BARRIER TO BILATERAL U.S.-RUSSIAN NONPROLIFERATION ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS,” William & Mary Law Review, February 2006, 47 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 1427)

Accordingly, there is a significant and ever-present risk that terrorists could acquire a nuclear device or fissile material from Russia as a result of the confluence of Russian economic decline and the end of stringent Soviet-era nuclear security measures. 39 Terrorist groups could acquire a nuclear weapon by a number of methods, including "steal[ing] one intact from the stockpile of a country possessing such weapons, or ... [being] sold or given one by [*1438] such a country, or [buying or stealing] one from another subnational group that had obtained it in one of these ways." 40 Equally threatening, however, is the risk that terrorists will steal or purchase fissile material and construct a nuclear device on their own. Very little material is necessary to construct a highly destructive nuclear weapon. 41 Although nuclear devices are extraordinarily complex, the technical barriers to constructing a workable weapon are not significant. 42 Moreover, the sheer number of methods that could be used to deliver a nuclear device into the United States makes it **__incredibly [is] likely that terrorists could successfully employ a nuclear weapon__** once it was built. 43 Accordingly, supply-side controls that are aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear material in the first place are the most effective means of countering the risk of nuclear terrorism. 44 Moreover, the end of the Cold War eliminated the rationale for maintaining a large military-industrial complex in Russia, and the nuclear cities were closed. 45 This resulted in at least 35,000 nuclear scientists becoming unemployed in an economy that was collapsing. 46 Although the economy has stabilized somewhat, there [*1439] are still at least 20,000 former scientists who are unemployed or underpaid and who are too young to retire, 47 raising the chilling prospect that these scientists will be tempted to sell their nuclear knowledge, or steal nuclear material to sell, to states or terrorist organizations with nuclear ambitions. 48 The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate human and economic losses. 49 Moreover, there would be **__immense political pressure in the U __**nited S tates to discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and potentially **__triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict__**. 50 In addition to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. 51 **__This__** proliferation **__will__** increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States [*1440] or its allies by hostile states, 52 as well as in **__crease the likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the U__**nited **__S__****t**ates **__and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons__**. 53

Territorial disputes draw in great powers - causes World War 3 Waldron, 97 – professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College and an associate of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard (March 1997, Arthur, Commentary, “How Not to Deal with China,” EBSCO)

MAKING THESE flash-points all the more volatile has been a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of China's weapons acquisitions. An Asian arms race of sorts was already gathering steam in the post-cold-war era, driven by national rivalries and the understandable desire of newly rich nation-states to upgrade their capacities; but the Chinese build-up has intensified it. In part a payoff to the military for its role at Tiananmen Square in 1989, China's current build-up is part and parcel of the regime's major shift since that time away from domestic liberalization and international openness toward repression and irredentism. Today China buys weapons from European states and Israel, but most importantly from Russia. The latest multibillion-dollar deal includes two Sovremenny-class destroyers equipped with the much-feared SS-N-22 cruise missile, capable of defeating the Aegis anti-missile defenses of the U.S. Navy and thus sinking American aircraft carriers. This is in addition to the Su-27 fighter aircraft, quiet Kilo-class submarines, and other force-projection and deterrent technologies. In turn, the Asian states are buying or developing their own advanced aircraft, missiles, and submarines--and considering nuclear options. The sort of unintended escalation which started two world wars could arise from any of the conflicts around China's periphery. It nearly did so in March 1996, when China, in a blatant act of intimidation, fired ballistic missiles in the Taiwan Straits. It could arise from a Chinese-Vietnamese confrontation, particularly if the Vietnamese should score some unexpected military successes against the Chinese, as they did in 1979, and if the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which they are now a member, should tip in the direction of Hanoi. It could flare up from the smoldering insurgencies among Tibetans, Muslims, or Mongolians living inside China. Chains of alliance or interest, perhaps not clearly understood until the moment of crisis itself, could easily draw in neighboring states-- Russia, or India, or Japan--or the United States.

