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North Korea’s Ideology, Not its Weapons, Is the Real Threat to Peace

Posted on Friday, December 16, 2022
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by Ben Solis
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AMAC Exclusive – By Ben Solis

North Korea

Last month, North Korea once again launched ballistic missiles four thousand miles high into space, frightening South Koreans and forcing hundreds of Japanese to flee to bomb shelters. To effectively counter the growing ballistic nuclear missile threat from North Korea, President Biden and his administration should heed the lessons from the four-decade Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union that taught that the most potent weapon a totalitarian system possesses is not missiles or bombs, but the ideological system it has forged to persevere and facilitate absolute power. As President Ronald Reagan’s administration understood, victory over tyranny comes from a defeat of ideology, not physical armies.

While totalitarian leaders have long understood that their own ideology is their greatest tool in controlling a population, they have also understood that the ideology of free and democratic peoples is their greatest challenge. When the Soviet Union’s revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin first realized that the western democratic political order was resilient and appreciated by its citizens, he saw the need to undermine it if he was going to defeat it: thus, a party of a new type came forth.

Unlike its Western counterpart, which is an electoral platform comprised of a group of people aimed at promoting the best candidates for office to win elections, the Leninist party is dedicated to organizing the whole of society around an ideology that is a means to an end – to win and never willfully give up power.

The contest between Lenin’s totalitarian vision – and the western strategy to defeat it – was dramatically illustrated forty-one years ago this week, on December 13, 1981, when Polish communist prime minister and high military official Wojciech Jaruzelski led a military coup and imposed martial law across Poland, insisting with military force that Lenin’s road to revolutionary socialism is one-way with a ban on u-turns.

But neither the secret police carrying out thousands of nightly arrests, nor the ominously roaring tanks on the street were so damaging as the Leninist ideology that attacked the hearts and minds of Poles and the perfidious lies that once again became the norm in the media.

If not for the rhetoric of truth and liberty carried on broadcasts like Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, orchestrated as part of Ronald Reagan’s confrontation against the Soviets, the other half of the Poles would have also believed the martial law propaganda. Fortunately, Reagan’s strategy eventually helped Poles peacefully reconquer their freedom. On January 30, 1990, the Polish Communist Party dissolved itself in a symbolic walk-out under the banner.

Reagan’s strategy was successful because he trusted the American people who approved the strategy by regularly gathering to listen to his commentaries that targeted, as he put it, “difference in culture, morals and in the levels of civilization between the free world and communism”.

“When all you have to do to win is rely on the good judgment of the American people, then you’re in good shape—because the American people have good judgment,” Reagan declared.

Fast forward to November 18, 2022: intercontinental ballistic missile engines roared on Korea’s Peninsula as 85-foot-long missiles arced across the sky with Kim Jong-un in attendance. North Korea’s propaganda fumed ominously with contempt and hostility: “the ICBM was launched in an unacceptable situation – the reckless military-confrontational intrigues of hostile forces led by the United States.”

However, unlike in the 1980s under President Reagan or even two years ago under President Donald Trump, the Biden administration acts as if it doesn’t understand the ideological challenge. As Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze remarked, the core of the communist ideology that informed the Kremlin’s policies during the Soviet era was painting the nations of the entire world to appear as though they were the enemy of communism. North Korea’s leadership is animated by the same “siege mentality,” and Biden’s approach, focused on demilitarization alone, is doomed to fail because Pyongyang’s growing aggression is the consequence of its ideological system – a system that Biden has refused to confront.

This ideology has resulted in the destruction of the country’s economy, the crushing of dissent, partnering with like-minded totalitarian regimes, and threating regional and global security.

Biden fails to understand that a Leninist party depends on convincing its citizens that the West is determined to prey on their land, resources, and even their lives. As Dr. Chan Young Bang of the KIMEP University in Kazakhstan has noted, this is the foundation of North Korea’s foreign policy.

Informed by this worldview, a Leninist party rejects the free market and chooses an over-taxed, bureaucrat-dominated economic system that leads to waste and poverty. A command economy, in combination with astronomically high spending on internal security and the military, results in over-indebtedness and near starvation, while the party’s leadership blames the permanent crisis on the United States.

Proof of this was seen in Kim Jong-un’s statements the day of the missile launches last month. He explained that the launch was a response to “a genuine military threat from the United States,” and was needed to save country from the West which “is trying to disrupt peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region.”

However, the truth about the destabilization is the exact opposite: North Korea, not the West, threatens peace and stability. But North Koreans, like the Poles once were, are subjected to the powerful propaganda of a communist regime. Citizens living on the edge of starvation and subject to the tyranny of a police state are told that their suffering is necessitated by the looming threat of the West.

Dr. Chan warns that once Pyongyang acquires modern nuclear weapons, its Leninist ideology will lead the regime to illegally proliferate nuclear weapons in the region, leaving no option but for neighbors like South Korea and Japan to also acquire such weapons, with even countries like Australia or New Zealand also being compelled to start their own nuclear weapon programs.

