European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - December 15, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Wednesday december 15, 1993 l commentary 1 the stars and stripes Page 15it is time for America to make peace with itself Ellen Goodman this should be a time for a Small Celebration. We should hear a modest cheer or at least an audible sigh of Relief. With each symbolic act the nuclear Icecap on the old cold War is melting a bit More. Just last week the two old enemies who have pointed nuclear missiles at each other for decades announced that they Are planning to turn these warheads away from their hostile targets. Surely those of us who spent decades watching the big hand on the doomsday clock americans who built fallout shelters and worried about the Day after should feel safer. But we done to. Instead we have spent last week focused on anger and fear about violent crime. With barely a pause our attention has shifted from anxiety about living in a dangerous world to anxiety about living in a dangerous country. As one War de escalates the other escalates. The nuclear nightmares fade and the random terrors of drive by shootings murderous kidnappings and crazed men on commuter trains come into our horrific line of vision. A National Security once justified our defense against a foreign threat. Now it evokes images of the Domestic  the Home front we have our own madness a the mutually assured destruction of armed teen agers. I have worried that we Are dealing with our current National Security problem As sadly and futilely As we dealt with the old one. From the 1950s through the 1980s, we stripped our cupboards in the name of defense and stockpiled nuclear weapons. In the 1990s, we have focused on an equally expensive buildup at Home. We Are securing High schools that need computers with Metal detectors. We Are protecting hospitals that need nurses with Security guards. We Are paying for gunshot wounds and funerals instead of Chila care. Even the crime Bill that passed the Senate last month is tipped toward this defense buildup two thirds of the Money directed to More prisons More Boot Camps More police. Twice As much for prisons As for Job training. Twice As much for Boot Camps As National service. In the past 20 years we be quadrupled the prison population to Well Over a million without reducing the crime rate or certainly the sense of National insecurity. Yet in frustration and fear we go on stockpiling prisons. Meanwhile we have enough ammunition to overkill each other Many times. And we have lacked the will to Wathas of happen Saffore get some real gum cok1trol  this counts slow the Domestic arms race. But at the end of the Roundup we wont be More secure. Now if the polls and the president Are right we arc ready for something better than a buildup. We need to negotiate hard for a different sort of treaty about crimes and causes. If we Are to Send More police onto the streets to be shot at then we must also agree to take guns out of the hands of teen agers. ,. As we fund prisons to hold armed criminals we have to ban the Sale of handguns and assault weapons they use to shoot their Way in. And for every Boot Camp built we have to agree to spend More Energy Money and imagination on the daunting but not impossible tasks of shoring up Community family and Opportunity. We can to do one without the other. The old cold warriors have backed off the Brink dismantled missiles turned their sights and changed their targets. We feel safer in the world. But at Home we have to spend the dividend wisely and widely on making peace. C the Boston glob War in Korea unlikely despite Saber rattling is there another korean War looming on the horizon one could certainly draw that conclusion from the recent juror. A North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb a said president Clinton last month. A we have to be very firm about  some have feared that ultimatum might Spur a North korean invasion of South Korea. But in fact it highlights a fundamental difference Between today a crisis and the korean War. This time North Korea has been put on notice that vital . Interests Are involved. In 1950, precisely the opposite message was conveyed. In an address to the National press club in january 1950, Secretary of state Dean Acheson excluded Korea from the . Defense perimeter in asia., t a that announcement was made in the Wake of the withdrawal of All . Military forces from South Korea the year before including the . Xviii corps and the 6th and 7th inf dive. Those units had been stationed there at the end of world War ii to disarm the japanese occupiers and then buttress the development of democracy in the fledgling Republic of Korea. The effect of these . Actions was to isolate South Korea from outside support. T u an attack from the communist controlled North was thus unintentionally encouraged. For while South Korea was isolated North Korea and the soviet installed Kim ii Sung was part of what was then termed the communist a Monolith a under the personal direction of Josef Stalin. The korean War it was believed at the time was not Over Korea but instead part of a larger communist scheme to extend the soviet Empire by Force of korean armistice of today. But much has arms. Accordingly the United states sent More troops to Europe where it was thought the main attack would come than to Korea. After China a intervention in the War in november 1950, . Military strategy changed from the strategic offensive to the strategic defensive where the Best possible result was not military Victory but Battlefield stalemate. That was achieved with the 1953, which remains in effect changed in the intervening 40 years. Now there is no ambiguity about . Support for South Korea. Clinton made that Plain during his visit there this year. South Korea is the one place in the world he said where . Military Force Levels have not been Cut. South Korea is now clearly Well within our defense perimeter. The aged Kim ii Sung knows full Well that an attack on South Korea would trigger an immediate us. Response. And he also knows full Well that it is now North Korea not South Korea As in 1950, that is isolated in the world Community. While there is now general agreement contrary to the conventional Wisdom of the time that it was Kim u Sung not Josef Stalin who instigated the korean War there is no doubt that Kim knew he could count on the soviet Union and China for their full support. A conservative estimates Are that China alone lost Harry g. Summers some half million soldiers killed on korean battlefields with an additional million wounded. And both the soviet Union and China furnished untold millions of dollars in arms and equipment to North Kurca before and Dur inc the War. But if it Ever existed the communist a a Monolith is no More. For both political and economic reasons Moscow and Beijing now have More to gain through better relations with Seoul than with Pyongyang. In 1950, most of koreans manufacturing and mining industries were in the North and the South was an agricultural poor relation. Now South Korea is one of asians Quot Little  however with More than a million men under arms North koreans military is almost twice the size of South koreans 633,000-Man Force. But the South korean military is no longer the ill trained and ill equipped Force of the 1950s. It is by All accounts one of the Best military forces in the world. And with the end of the cold War the United states is no longer on the strategic defensive. Free of the fears of soviet or chinese intervention it is once again Able to bring its full offensive Powers to Bear. Thus the danger of a conventional War on the korean Peninsula is virtually nil for the outcome is preordained. Although it might make some initial gains North Korea knows that without chinese and russian help it could not sustain such an offensive and this time such Aid is not in the offing. That s the Good news. The bad news is that it is just this ebbing of North korean Power that makes it so reluctant to give up the one lever it has left a its nuclear weapons potential. C Loa Angeles times