Environmental disasters lead to extinction Watson 6 (Captain Paul, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Former Field Correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club Member, Greenpeace Member, Last Mod 9-17, http://www.eco-action.org/dt/beerswil.html)

The facts are clear. More plant and animal species will go through extinction within our generation than have been lost thorough natural causes over the past two hundred million years. Our single human generation, that is, all people born between 1930 and 2010 will witness the complete obliteration of one third to one half of all the Earth's life forms, each and every one of them the product of more than two billion years of evolution. This is biological meltdown, and what this really means is the end to vertebrate evolution on planet Earth. Nature is under siege on a global scale. Biotopes, i.e., environmentally distinct regions, from tropical and temperate rainforests to coral reefs and coastal estuaries, are disintegrating in the wake of human onslaught. The destruction of forests and the proliferation of human activity will remove more than 20 percent of all terrestrial plant species over the next fifty years. Because plants form the foundation for entire biotic communities, their demise will carry with it the extinction of an exponentially greater number of animal species -- perhaps ten times as many faunal species for each type of plant eliminated. Sixty-five million years ago, a natural cataclysmic event resulted in extinction of the dinosaurs. Even with a plant foundation intact, it took more than 100,000 years for faunal biological diversity to re-establish itself. More importantly, the resurrection of biological diversity assumes an intact zone of tropical forests to provide for new speciation after extinction. Today, the tropical rain forests are disappearing more rapidly than any other bio-region, ensuring that after the age of humans, the Earth will remain a biological, if not a literal desert for eons to come. The present course of civilization points to ecocide -- the death of nature. Like a run-a-way train, civilization is speeding along tracks of our own manufacture towards the stone wall of extinction. The human passengers sitting comfortably in their seats, laughing, partying, and choosing to not look out the window. Environmentalists are those perceptive few who have their faces pressed against the glass, watching the hurling bodies of plants and animals go screaming by. Environmental activists are those even fewer people who are trying desperately to break into the fortified engine of greed that propels this destructive specicidal juggernaut. Others are desperately throwing out anchors in an attempt to slow the monster down while all the while, the authorities, blind to their own impending destruction, are clubbing, shooting and jailing those who would save us all. SHORT MEMORIES Civilized humans have for ten thousand years been marching across the face of the Earth leaving deserts in their footprints. Because we have such short memories, we forgot the wonder and splendor of a virgin nature. We revise history and make it fit into our present perceptions. For instance, are you aware that only two thousand years ago, the coast of North Africa was a mighty forest? The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians built powerful ships from the strong timbers of the region. Rome was a major exporter of timber to Europe. The temple of Jerusalem was built with titanic cedar logs, one image of which adorns the flag of Lebanon today. Jesus Christ did not live in a desert, he was a man of the forest. The Sumerians were renowned for clearing the forests of Mesopotamia for agriculture. But the destruction of the coastal swath of the North African forest stopped the rain from advancing into the interior. Without the rain, the trees died and thus was born the mighty Sahara, sired by man and continued to grow southward at a rate of ten miles per year, advancing down the length of the continent of Africa. And so will go Brazil. The precipitation off the Atlantic strikes the coastal rain forest and is absorbed and sent skyward again by the trees, falling further into the interior. Twelve times the moisture falls and twelve times it is returned to the sky -- all the way to the Andes mountains. Destroy the coastal swath and desertify Amazonia -- it is as simple as that. Create a swath anywhere between the coast and the mountains and the rains will be stopped. We did it before while relatively primitive. We learned nothing. We forgot. So too, have we forgotten that walrus once mated and bred along the coast of Nova Scotia, that sixty million bison once roamed the North American plains. One hundred years ago, the white bear once roamed the forests of New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces. Now it is called the polar bear because that is where it now makes its last stand. EXTINCTION IS DIFFICULT TO APPRECIATE Gone forever are the European elephant, lion and tiger. The Labrador duck, gint auk, Carolina parakeet will never again grace this planet of ours. Lost for all time are the Atlantic grey whales, the Biscayan right whales and the Stellar sea cow. Our children will never look upon the California condor in the wild or watch the Palos Verde blue butterfly dart from flower to flower. Extinction is a difficult concept to fully appreciate. What has been is no more and never shall be again. It would take another creation and billions of years to recreate the passenger pigeon. It is the loss of billions of years of evolutionary programming. It is the destruction of beauty, the obliteration of truth, the removal of uniqueness, the scarring of the sacred web of life To be responsible for an extinction is to commit blasphemy against the divine. It is the greatest of all possible crimes, more evil than murder, more appalling than genocide, more monstrous than even the apparent unlimited perversities of the human mind. To be responsible for the complete and utter destruction of a unique and sacred life form is arrogance that seethes with evil, for the very opposite of evil is live. It is no accident that these two words spell out each other in reverse. And yet, a reporter in California recently told me that "all the redwoods in California are not worth the life on one human being." What incredible arrogance. The rights a species, any species, must take precedence over the life of an individual or another species. This is a basic ecological law. It is not to be tampered with by primates who have molded themselves into divine legends in their own mind. For each and every one of the thirty million plus species that grace this beautiful planet are essential for the continued well-being of which we are all a part, the planet Earth -- the divine entity which brought us forth from the fertility of her sacred womb. As a sea-captain I like to compare the structural integrity of the biosphere to that of a ship's hull. Each species is a rivet that keeps the hull intact. If I were to go into my engine room and find my engineers busily popping rivets from the hull, I would be upset and naturally I would ask them what they were doing. If they told me that they discovered that they could make a dollar each from the rivets, I could do one of three things. I could ignore them. I could ask them to cut me in for a share of the profits, or I could kick their asses out of the engine room and off my ship. If I was a responsible captain, I would do the latter. If I did not, I would soon find the ocean pouring through the holes left by the stolen rivets and very shortly after, my ship, my crew and myself would disappear beneath the waves. And that is the state of the world today. The political leaders, i.e., the captains at the helms of their nation states, are ignoring the rivet poppers or they are cutting themselves in for the profits. There are very few asses being kicked out of the engine room of spaceship Earth. With the rivet poppers in command, it will not be long until the biospheric integrity of the Earth collapses under the weight of ecological strain and tides of death come pouring in. And that will be the price of progress -- ecological collapse, the death of nature, and with it the horrendous and mind numbing specter of massive human destruction.

