Kil Sang Yoon | Korean Amercian National Coordinating Council
Opening Remarks:
The Maritime force of the North Atlantic nations began to colonize the continents of Africa, Asia, North and South America beginning 16th Century. Some of us used to hear a story that the sun never set in the British Empire.
When some socio-economic and political hardship in the European Continent and British Iles, some of the Anglo-Saxon Christians migrated to the North American continent with the belief that they were directed by Manifest Destiny to civilize the colored people following the Sun toward the west. These people became the Settlers conquering the indigenous people in the North American Continent. This Settlers-colony raged war against British rule and claimed their independence as the USA. This new nation expanded their territory by the US-Mexico War and completed occupation of the entire continent.[1]
In 1823 President Monroe declared the Monroe Doctrine which the Europeans nations should not occupy the nations in the South American continent. Then US begun to exploit and oppress the indigenous people to increase wealth by extracting the natural resources and the cheap labors.
In 1885 the Commodore Perry led fleet to Tokyo Bay and Japan began to accept the western sciences and modernize the military industry. Japanese began their self-identity as Westerners with the policy of motto “Leaving Asia and Entering Europe”.
In early 20the Century the US facing the Pacific Ocean, this new nation was again motivated to fulfill the Manifest Destiny to civilize the colored people in the Pacific Rims and Asia. In the summer of 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched a large diplomatic delegate to Pacific Rim and Asian countries. The Secretary of War William Howard Taft was the head of the group. This venture is the first step of the US to dominate the Pacific and Northeastern Asia.
In this tour the US and Japan made a secret agreement, the Taft-Katsura Agreed Memorandum which made Japan to begin as an imperial nation to colonize Cho-Seon (Korea) and parts of Manchuria/China.
The US Imperial Dominance in 20th Century:
The Marshall Plan rebuilt the devasted Europe. Then in 1949 US formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a military coalition of the western European nations against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after WWII.
Toward the end of the WWII President Franklin Roosevelt suggested to Churchill and Stalin to put the Korea under the Trusty of the alliance since the Koreans were not ready to form a government and rule the nation. But the other leaders did not agree with such an idea.
As the Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, the USA occupied the entire Japanese Island and proposed to divide the Korean peninsula along the 38th parallel and asked USSR to disarm the Japanese in the North of the dividing line and the US Military in the South.
It was possible strategy of the US to use the Korean peninsula as a military outpost to deter the rising communist revolution in China under the Mao’s leadership.
Then the US began to rule the Southern part by the Military Rule for three years.
When the US Military Government organized the ruling machinery such as police force, military, and all other officers in all levels of systems, the US governor general hired all the Korean collaborators who served the Imperial Japanese oppressive colonial ruling mechanism. Those cruel Korean agents of the Japanese colonial rulings pursued, arrested, imprisoned and killed Korean patriots who worked to defeat the Japanese occupants and to achieve their National Liberation. All of those Korean collaborators were rehired by the US Military governing as the ruling gangsters of the newly established government of southern part of Division.
Then the US Military ruling’s poll in the South revealed that 79% of Koreans in the South wanted to have an independent Korea in Socialism. Then the US Military government considered those were communists influenced by the USSR and ordered to clean up those Koreans. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were massacred.
In sharp contrast in the North of the dividing line, the government was established by the Korean leaders who had waged guerilla warfare against Japanese invading forces in the Manchuria to defeat imperial Japanese forced occupation of Korea, in cooperation with Chinese people.
Such differences were the sufficient causes of conflict between the two sides of Korea.
The US military withdrew from Korea even though there were ongoing skirmishes along the dividing lines between the two sides. But a group of military advisors remained to train and direct their serfs, all the ruling elites in the newly established Korean government.
It was possible strategy of the US to use the Korean peninsula as a military outpost to deter the rising communist revolution in China under the Mao’s leadership.
On January 12, 1950, the Secretary of the US State Department Dean Acheson in his address at the National Press Club said that in the Fareast Korean peninsula is not in our defense perimeter. Our defense line would be the Japanese Isles to Taiwan. The war in Korea was induced by the US to destroy the Northern government and occupy the entire peninsula?[2]
Michael Pembroke in his book, Korea, Where the American Century Began, said after the WWII by the war in Korea the Cold War began to control the entire world and developing the military industries.[3]
The US Policy of the Full Spectrum Dominance and Imperialism has driven millions of people to flee their homes across the world:
James Lucas in his research article published by the Global Research on November 17, 2015, pointed that the US after the WWII raised 37 wars and killed over 20 million people. It has been well acknowledged facts that the US has penetrated other countries with overt and covert tactics to divide the people, instigate changes by mass protests and Coup D’état, assassinations and regime changes.
