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Consult North Korea Counter Plan

The United States Government Should Enter into Consultation with the
Government of North Korea Over Whether the United States Should Withdraw
from South Korea. The United States Government should implement the Results of
that Consultation.

Genuine Consultation regarding Military Presence is Critical to preventing nuclear

conflict. Associated Press 10. Associated Press, “North Korea Threatens Nuclear War”,
December 13, 2010, Independent.co.uk.

North Korea has warned that US-South Korean cooperation could bring a nuclear
war to the region, as the South began artillery drills amid lingering tension nearly
three weeks after the North's deadly shelling of a South Korean island. The South's
naval live-fire drills are scheduled to run Monday through Friday at 27 sites. The
regularly scheduled exercises are getting special attention following a North Korean
artillery attack on front-line Yeonpyeong Island that killed two South Korean marines
and two civilians. The November 23 artillery barrage, the North's first assault to target a
civilian area since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, began after the North said South
Korea first fired artillery toward its territorial waters. South Korea says it fired shells
southward, not toward North Korea, as part of routine exercises. After the attack, South
Korea staged joint military drills with the United States and also pushed ahead with more
artillery exercises, despite the North's warning that they would aggravate tension. A
South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff officer tried to play down the significance of this
week's drills, saying they are part of routine military exercises and would not occur near
the disputed western Korean sea border where last month's attack took place. The officer,
who spoke on condition of anonymity because of office policy, gave no further details.
North Korea, however, lashed out at Seoul, accusing South Korea of collaborating
with the United States and Japan to ratchet up pressure on Pyongyang. That
cooperation "is nothing but treachery escalating the tension between the North and the
South and bringing the dark clouds of a nuclear war to hang over the Korean peninsula,"
Pyongyang's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by the
North's official Korean Central News Agency. North Korea has often issued similar
threats during standoffs. In a show of unity, top diplomats from South Korea, the United
States and Japan met in Washington last week and said they would not resume
negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program
until the country's behavior changes. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff, visited South Korea last week and warned Pyongyang to stop its
"belligerent, reckless behavior". On Monday, South Korean and US defence officials met
in Seoul for one-day discussions on North Korea and other issues that are part of regular
defence talks, according to Seoul's Defence Ministry. At the opening of the meeting, US
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Michael Schiffer said "the United States stands
shoulder to shoulder with the Republic of Korea and with the Korean people in the face
of recent North Korean provocations," referring to South Korea by its formal name.
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg was also set to visit China later this week for
talks on North Korea amid international pressure for Beijing to use its diplomatic clout to
rein in North Korea, its ally. After the China meeting, senior US officials accompanying
Steinberg will travel on to Seoul and Tokyo. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson,
meanwhile, leaves the United States for North Korea on Tuesday. Richardson, who
has often acted as a diplomatic troubleshooter, has made regular visits to North
Korea and has also hosted North Korean officials in New Mexico.
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Consulting with North Korea Prevents Nuclear War. Gerson 6.

Preventing Nuclear War in Korea By Joseph Gerson (Dr. Joseph Gerson is Director of
Programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England and author of the
forthcoming Empire and the Bomb: How the United States Uses Nuclear Weapons to
Dominate the World.) Sunday, October 15, 2006 Zcom

Kofi Anan has again urged us to be wise and to refrain from the self-defeating
practice of playing superpower bully. In the wake of North Koreas reported
nuclear weapons test, the outgoing U.N. General Secretary was clear that
Pyongyang's nuclear test was unacceptable. Instead of the militarized sanctions, he
urged bilateral negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.

Just over a decade ago, it took former President Carter's courageous and creative
diplomatic intervention was required to save Bill Clinton and the Korean people from the
young President’s arrogant belief that we would prevail in the game of nuclear
chicken. President Bush has yet to learn the lessons of that crisis, nor has he learned those
of his disastrous invasion of Iraq. Instead, he insists that the crisis with Pyongyang be
resolved on terms that he dictates. He refuses bilateral negotiations and warns that “all
options [including nuclear attack] are on the table.”