Disease spread risks extinction Steinbruner 98 – Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution [John D., “Biological weapons: A plague upon all houses,” Foreign Policy, Dec 22, LN]

It is a considerable comfort and undoubtedly a key to our survival that, so far, the main lines of defense against this threat have not depended on explicit policies or organized efforts. In the long course of evolution, the human body has developed physical barriers and a biochemical immune system whose sophistication and effectiveness exceed anything we could design or as yet even fully understand. But evolution is a sword that cuts both ways: New diseases emerge, while old diseases mutate and adapt. Throughout history, there have been epidemics during which human immunity has broken down on an epic scale. An infectious agent believed to have been the plague bacterium killed an estimated 20 million people over a four-year period in the fourteenth century, including nearly one-quarter of Western Europe's population at the time. Since its recognized appearance in 1981, some 20 variations of the HIVvirus have infected an estimated 29.4 million worldwide, with 1.5 million people currently dying of aids each year. Malaria, tuberculosis, and cholera-once thought to be under control-are now making a comeback. As we enter the twenty-first century, changing conditions have enhanced the potential for widespread contagion. The rapid growth rate of the total world population, the unprecedented freedom of movement across international borders, and scientific advances that expand the capability for the deliberate manipulation of pathogens are all cause for worry that the problem might be greater in the future than it has ever been in the past. The threat of infectious pathogens is not just an issue of public health, but a fundamental security problem for the species as a whole.

Observation 3 is China Conflict

2 scenarios:

First is Hegemonic Decline The plan eases the transition to a more multipolar world – trying to cling to the status quo makes hegemonic decline and conflict with China inevitable Bandow, 09 – Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance and Cato Institute and former Special Assistant to Reagan (1/12/09, Doug, “First Among Equals,” [], JMP)

