Thread by @Robert_E_Kelly

THREAD: Why there is No Korean Peace Treaty (It wouldn’t Change Anything)

Much of the linked thread is highly contestable:

A. Korea obviously is not a 'forever war'

This is a grossly inaccurate description. 'Forever war' implies sustained kinetic activity in an unwinnable

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quagmire with no obvious endpoint. That is not K at all. The war has been over since mid-1953, and it is NK, not the allies, who provokes. The lack of paperwork - a formal peace treaty - has no bearing on the empirical situation on the ground which is far from open conflict.

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B. A 'War-Ending Declaration' (종전선언) is a legally bizarre neologism which no one really understands

The only reason this strange language is used is bc the Moon government's first effort to get a 'peace treaty' failed, as did its second, vaguer 'peace regime' effort. So

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then we got the even murkier 'war-ending statement' idea, a weird fallback in the quixotic effort by the SK left to write a paper resolution to the war. But if it's not a treaty, then what is it? I spoke at a National Assembly Research Service (NARS) conference on this in 2018

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when it was a hot topic. Everyone knew what a treaty was and why it was important. But no one really knew what a war-end declaration meant. The lawyers, MPs, and academics in attendance spent the whole time arguing about it: it is diplomatic recognition, a treaty, mutual

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disarmament, a statement of intent? And what would flow from it? No one really knew.

C. Signing It Makes No Difference if Nothing Else Changes

If a treaty/war-end declaration does not reflect a political narrowing of the extreme regime type difference between N and SK,then

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it will make no difference, bc nothing will change on the ground. In practice this means that a real treaty end to the war requires NK liberalization, bc SK is not going to become more like NK. I.e, if NK stays the orwellian, cultish DPRK it is, complete w/ a million soldiers

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forward deployed on the DMZ, a spiraling WMD program, and gulags, then what would change post-treaty? Neither side would disarm; the inter-K arms race would continue; the US & UN commitment would still be needed; human rights wd still be a big issue; and so on. So what is the

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point?

D. US Obduracy is Not the Primary Reason there is No Peace Treaty

Yes, the US is nervous about a treaty, but for good reason - it undercuts the legal basis of UNC and USFK. At the NARS conference I did, everyone admitted this. But there are

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actually a lot of other, more important factors:

i) Implacable Resistance of the SK Right

The right here is anti-communist and pro-Southern-led unification. The Moon government has made no effort to reach out to them on this issue. They'll fight hard.

ii) SK Center/Median

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Voter will be Nervous about Anything which Questions the US Commitment

The alliance is very popular and backstops SK growth & participation in the global economy. 'SK' isn't pining for this declaration; only the SK left really is, maybe 35% of the country. Moon just doesn’t

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have the domestic support for this which is why this idea, which the left has kicked around for decades, never goes anywhere, just like Moon's 2019 inter-K 'peace economy' idea flopped.

iii) Legal Confusion

SK did not sign the armistice, so no one is quite clear what its

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role in a declaration or treaty would be. But China did, so it would seem to have a veto. Do we want to invite CN further into Korean affairs given its cynical manipulation of NK as a 'buffer,' mistreatment of NK escapees, & bullying of SK on THAAD? The NARS event recognized

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this legal tangle and had no answer.

iv) Constitutional Amendment?

The SK constitution declares SK the sole government of the peninsula. A treaty/declaration which formally recognized NK in some way might well require a constitutional amendment. The NARS event recognized

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this too and had no answer.

E. A US-ROK alliance post-treaty would be contested by NK and China as unnecessary.

Yes, the US and SK could align in conditions of 'peace,' but that is de facto state of the peninsula now anyway, and post-treaty, alignment would only be harder.

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China and NK would claim there's no reason for it. NK in the past has insisted on a US withdrawal as part of ending the war, and China particularly would play hardball on a peacetime US-ROK alliance, just as they did on THAAD.

F. A treaty/declaration is all upside for NK

It

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suggests: inter-K diplomatic normalization; legitimization of NK as an equal, normal K state (rather than the orwellian gangster fiefdom and errant blackhole of Korean history which it is); and undercuts the legitimacy of UN and US presence. So why should we do this? What we

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getting in return for all that? If we are going to do this, can we at least trade a treaty/war-end declaration for NK concession on human rights, WMD, KPA deployments, etc.?

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