Especially when the USSR was dissolved in 1991, the Bipolar world was over, and the US became the Unipolar in the global village. In these three decades, the US has invaded Iraq and Afghanistan to retaliate the 9.11 attacks with certain manufactured intelligences that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and to defeat the terrorists.
The US Imperialism has flexed muscles of war machines rather than engaging with others in diplomatic engagement for mutual understanding and respect.
Stephanie Weatherbee Brito in the Peoples Dispatch published her research on June 20, 2024, stated real pictures of such tragic reality, “The intensification of existing violent conflicts and emergence of new ones have caused a significant increase in the number of forcibly displaced people.”
Sudanese refuges in Chad. Over 10 million people have been forcibly displaced in over a year of war in Sudan. On this year’s World Refugee Day―June 20―we must collectively reckon with the fact that more than 117 million people are victims of forced displacement. From Palestine to Sudan, Yemen to Ukraine, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Myanma—”[4]
People in the Global South Have been Awaken:
Africa’s Case:
There was a Military Coup in Niger west Africa. Civilian president elected by the democratic process was driven out. Military leaders thought even though their country was liberated from the French colonial rule, and president was elected by the indigenous people in democratic process, yet his policy and styles were still very much French. I assume these military leaders wanted to make Niger based on its indigenous cultural mores as a wholly de-westernized Niger.
The neighboring countries even tried to prevent this coup by military action. But people stood up to oppose such action.
Coup leaders request the French Military to go home and, they requested the US withdraw small attachment of military by September this year! Chad also requested the US military to be withdrawn.
Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon arrived in Botswana as the U.S. faces a critical inflection point in Africa. (AP News, June 24, 2024)
The U.S. needs to have a dialogue with those nations to see what type and size U.S. military presence they would want, he said, adding, “That’s why this conference is important.”
Brown and other defense officials say the conference is a chance to show African leaders that the U.S. can listen and accept local solutions. The U.S., said one defense official, must adjust to the solutions that Africans have identified and not impose external Western ideals.
Now is the US going to respect the what the Africans want to be and do for themselves?
South America’s Case:
Some of the Central and South American nations have come to restore their sovereignty.
In 2023 Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador declared,
“Now the countries in Central and South America must be released from the Grip of the US. And the new hope of Mexico must come out of the corruption, violence and the walls which Trump erect on the border.”
The Summit of the Americas, the Conference of 9th Summit of the Americas in June 6-10, 2022, in Los Angeles, CA, three presidents of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were not invited. So many presidents of the south American nations did not attend and sent ministers of foreign affairs or assistant ministers. As such some of the South American nations have come to retore their independence from the US dominance.
An Uneasy Relations between the US and European Nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: Why Does the US Policy Makers Need Adversarial Nations?
The USSR and Eastern European Countries formed Warsaw Pacts in 1955 as the Counter measure of NATO.
Since 1991 when the USSR was dissolved the Warsaw Pact was also dismissed.
But the NATO continued its role to deter the Russian “threats”. And those former members of the Warsaw Pact were pulled into NATO. But Ukraine remained as a neutral state between the West and Russia.
NATO held its summit in Bucharest, Romania in 2008 and issued <the Bucharest Summit Declaration> to bring Ukraine in the bosom of NATO. It could be an open declaration of war against Russia. The Director of Eastern Europe at the US State Department with other agents infiltrated Ukraine and operated to plant “democracy” in stirring up the people to oust the neutral president. Among those newly formed NGOs existed New Nazi militia group. Finally on February 22-24, 2014, the all-out protest to dethrone the neutral president as Maidan Coup. As the Russian Speaking People in the Eastern part of the country opposed the coup, the Nazi militia attacked killing and terrorizing such groups.
To stop such conflicts there was <Minsk Agreement> to end conflict between the Coup groups and the Russian speaking people. But it was not implemented.