Like Kofi Anan, Jimmy Carter is advising that “What must be avoided is to leave a
beleaguered nuclear nation convinced that it is permanently excluded from the
international community, its existence threatened.” It is no secret that since its reported
nuclear test, Pyongyang has repeated what is has been saying for years: it can accept a
denuclearized Korean peninsula if the U.S. will engage in bilateral negotiations. Still
imaginative, President Carter reminds us that Bush's rejection of bilateral talks can be
“finessed through secret discussions with a trusted emissary like former Secretary of
State Jim Baker” who has reminded us that it is "not appeasement to talk to your
enemies."

This crisis is not an aberration. Rather, it is systemic product of sixty years of U.S.
nuclear arrogance, as well as being a consequence of Bush-Cheney imperial fantasies and
their “romance of ruthlessness.”

Years ago, speaking in Hiroshima, Joseph Rotblat, the former Manhattan Project senior
scientist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, reminded us that the humanity faces a stark
choice: We can completely eliminate the world's nuclear arsenals, or we will witness
their global proliferation and their genocidal -- potentially omnicidal --consequences.
Because no nation will long tolerate an unjust imbalance of power – in this case
threatened nuclear annihilation – governments will do what they can to rectify that
imbalance, including in some cases seeking nuclear weapons of their own. The
discriminatory hierarchy of nuclear terrorism is thus inherently unstable and cannot
endure. Pursuing nuclear superiority and making nuclear threats inevitably results in
nuclear weapons proliferation.

Beginning with the U.N. General Assembly’s first resolution in 1945, the vast
majority of the world's nations have sought security through nuclear weapons abolition.
The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT,) which followed roughly twenty-five years
later, provided that in exchange for the non-nuclear nations foreswearing nuclear
weapons ambitions, the nuclear powers would provide them technologies for nuclear
power generation and, Article VI committed the Nuclear 5 to negotiate the elimination of
their nuclear arsenals. Six years ago, under pressure from the world's nations during the
NPT Review Conference, the declared nuclear weapons states led by the United States
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reiterated their “irrevocable commitment” to implement Article VI and to take 13

still neglected steps toward its fulfillment. Last year, more than 150 nations, including
U.S. allies, voted for a U.N. resolution calling for negotiation of a nuclear weapons
abolition convention. Only five countries voted no: the U.S., Britain, France, Israel and
India.

There is also the legacy of U.S. nuclear threats. Unlike any other nation, on more than
thirty occasions since the A-bombing of Nagasaki every U.S. president has prepared or
threatened to initiate first strike nuclear attacks during crises, confrontations and wars.
This has led nations – including North Korea and Iran – to seek deterrent nuclear
forces. Since 1950, the U.S. has threatened North Korea with nuclear attack at least eight
times. Nearly a dozen such threats have been made during Middle East wars and crises.
Since the end of the Cold War, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Libya have been threatened
with U.S. nuclear attacks. And, the 2002 the Bush-Cheney Nuclear Posture Review
named seven nations as primary U.S. nuclear targets: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China,
Russia, Libya and Syria.

The Bush administration compounded these structural and historical crises with its
arrogant approach to the two Koreas. In one of his first foreign policy blunders, two
months after assuming office, President Bush humiliated South Korea's courageous Prime
Minister Kim Dae Jung and derailed the nearly completed disarmament process with
North Korea initiated by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In response,
North Korea resumed development of what appears to be its primitive nuclear weapons
program, and the U.S.-South Korean alliance has been in shambles.

The stakes of the U.S.-Korean crisis are far greater than is popularly understood. More
immediate than the decade or so that it will take to develop nuclear weapons that work
and missiles could reach Seattle, or the possibility it might export nuclear technologies, is
the danger of a catastrophic Northeast Asian arms race. Japan's new nationalist Prime
Minister is not only the grandson of a class A war criminal later nurtured by the CIA, but
a man who has advocated that Japan – which has hundreds of tons of weapons grade
plutonium and missiles that can reach the moon -- become a nuclear weapons state with a
first strike policy. Given the still deep wounds of Japan's brutal conquest and colonization
of much of China and all of Korea, a Japanese nuclear weapons program would likely
lead China to jettison its “minimum deterrent” nuclear policy. A dangerous 21st
century involving the U.S. would then be fully engaged.