It’s the job of military planners to plot future contingencies, which is why the U.S. Joint Forces Command looked ahead in its newly published Joint Operating Environment 2008. Despite obvious foreign threats, America’s destiny continues to remain largely in its own hands. No other country could draft such a report with such a perspective. The Europeans, constrained by the European Union and their memories of World War II, must cast a wary eye towards Russia and have little military means to influence events much beyond Africa. For all of its pretensions of power, Moscow is economically dependent on Europe and fearful of an expanding China; Russia’s military revival consists of the ability to beat up small neighbors on its border. Countries like Australia, South Korea and Japan are not without resources, but they are able to influence their regions, no more. Brazil is likely to become the dominant player in South America, but global clout is far away. India and China are emerging powers, but remain well behind Russia and especially the United States. Every other nation would have to start its operational analysis with America, which alone possesses the ability to intervene decisively in every region. The main challenge facing the United States will be becoming more like other nations. That is, over time other states will grow economically relative to America. That will allow them to improve and expand their militaries. Washington will long remain first among equals, the most powerful single global player. But eventually it will no longer be able to impose its will on any nation in any circumstance. That doesn’t mean the United States will be threatened. Other countries won’t be able to defeat America or force it to terms. But the outcomes of ever more international controversies will become less certain. Other governments will be more willing in more instances to say no to Washington. Especially China. Much will change in the coming years, but as the JOE 2008 observes, The Sino-American relationship represents one of the great strategic question marks of the next twenty-five years. Regardless of the outcome—cooperative or coercive, or both—China will become increasingly important in the considerations and strategic perceptions of joint force commanders. What kind of a power is Beijing likely to become? Chinese policymakers emphasize that they plan a “peaceful rise,” but their ambitions loom large. Argues JOE 2008, while the People’s Republic of China doesn’t “emphasize the future strictly in military terms,” the Chinese do calculate “that eventually their growing strength will allow them to dominate Asia and the Western Pacific.” More ominously, argues the Joint Forces Command, “The Chinese are working hard to ensure that if there is a military confrontation with the __U__nited __S__tates sometime in the future, they will be ready.” Yet this assessment is far less threatening than it sounds. The PRC is not capable (nor close to being capable) of threatening vital U.S. interests—conquering American territory, threatening our liberties and constitutional system, cutting off U.S. trade with the rest of the world, dominating Eurasia and turning that rich resource base against America. After all, the United States has the world’s most sophisticated and powerful nuclear arsenal; China’s intercontinental delivery capabilities are quite limited. America has eleven carrier groups while Beijing has none. Washington is allied with most every other industrialized state and a gaggle of the PRC’s neighbors. China is surrounded by nations with which it has been at war in recent decades: Russia, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and India. Indeed, today Beijing must concentrate on defending itself. In pointing to the PRC’s investment in submarines, the JOE 2008 acknowledges: “The emphasis on nuclear submarines and an increasingly global Navy in particular, underlines worries that the U.S. Navy possesses the ability to shut down China’s energy imports of oil—80% of which go through the straits of Malacca.” The Chinese government is focused on preventing American intervention against it in its own neighborhood, not on contesting U.S. dominance elsewhere in the world, let alone in North America. Washington almost certainly will be unable to thwart Beijing, at least at acceptable cost. China needs spend only a fraction of America’s military outlays to develop a deterrent capability —nuclear sufficiency to forestall nuclear coercion, submarine and missile forces to sink U.S. carriers, and anti-satellite and cyber-warfare weapons to blind and disrupt American forces. Washington could ill afford to intervene in East Asia against the PRC so equipped. Such a military is well within China’s reach. Notes JOE 2008: “by conservative calculations it is easily possible that by the 2030s China could modernize its military to reach a level of approximately one quarter of current U.S. capabilities without any significant impact on its economy.” Thus, absent the unlikely economic and social collapse of China, in not too many years Beijing will [be] able to enforce its “no” to America. Washington must reconsider its response. U.S. taxpayers already spend as much as everyone else on earth on the military. It’s a needless burden, since promiscuous intervention overseas does not make Americans safer. To maintain today’s overwhelming edge over progressively more powerful militaries in China, Russia, India and other states would require disproportionately larger military outlays in the __U__nited __S__tates. **__It’s a game Washington cannot win.__** A better alternative would be to more carefully delineate vital interests, while treating lesser issues as matters for diplomacy rather than military action. Equally important, the American government should inform its allies that their security is in the first instance their responsibility. Washington should act as an offshore balancer to prevent domination of Eurasia by a hostile hegemon. But the __U__nited __S__tates should not attempt to coercively micro-manage regional relations. Stepping back today would **__reduce pressure on Beijing to engage in a sustained arms buildup to limit U.S. intervention in the future. If the PRC nevertheless moved forward, its neighbors could take note and respond accordingly. Encouraging China to keep its rise peaceful is in everyone’s interest. __** Despite the many challenges facing U.S. policy, America retains an extraordinarily advantageous position in today’s global order. Eventually, the __U__nited __S__tates is likely to fall to merely first among many—the globe’s leading state, but no longer the hyper- or unipower, as America has been called. **__The sooner Washington begins preparing for this new role, the smoother will be the transition.__**