As the peaceful co-existence between the Russian speaking region and the newly established Ukraine became impossible, Russia began the war February 2022. It could be considered as a war of self-defense from the threats of NATO led by the US. Even there was a proposal to cease fire in April. But the US and UK ignore the proposal and pushed Ukraine to continue the war. Now there was Fifth proposal for peace. Again, the US ignored it.[5]
Boomerang of the Sanctioning Russian Crude Oil and Gas:
The US sanctioned Russia by freezing the US dollar in Russia’s Accounts.
The Russian petroleum and gas were cut and the industries in Germany and European countries were hit hard. The US pushed members of NATO to provide arms to Ukraine. NATO members were requested to raise the defense budget.
Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg came to Washington, DC in June to prepare for the NATO Summit in July 2024. He said that many of the 32 member countries raised their defense budgets. Now two third of the budget come to the US to produce more arms for Ukraine!
As the war in Ukraine was going on, French President Macron said “Is Europe subjected vassals to the US. Now the European nations must restore sovereign rights for the strategic matter.” Then former Greek’s Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis responded, “Vassals had some sovereignty. We are worse than vassal, we are serfs!”[6]
China’s Revolution as Victory in Defeating Western Imperialist Powers and Becoming an Independent Nation with economic development as Challenge to the US:
China as an agricultural society and governed by monarchial dynasties had been painfully humiliated over a century by the western European nations, which occupied some parts of the continent and ruled them by the Extraterritorial rules. Among those foreign colonial occupants, the British War of Opium put Chinese society into the worst devastation. The era of the Republic of China (1912-1949) was over by the revolutionary war led by Mao Zedong.
The core of this Revolution was for China to defeat the western imperial colonizers and to restore national independence! People’s Republic of China was announced on October 1, 1949, as an independent Socialist nation including Taiwan. At the leadership of Deng Xiaoping (1978-1989) China began planned economy with industrialization.
China and the US opened diplomatic relations in January of 1979. Since then, China has built a large productive capitalistic economy as the US has become financial capitalism relying on the Chinese supplies of produced goods.
Also, in recent decade China expanded maritime territory with China South Sea and the US also began Pivot to Pacific Rim (now Indo-Pacific) to bring countries in the region to have trades among them as a block of a competing force against China. Chinese economy has grown to the level of the US.
The US raised 25% in tariff in 2018 and approached Taiwan violating the One China Policy selling US Arms instigating Taiwan’s independence away from China.
The US formed Quad―Australia, India, Japan; AUKUS―Australia, United Kingdom and US; and in August 2023 Trilateral Cooperation with South Korea, Japan and US. Also, the US invited Japanese Prime Minister and S. Korean President to NATO Conference since 2022. And the US requested S. Korea decoupling with China.
Such US Actions seem to be a desperate tactics facing the Russian and Chinese challenges against her delusionary policy of Full Spectrum Dominance of the world.
The US in the last three decades as the Unipolar power in the world has tried to subjugate most of the countries to be under the US politico-economic dominance.
The US Imperial Strategies and Tactics Are Exposed widely:
Mr. Chris Hedges featured a critical article, <The Impending Collapse of US Empire> on the Consortium News on June 20, 2024. “The military machine commits fiascos abroad. At home, by diverting funds and resources to endless war, it disembowels and impoverishes the nation.”[7]
The BRICS and plus have come to the Global South, which had been exploited and extracted so long by the Western powers such US and NATO, with an alternative hope to support all the countries to keep their sovereignty with dignity and to develop their socio-economic and political structures based on their historical and cultural mores and foundation!
The American Century of Imperial attempts is now diminishing. Isn’t it time for the US policy makers to be awakened in this time of epochal transition to learn to live with other nations in the spirit of good will of mutual understanding and respect to live peacefully with others?
References
[1] James Bradley, The Imperial Cruise, A Secret History of Empire and War, Little, Brown and Company, 2009
[2] Bruce Cumings, The Origins of Korean War, Vol. I, Prinston University Press, 1981
[3] Michael Pembroke, Korea. Where the American Century Began, One world Publication, 2028
[4] Stephanie Weatherbee Brito, Peoples Dispatch, June 20, 2024
[5] Jeffrey D. Sachs, Russia’s Fifth Offer to Negotiate with US on Ukraine, Consortium News, June 20, 2024
[6] Patrick Lawrence, Europe’s Fate, the Consortium News, May 3, 2023
[7] Chris Hedges, The Impending Collapse of US Empire, the Consortium News, June 20, 2024