This need not be our future. Anticipating Kofi Anan and Jimmy Carter, during the week
before the North Korean test, a delegation of senior Japanese nuclear weapons
abolitionists – including A-bomb survivors – reminded U.S. audiences the world is
almost completely unified in opposing North Korean A-Bomb. They also warned that
much of the world is aghast at the prospect of the world's superpower, with its
arsenal of 15,000 deployed a stockpiled thermonuclear weapons, feeling so
threatened by North Korea that it refuses patient bilateral negotiations with the
desperately poor and isolated country and threatens military actions and war.

As awful as they were, the archetypical Cold Warriors Richard Nixon and Henry
Kissinger did not hesitate to negotiate with Soviet and Chinese leaders. Why then do
Bush and Cheney fear testing Pyongyang's offer of a denuclearized Korean peninsula in
exchange for bilateral negotiations? Why not use those negotiations to engage the Six-
Party negotiators to create a Northeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone like those in
Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the South Pacific, Africa, and Latin America? And, why
not prevent future nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear wars by honoring our
“irrevocable commitment” to Article VI of the NPT and by implementing the 13
steps agreed to at the 2000 NPT Review Conference?
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Nuclear War with North Korea would turn into a global nuclear holocaust of
human extinction. Ross 3.
Racing Toward Extinction,‖ Larry Ross, Founder of NZ Nuclear-Free
Peacemaking Association, December 10, 2003,
http://nuclearfree.lynx.co.nz/racing.htm

We have greatly changed our environment with our new

destructive tools - nuclear weapons. They have given us a
quantum leap in our ability to destroy ourselves and the world.
Given present trends, we will not adapt, but will continue on the
present path to nuclear extinction. However, our brains provide the
vital difference between extinct species and us. They can tell us what
we have created, and the probable results if we keep repeating our
historically destructive behaviour - the thousands of wars in our
history. Our unique insight allows us to change our behaviour so we
don't repeat our traditional pattern of destruction with our new earth-
destroying tools. We have even recognised the extreme risks to
ourselves, by creating treaties committing us to vigorously pursue
disarmament steps to abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us.
Unfortunately, we have not observed these treaties. The essential
question is: Will we use our brains constructively to solve this problem
in time to save ourselves? It seems unlikely. We are using our brains to
deny the terrifying reality, pretend there is no risk, or that it is
insignificant. Many believe that nuclear weapons have been proven
over 50 years to give us security. We tend to venerate our leaders,
believe and obey them. Like the Germans did with Adolph Hitler, or
Italians with Mussolini. Leaders are respected as rational, sensible,
honest, moral Christians who could never do anything crazy. However
President Bush - the world's most powerful man, and his allies and
staff, have lowered the barriers against using nuclear weapons. They
have developed new doctrines that allow them to use nuclear weapons
in many more war situations and against non-nuclear states - not just
in retaliation for a massive attack. The U.S. Congress and mass media
have skirted this issue, so you may not know about this 'seismic'
change in U.S. policy and its implications. People have forgot, or never
learned, how nuclear weapons can destroy our world. Here is a chart
with 6,000 dots divided into 100 squares. The one dot in the centre
represents all the explosive power of allied bombs dropped in WWII -
equal to 3,000,000 tons of TNT or 3 megatons. Millions were killed. We
have enough for about 6,000 WWII's. The dots in just one of the 100
squares represent the firepower to kill all life on earth. We have made
enough weapons to kill everyone on earth many times over. That is our
dire situation today. We are not adapting to change our
behaviour, but reinforcing old behaviour that leads to war? The
nuclear arms race, accelerated by the vested interests of the
military-industrial-political complex, and the phantom threats
we invent to sustain it, is the major occupation of many top
brains and huge resources today. It has huge momentum and
power. It is embedded in U.S. society and some others. It is an
accepted part of the culture. This weapons culture and the new
doctrines mean that nuclear weapons are no longer treated as
a last resort. They can be used in addition to conventional
weapons to achieve military goals. The culture has programmed
itself for self-destruction and now has the ideology to continue until
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they precipitate a nuclear holocaust which kills all life. The quantum
leap in destructive power has now been matched by this new will, or
self-permission, to use these weapons. Laws, fears and reservations
have been swept aside. Humanity seems to have accepted the new
doctrines. Few seem concerned that any usage can kill millions, and
quickly expand beyond any countries control, leading to a global
nuclear war which ends humanity. We have radically altered our
environment in so many other ways as well, that also threaten our
existence in the longer term. Population growth and our economic
growth ideology augment the trends of climate change - global
warming - pollution - dwindling natural resources - deforestation etc.
To emphasise again, the biggest change we have made in our
environment is the quantum leap in our ability to destroy ourselves.
Our psychological and social climate makes it more probable. Most
people are not aware of this huge change in our environment. Others
just accept it. We have learned to live with and treat nuclear weapons
as a normal part of the environment. Many feel that to question or
oppose this situation is silly, disloyal or threatens the security we think
nuclear weapons give us. Nine countries are dedicated to
constantly developing their nuclear arsenals. That makes
accidental or intentional usage more likely. That the U.S. has
said the nuclear barriers are down adds to the likelihood of
nuclear weapons use by some other state. A probable
escalation would follow.