Withdrawal solves accidental war with China and leads to a nuclear free peninsula Garfinkle, 03 – taught American foreign policy and Middle East politics at the University of Pennsylvania and is editor of The National Interest (1/27/03, Adam, National Review, “Checking Kim,” [], JMP)

NO NORMAL DIPLOMACY The U.S. finds itself in an unenviable situation: one in which it has no military options, yet normal diplomacy is futile. Diplomacy of the sort being pressed upon the U.S. by South Korea amounts to paying North Koreans for acting temporarily less scary until the next occasion for extortion. I have argued that the only way to solve the problem is to transcend it: to think not like a diplomat, who is paid to manage, but like a statesman, who is paid to transform basic circumstances. I proposed last October that the major powers — the U.S., Japan, Russia, and China — unite to condition aid to North Korea in such a way as ultimately to undermine North Korean sovereignty. This proposal stood at least a chance of getting at the real source of the problem, which is the nature of the North Korean regime; and it could provide benefits to all the major powers that they could not otherwise achieve for themselves. I also acknowledged its drawbacks: that North Korea would not easily allow itself to be managed into oblivion and might lash out (which might happen anyway); and that the degree of cooperation we required, especially from China, might not be forthcoming. China has in fact proved recalcitrant, but not irremediably so. Indeed, the Chinese seem to appreciate the gravity of the present situation, and may still be prepared to cooperate with the U.S. if we persist in our efforts. The reason is that the Chinese may ultimately put their own national interest above habit. The key Chinese interest is that Korea not be nuclearized, because that presupposes a nuclear Japan. China also prefers, however, for perfectly understandable Realpolitik reasons, that Korea not be unified. China has been a free rider on U.S. policy and power for years to achieve both of these interests, and has never been forced to choose between the two. Now that choice is looming: China's reliance on U.S. policy to prevent the nuclearization of the Korean peninsula is proving ill-founded. Meanwhile, as a result of North Korean proliferation, the U.S. has an interest in bringing about a unified non-nuclear Korea in which some redefined U.S. military presence underwrites the peninsula's non-nuclear status. If forced to choose between a) a nuclear North Korea and b) a unified Korea under Seoul's aegis whose non-nuclear status is underwritten by the U.S., China would be slightly crazy not to choose the latter. But it will not so choose until the choice becomes inevitable. A secondary Chinese interest, often cited, is Beijing's fear of chaos on its border. But unless one assumes that North Korea can be reformed successfully, a proposition for which there is no evidence, waiting will only make things worse from the Chinese perspective. The more time the North Korean regime has both to fail and to build nuclear weapons, the more likely its eventual collapse will be maximally calamitous. China's policy today amounts to propping up an influence-resistant and disaster-prone regime — seething with refugees ready to pour across the Chinese border by the hundreds of thousands. Concert with the U.S., Japan, and Russia, on the other hand, would give China far more influence over what may happen in North Korea, and help to manage it. If the Chinese leadership sees its choices for what they really are, why would it choose a course of minimal influence and maximum ultimate peril? SENDING OUT FOR CHINESE And so we come to thoughts the administration may or may not have allowed itself to think, about how the U.S. can achieve the cooperation it needs to solve the North Korean problem. In other words, how can we bring other powers, particularly China, to the point of serious decisions that will lead them to join with the United States? Charles Krauthammer recently suggested using the "Japan card" for this purpose — in other words, telling the Chinese that their failure to help us isolate North Korea would make the U.S. receptive to Japanese nuclear-weapons development. The U.S. need not say a word to Beijing about this, however; the Chinese understand the stakes better than we do. Besides, we have a far more dramatic option — the explanation of which requires a brief preface. It made sense for the U.S. to risk war on the Korean peninsula between 19 53 and the end of the Cold War, for Korea was bound up in a larger struggle. We could not opt out of any major theater in that struggle without the risk of losing all. But it no longer makes sense to run such risks. What larger stakes since 1991 have justified the costs and dangers of keeping 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, the overburdening of the U.S.-South Korean relationship, and the tensions caused to the U.S.-Japanese alliance? None that is readily apparent in the cold light of U.S. interests. The division of Korea puts U.S. interests at risk more than it does those of any other major regional power (we have troops there; we — not China or Russia or Japan — face directly a nuclearizing adversary), and for the sake of the lowest stakes. Think about what the U.S. might suffer if war broke out in Korea, and about what we would gain from its not breaking out. We would suffer thousands of dead GIs, the probable ascription of responsibility for the razing of Seoul (and maybe Tokyo), and maybe **__accidental conflict with China. What do we gain from the status quo? Perpetual diplomatic heartburn with Japan and others __**, and the privilege of fruitlessly negotiating with Pyongyang. In short, the end of the Cold War dramatically changed the balance of risks and rewards in U.S. Korea policy, and should have led us to adjust our stance. But U.S. policymakers conducted business as usual, only responding to North Korean threats and never themselves taking the lead to solve the underlying problem. We should have managed the transition to South Korea's responsibility for its own security, while at the same time joining with other regional powers to limit North Korea's trouble-making potential. Had we started early enough, before North Korea had nukes, we would have had far more robust military options to enforce a muscular diplomacy than we do today. Better late than never, however; we still need to rethink the Korea problem down to its roots. When we do, we immediately see our other option: **__Announce our intention to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Korea. Lots of South Koreans would be delighted. More important, such an announcement would force China and the other parties to the problem to face reality. South Koreans, having to defend themselves, will either see the illusions of their own policy or suffer the consequences of maintaining it. __** But it's their country, and, frankly, their potential misfortune no longer matters to us as much as it did during the Cold War. If North Korea becomes a six-or-more-weapon nuclear power, we will be far away, **__with deterrence reasonably intact, and with a decent if imperfect ability to prevent North Korea from exporting fissile materials and missiles. __** China, however, cannot relocate. If we profess an intention to leave, Beijing will then have to choose between a nuclear North Korea and Japan (and maybe South Korea, too) on its doorstep, or joining with the U.S. and others to manage the containment, and ultimately the withering away, of the North Korean state. **__Until it is faced with such a choice, Beijing will temporize and try to fob off the problem on Washington, hoping as before to free-ride on us for an outcome that benefits China more than it benefits the U.S. That's reality, and the Chinese need to face it. We can help them do so. __**