To effectively combat this threat, Biden and other Western leaders must make a commitment combat the ideology which underpins it, not just the weapons of mass destruction which result from it. Only then can the world begin to move toward a denuclearized Korean peninsula and a flourishing of peace and democracy in the region.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.

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Mike S
Mike S
1 year ago

Any mention of the name Reagan and the vile name of Biden in the same sentence is disgusting. One man never shirked from his responsibility, the other is the worst example of the high office of the President of the United States of America the country has ever seen. The sooner he leaves office the better it will be for all Americans.

PaulE
PaulE
1 year ago

Another article claiming the Biden administration just “doesn’t understand” the nature of the threat yet another despotic and authoritarain regime poses to the United States. The Biden administration and the Democrats FULLY UNDERSTAND, but DO NOT CARE. You can’t fix a problem until you admit what the problem actually is. These nonsensical articles of this vein, that try to paint the current administration and Democrats in general as simply clueless fools lurching from one unintended error to the next, certainly don’t help educate the public to the real basis of why events are unfolding as they are. Either have the courage to write the truth or don’t bother to write anything at all. Avoiding the truth of the matter doesn’t help anyone in the end.

The Biden administration and the Democrats are ideologically aligned with socialist and communist regimes around the world, as they themselves are socialists by the policies they advocate for. They envy the power and control such regimes have over their people and every aspect of their economies. Many are on public record as being envious of the enormous power and control people like Xi, Putin and Kim have over their respective countries. The enormous personal wealth and power that the leaders of these authoritarian countries possess is what the Democrats covet here.

Richard
Richard
1 year ago

God save Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu From tyranny usa and Israel were better off before the last USA national election appeared stolen from the former president. 2020 election night did not support liberty.

Bob L.
Bob L.
1 year ago

North Korea is Communist China’s toady and what I consider a diversion from what China is doing.
Communist China IS at war with the U.S., why do you think the massive amount of drugs, especially fentanyl are coming through Mexico along with the massive number of illegal migrants who are overwhelming our ability to shelter, feed, educate, and medicate them much less support most since they are also mostly unemployed or unemployable. Remember seeing all of the “poor” migrants walking along the roads of Central America and Mexico towards the U.S. border? No, they were not marching a thousand and more miles, they were only walking a short distance for the TV cameras before reboarding the busses actually transporting them. The massive “invasion” takes a lot of money and organization to undertake. Where is all of that funding and organization coming from? Red China as well as our own federal government mostly. Yes, our own government which has been taken over almost totally now by the New World Order. We only learn of what is actually taking place through alternate news sources like AMAC, One America News, a little through FOX, and by reading online sources like The Western Journal and others. The big networks and their local affiliates don’t mention or distort any real truths.

What I have to ask is if and when are the States going to fully recognize that our national government has been captured by the enemy and is being used to conquer us through ignorant submission to their agenda in the name of falsely following the Constitution? Our top national “leadership” is owned by the enemy of freedom and national sovereignty. The States are going to have to apply the Tenth Amendment in a massive way to turn back the REAL insurrection against our country that did not taking place on the Capitol steps, but from within the Capitol, White House, and every bureaucratic office and agency now controlled by radicals.

Communist China has also set the stage for disabling our ability to sustain ourselves if and more likely when they “pull the plug” on supplying us with the majority of essentials we now import from them rather than producing domestically, pharmaceuticals being a big critical one. Think of not being able to sustain our ability to live daily life making it all but impossible to then work to support militarily defending ourself, which by the way we also now depend on importing a lot of rare earth minerals for making our high tech weapons systems. That comes from Red China also or from countries where they have become very friendly.

We and the rest of what’s left of free humanity face three powerful (mortal) enemies, communism, Fabian Progressivism, and Islam. Communism and Fabian Progressivism are very close allies and the greatest threat. If you’ve never heard of The Fabian Society, you need to for it’s their agenda behind the New World Order which has slowly been working, eroding our Constitutional government from within for more than 110 years. The old failed League of Nations, the United Nations, all of the climate change organizations and “G’ numbered summits are all Fabian New World Order based.

johnh
johnh
1 year ago

The statement LENIN “To Win & never willfully give up power” reminds me why I never want this to happen in USA. That is why USA elections must always have a loser & a winner. I will never vote again for a candidate that will not accept election results.

WILLIAM MCKENZIE
WILLIAM MCKENZIE
1 year ago

Indeed!

Rich
Rich
1 year ago

We fail to remember that president Reagan spoke softly and carried a big stick. He built a strong military and was not going to take any garbage from anyone, unlike the previous administration. President Trump called out Kim Jong-un for the crazy ruler that he is. You don’t have to have a war to stop a threat. Biden’s handlers will never tell these people what they need to hear, that if they EVER launch a warhead toward us or one of our allies, they will cease to exist. To stop a bully you need to punch them in the face and let him know he doesn’t want to go there again. This administration is treasonous, and can’t even protect our southern border. All they care about is for their agenda to succeed. So far it is succeeding very well.

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