Because of its scientific probability and global destruction,

extinction from nuclear war is the worst impact. Shell 1982
Jonathan Shell, Fate of the Earth, 1982, pp. 93-96

To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a

misrepresentation – just as it would be a misrepresentation to say that
extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we know that a holocaust
may not occur at all. If one does occur, the adversaries may not use all
their weapons. If they do use all their weapons, the global effects in
the ozone and elsewhere, may be moderate. And if the effects are not
moderate but extreme, the ecosphere may prove resilient enough to
withstand them without breaking down catastrophically. These are all
substantial reasons for supposing that mankind will not be
extinguished in a nuclear holocaust, or even that extinction in a
holocaust is unlikely, and they tend to calm our fear and to reduce our
sense of urgency. Yet at the same time we are compelled to admit that
there may be a holocaust, that the adversaries may use all their
weapons, that the global effects, including effects of which we as yet
unaware, may be severe, that the ecosphere may suffer catastrophic
breakdown, and that our species may be extinguished. We are left with
uncertainty, and are forced to make our decisions in a state of
uncertainty. If we wish to act to save our species, we have to
muster our resolve in spite of our awareness that the life of
the species may not now in fact be jeopardized. On the other
hand, if we wish to ignore the peril, we have to admit that we
do so in the knowledge that the species may be in danger of
imminent self-destruction. When the existence of nuclear
weapons was made known, thoughtful people everywhere in
the world realized that if the great powers entered into a
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nuclear-arms race the human species would sooner or later

face the possibility of extinction. They also realized that in the
absence of international agreements preventing it an arms race would
probably occur. They knew that the path of nuclear armament was a
dead end for mankind. The discovery of the energy in mass – of "the
basic power of the universe" – and of a means by which man could
release that energy altered the relationship between man and the
source of his life, the earth. In the shadow of this power, the earth
became small and the life of the human species doubtful. In that
sense, the question of human extinction has been on the political
agenda of the world ever since the first nuclear weapon was
detonated, and there was no need for the world to build up its present
tremendous arsenals before starting to worry about it. At just what
point the species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between
merely having the technical knowledge to destroy itself and actually
having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any second, is not
precisely knowable. But it is clear that at present, with some twenty
thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with
more being added every day, we have entered into the zone of
uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction. But the
mere risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically
different from, and immeasurably greater than that of any
other risk and as we make our decisions we have to take that
significance into account. Up to now, every risk has been
contained within the framework of life; extinction would
shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some
purpose but an abyss in which all human purpose would be
drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this
limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as risk that we run in the
ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment of
human history. To employ a mathematician's analogy, we can say that
although the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly
speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity. In other
words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction
we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will
be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another
chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the
difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust
will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the
same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear
weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an
end to our species. In weighing the fate of the earth and, with it, our
own fate, we stand before a mystery, and in tampering with the earth
we tamper with a mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance
should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our
humility should inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence
and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat
we now post to the world and to ourselves.