Conflict with China will escalate to global nuclear world war 3 Hunkovic, 09 – American Military University [Lee J, 2009, “The Chinese-Taiwanese Conflict Possible Futures of a Confrontation between China, Taiwan and the United States of America”, []]

A war between China, Taiwan and the United States has the potential to escalate into a nuclear conflict and a third world war, therefore, many countries other than the primary actors could be affected by such a conflict, including Japan, both Koreas, Russia, Australia, India and Great Britain, if they were drawn into the war, as well as all other countries in the world that participate in the global economy, in which the U nited S tates and China are the two most dominant members. If China were able to successfully annex Taiwan, the possibility exists that they could then plan to attack Japan and begin a policy of aggressive expansionism in East and Southeast Asia, as well as the Pacific and even into India, which could in turn create an international standoff and deployment of military forces to contain the threat. In any case, if China and the U nited S tates engage in a full-scale conflict, there are few countries in the world that will not be economically and/or militarily affected by it. However, China, Taiwan and United States are the primary actors in this scenario, whose actions will determine its eventual outcome, therefore, other countries will not be considered in this study.

Motivating Beijing to take a greater regional role ensures its peaceful rise Bandow, 09 – senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to Reagan (2/24/09, Doug, “Balancing Beijing,” EBSCO, JMP)

So Washington should exhibit humility about its ability to force change. As Secretary Clinton observed, “We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can’t interfere” with cooperation on other issues. Ultimately a positive relationship with Beijing is more likely to lead to a more liberal China. The result is not foreordained, but as always engagement offers the better bet. The United States shouldn’t hesitate to promote its ideals, but it must recognize its limits in enforcing them. Washington also should look on benignly as the PRC expands its commercial and diplomatic ties around the world. Even a sober military analyst like Tom Ricks of the Washington Post recently warned: “I am not sure what China is up to in Africa. But I have the nagging thought that we will figure it out in 15 years and be sorry.” Yet the United States and Soviet Union spent most of the cold war sparring for influence in the Third World to little meaningful effect. Money was spent and lives were lost, but in the end it didn’t much matter who was numero uno in Vientiane, Kinshasa, Luanda or Managua. It matters even less today. As my Cato colleague Ben Friedman puts it, “There is little that China can do in Africa to make it stronger or to damage U.S. interests.” If Beijing wishes to invest heavily in places with little geopolitical heft, why should the United States object? Even more important, Washington needs to back away from any kind of arms race with the PRC. The latest Pentagon Joint Operating Environment 2008 ominously declared that while Beijing doesn’t “emphasize the future strictly in military terms,” the Chinese do calculate “that eventually their growing strength will allow them to dominate Asia and the Western Pacific.” The annual Pentagon assessment of PRC military spending appears to show Beijing’s conscious effort to build a force capable of deterring American intervention against China in East Asia. As a result, Aaron Friedberg, until recently Vice President Cheney’s chief foreign-policy adviser, worries that the balance of power “is beginning to shift in way that, under the wrong set of circumstances, could increase the risk of miscalculation and conflict.” Yet the question is, what balance of power? Beijing poses no threat to America’s homeland or even Pacific possessions and will not do so for decades, if ever. The United States possesses a far stronger military to start—eleven carrier groups to none, for instance—spends five or more times as much as the PRC on defense (excluding the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq) and is allied with most important industrial states in Asia and Europe. There is no Chinese threat or potential threat to America. At issue is relative influence in East Asia and the security of Washington’s friends in that region. Yet the PRC so far has been assertive rather than aggressive and those nations, particularly Japan and South Korea, could do much more individually and collectively for regional security. Washington should not hesitate to sell arms to friendly states, including Taiwan, despite Chinese protests, but should leave them with responsibility for their own defense. Of course, a policy of continued restraint by Beijing will make it far easier for the United States to back away. In any case, there is little that Washington can do, at least at acceptable cost, to maintain U.S. dominance along China’s borders, as the PRC —whose economy already ranks number two or three, depending on the measure, in the world—continues to grow. Washington would have to devote an ever larger amount of resources to the military, in the midst of economic crisis, to ensure its ability to overcome far more limited Chinese capabilities. Even then, Beijing is unlikely to forever accept U.S. hegemony. Confrontation if not conflict would be likely. The better option would be to temper America’s geopolitical pretensions and accept a more influential PRC in its own region. China will grow in power, irrespective of Washington’s wishes. America’s chief objective should be to ensure that this rise is peaceful, as Beijing has promised. U.S.-China diplomatic relations passed the thirty-year mark last fall. The relationship has survived great challenges and is likely to face even greater ones in the future. But despite inevitable differences between the two nations, much depends upon strengthening their ties. The twenty-first century will turn out far differently—and positively—if America and the PRC prove willing to accommodate each other’s economic and geopolitical ambitions.

Second is South Korean Modernization

Plan prompts South Korean conventional force modernization which allows it to deter Chinese aggression Bandow, 09 – Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to Reagan (6/16/09, Doug, “A Tattered Umbrella,” [], JMP)

South Korea’s foreign minister reports that Washington plans to guarantee his nation’s defense against a nuclear-armed North Korea in writing. The promise reportedly will be formalized when South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visits the United States this week. It’s a bad idea. Washington should be shedding defense responsibilities, not increasing them. More than a half century after the Korean War, the Republic of Korea ( ROK ) remains surprisingly dependent on America. It’s as if the United States was cowering before the Mexican military, begging its friends in Europe for help. In fact, the ROK requires no assistance to defend itself from conventional attack. The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has a strong numerical military advantage over the South: about 1.1 million personnel under arms, compared to fewer than seven hundred thousand for Seoul. Pyongyang also has impressive numbers of other weapons, including more than four thousand tanks and roughly eighteen thousand artillery pieces. However, most of the North’s equipment is decades old, a generation or two behind even that of the long-gone Soviet Union. Training is minimal and many of the DPRK’s military personnel perform construction and similar tasks. The Korean peninsula’s rugged geography favors defense. Putting thousands of antiquated tanks backed by hundreds of thousands of malnourished soldiers on the move south would create a human “turkey shoot” of epic proportions. Anyway, the ROK’s numerical inferiority is a **__matter of choice, not an immutable artifact of geography. __**In its early years the South’s resources were sharply limited. But today, South Korea is thought to have upwards of forty times the North’s GDP. Seoul also possesses a substantial industrial base, sports high-tech expertise and enjoys a sterling international credit rating. The ROK’s population is twice that of the North. South Korea could spend more than the equivalent of North Korea’s entire economy on defense if the former wished. But it hasn’t wished to do so, **__preferring to rely on Washington instead.__** The time for subsidizing wealthy allies has long passed. The financial crisis makes it imperative that the United States return to such nations responsibility for their own defense. Undoubtedly an American withdrawal would **__result in a far-reaching debate among South Koreans over __** how much they felt threatened by the North and how much they believed necessary to spend in response. But that is precisely the debate they should have had years ago. The prospect of a nuclear North Korea obviously is more frightening than even one with ample numbers of artillery pieces targeting the city of Seoul. But there is little reason to believe that the North has any deliverable weapons at this point. Given present course, that time is likely, but not certain, to come. However, South Korea has time to prepare. Rather than relying on America for its protection, Seoul should invest in missile defense and enhance its air-defense capabilities. The South also should consider **__creating a conventional deterrent : the ability to respond to a nuclear strike by eliminating the Kim regime. That means developing potent offensive missile and air attack capabilities.__** (Japan, despite its quasi-pacifist constitution, should do the same.) Such forces would help fulfill a second function: deter an aggressive China, if Beijing ever changed its policy from the oft-repeated “peaceful rise” to a more belligerent stance. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has much to gain from stability in East Asia and has worked to assure its neighbors of its peaceful intentions. However, the future is unknowable. The best way for Beijing’s neighbors to ensure China’s rise is peaceful is to maintain armed forces sufficient to deter the PRC from considering military action. Such a “dual use” capability would benefit the United States as well. The objective would not be a high-profile attempt at containment, but a low-profile capacity for deterrence, **__relieving Washington of any need to intervene.__** Most important, America should not reflexively extend its “nuclear umbrella” in response to the future possibility of a nuclear North Korea. Doing so would inevitably deepen American involvement in regional controversies, potentially turning every local dispute into an international crisis.

Chinese aggression against Taiwan will escalate and go nuclear Adams, 09 – reporter for global post and newsweek on China and Taiwan (3/31/09, Jonathon, Global Post, “The dragon sharpens its claws,” [])

TAIPEI — It's the stuff of dark sci-fi scenarios; the war that nobody wants. But the most recent Pentagon report on China's military power — released last week — shows how high the stakes have become, in the unlikely event the United States and China ever do come to blows. China has the world's fastest-growing military. It is building state-of-the art fighter jets, destroyers, and anti-ship missiles worth billions of dollars. It's just confirmed it will build an aircraft carrier. And according to the Pentagon, it's now fielding a new nuclear force able to "inflict significant damage on most large American cities." Most disturbing, Chinese military officials have publicly threatened to use that capability against the United States — in a conflict over Taiwan. "China doesn't just threaten war, it threatens nuclear war ," said John Tkacik, a China expert and former U.S. diplomat, at a forum in Taipei last weekend. "This is the kind of thing that rattles cages in the U.S." For now, Taiwan is the only plausible cause of military conflict between the world's superpower and the rising Asian giant.

Extinction Strait Times, 2k (June 25th) THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale war between the US and China. If Washington were to conclude that splitting China would better serve its national interests, then a full-scale war becomes unavoidable. Conflict on such a scale would embroil other countries far and near and -horror of horrors -raise the possibility of a nuclear war. Beijing has already told the US and Japan privately that it considers any country providing bases and logistics support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties open to its retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China were to retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire. And the conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may try to overturn the existing world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to redefine Europe's political landscape. The balance of power in the Middle East may be similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south Asia, hostilities between India and Pakistan, each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new and dangerous phase. Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to General Matthew Ridgeway, commander of the US Eighth Army which fought against the Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save the US from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the military and political aspects of the conflict and its implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US was confronted with two choices in Korea -truce or a broadened war, which could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the latter acquired a similar capability, there is little hope of winning a war against China , 50 years later , short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that China possesses about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also seems prepared to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese military officer disclosed recently that Beijing was considering a review of its "non first use" principle regarding nuclear weapons. Major-General Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies, told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that principle, there were strong pressures from the military to drop it. He said military leaders considered the use of nuclear weapons mandatory if the country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway said that should that come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilization.