A REVIEW OF A.B. ABRAMS’ NEW BOOK: "SURVIVING THE UNIPOLAR ERA: North Korea’s 35-Year Standoff with the United States"

(CLARITY PRESS 2024)

By Richard C. Cook, Co-Founder and Lead Analyst, American Geopolitical Institute. Author, Our Country, Then and Now (Clarity Press, 2023)

A Short Quiz:

1.     With what nation has the U.S. been at war for almost 75 years?

2.     What nation has never been colonized by a Western power?

3.     What nation has never bowed to U.S. pressure to surrender any aspect of its sovereignty to the New World Order?

4.     What nation survived the collapse of its patron, the Soviet Union, followed by natural disasters, possibly manmade, that took its population to the brink of starvation in the 1990s?

5.     What nation negotiated a possible peace settlement with the Clinton administration only to have President George W. Bush declare it part of an “axis of evil”?

6.     What nation was #1 on the U.S. regime change hit list in 2002, ahead of Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and Iran?

7.     What nation was called by the U.S. “a very tough nut to crack,” forcing the U.S. to back down from an attack after it utilized its own resources to develop a nuclear deterrent?

8.     What nation created a massive underground fortification complex that may have inspired Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah?

9.     What nation has a nuclear deterrent possibly capable of dropping H-bombs on the U.S. mainland?

Overview

Obviously the answer is North Korea, a part of the world about which most Western readers know absolutely nothing. What they think they know is often based on the lies of the mainstream media that routinely fabricates atrocity stories about every U.S. “adversary” that raises its head.

Now Clarity Press has come out with a new book by Korea expert A.B. Abrams that reads like a thriller but tells you much of what you need to know about an epic story by a resilient country that has turned its small, mountainous land into a fortress of survival in today’s mortally dangerous international environment.

The origins of the Korean conflict lie in the standoff between the Communist and Western blocs that formed at the end of World War II. The Korean peninsula had been under Japanese rule since 1905, but an indigenous revolt had begun to take power during the latter stages of the war. The U.S. moved to prevent that revolt from taking over all of Korea.

In August 1945 the U.S. proposed a temporary division of Korea into areas of Soviet and U.S. trusteeship at the 38^th parallel. The Koreans in the North who had formed people’s committees operated with considerable autonomy. Those in the South worked under tight U.S. control, declaring the Republic of Korea as rulers of the entire peninsula on August 15, 1948.

By now a civil war had broken out, with the leaders to the North declaring their own Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in September 1948. In 1950, full-scale war began, and within 72 hours the forces of the South had been defeated. The U.S. military now stepped in and the Korean War was on.

The violence was horrendous, with massive civilian deaths. U.S. bombing killed a million North and South Koreans and left six million homeless. The U.S.-led land army invaded the north but was driven back by Chinese intervention. The final armistice was at the point where hostilities began, the 38^th parallel.

U.S. air power carried out massive indiscriminate bombing on a scale that had only been exceeded by the assault on Japan in World War II. The U.S. dropped 32,557 tons of napalm. Bombing of the Yalu River dams destroyed 250,000 tons of rice and caused floods and starvation. Altogether, three to four million North Koreans died in the war, a number declared by many observers to be genocidal.

During the war, U.S. commander Douglas MacArthur recommended nuclear strikes against 26 Korean and Chinese targets. These were deterred by the Soviet Union’s possession of a nuclear strike capability that could be used against American East Asian bases. The Korean War also led China to believe it needed a nuclear deterrent against the U.S.

Despite the existence of the 1953 Armistice, there was never a treaty of peace between the U.S. and North Korea or between North and South, causing a state of war to be in existence to this day. It’s the oldest condition of open hostilities on earth, with the U.S. never recognizing the existence of the North Korean state and never backing off from its official policy that a North Korean government and nation must cease to exist.

So the question arises as to how North Korea has managed to survive after all these years? What is their secret in being able to do what no other nation has done that is not part of the official Western hegemony?

This is the question addressed by A.B Abrams in his most recent book. The answer, of course, is complex but includes North Korea’s own decision to acquire nuclear weapons and missiles to attack the American homeland. It’s also a question that hit the front-page headlines when President Donald Trump visited North Korea and engaged with its leader, Chairman Kim Jong Un, and became the first U.S. chief executive to say anything about North Korea other than insults.

Under the Biden administration, North Korea returned to the crosshairs, though with its support of Russia in Ukraine and the creation of a new multipolar world led by Russia and China, a page may have been turned, with matters still being far from settled. Thus the future of North Korea remains an open question, and North Korea is not backing down.

The following paragraphs consist of a brief synopsis of A.B. Abrams’ text, along with pertinent quotations. For the full impact, read the entire book. Your worldview may never be the same by the time you turn the final pages. You will also discern the implications of the latest news of North Korea’s assistance being provided to Russia in Ukraine.

“Introduction”

At the end of a lengthy Introduction, A.B. Abrams summarizes: “Where they were not properly deterred, America and the wider Western world would not hesitate to bring ruin and immeasurable suffering to populations that remained outside their control, which was a lesson learned at cost to the peoples of both North and South Korea during the Korean War, and subsequently strongly reinforced by Western militaries’ conduct over the following several decades.”

Chapter 1: “The Post-Cold War Years: A New Era of Conflict”

During the Cold War, North Korea became the most urbanized and industrialized country in Asia. Dams being built were “engineering masterpieces.”

With the growth of the Western bloc, North Korea became increasingly isolated. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-1991, North Korea found itself “in a very small minority of states outside of Western influence.”

Iraq/Desert Storm and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia showed North Korea the danger of a sudden Western assault. Demonization of North Korea began with an April 10, 1991, article by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations entitled “North Korea: The Next Nuclear Nightmare,” with parallels being drawn between Iraq and North Korea. Regime change was in the air, including pre-emptive attacks.

North Korea had decided to develop nuclear weapons, starting by 1990. They saw Iraq facing the U.S. without nuclear weapons as its fatal mistake. North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and fired a large ballistic missile capable of hitting U.S. bases in Japan on May 29, 1993.

The U.S. moved to impose sanctions against North Korea along with planning a major attack with 100,000 troops. North Korea moved for full normalization of relations with the U.S., which the Clinton administration refused. Ex-president Jimmy Carter was then called in to negotiate, resulting in the October 21, 1994, “Agreed Framework.” North Korea agreed to give up nuclear weapons development in exchange for technical aid in power generation and movement toward normal state-to-state relations. 

Meanwhile, North Korea had lost the support of the former Soviet Union as a bulwark, while the U.S. foreign policy establishment was convinced that North Korea would soon collapse. In 1995-1998 the North Korean economy did come close to collapsing due to catastrophic flooding followed by drought. The U.S. claimed North Korea was deliberately starving its people. But North Korea recovered, with Chinese support replacing Russia’s. During this time, “North Korea has proven amazingly resilient,” with U.S. Neocons calling on the U.S. government to “tear down this tyranny.”

The U.S. failed to live up to the Agreed Framework by normalizing relations, and by the end of the Clinton administration the opportunity had been lost.

Chapter 2: “The George W. Bush Years: Deterring an Invasion and Becoming a Nuclear Weapons State”

Within three years the Bush administration “would collapse the Agreed Framework and again bring the two countries to the brink of war.” Bush labeled North Korea a member of the “axis of evil,” along with Iran and Iraq. On September 17, 2002, the U.S. issued a new National Security Strategy “announcing the option of using nuclear weapons against rogue states thought to be developing weapons of mass destruction.”

Feeling the threat, North Korea resolved to become a nuclear weapons state.

The U.S. plan was to go to war against North Korea, followed by Iraq, Syria, Iran, and others. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said, “We want to end all challenges, no matter how indistinct they might be to American power.”  But it was the Pentagon that took North Korea off the list as #1 because of North Korea’s military strength and the estimate that the U.S. and South Korea would take 500,000 casualties in the first 90 days of war. So the U.S. decided to go after the “low-hanging fruit” in the Middle East instead.

Meanwhile, North Korea had heavily fortified itself against potential U.S. nuclear attack. “Almost all of North Korea’s critical industries are now located underground.” A ground U.S. assault was deemed impossible, while “winning the war from the air would not be viable.”

In 2003, North Korea announced its withdrawal from the Agreed Framework and reactivated its plutonium facility. By June 2003, North Korea had enough plutonium for 3-4 new warheads. After the fall of Baghdad, the U.S. began to prepare an attack on North Korea, but as Iraq became a quagmire of insurgencies, the U.S. bogged own. By the end of 2003, the Bush administration concluded that there was no good military solution, with a consensus that North Korea was winning the confrontation.

The U.S. now escalated existing financial and trade sanctions against North Korea, while in 2006 North Korea put into service its first intermediate range ballistic missile and on October 9, 2006, detonated its first nuclear warhead in an underground test.

Now the U.S. moved toward a more conciliatory posture via sanctions relief, while North Korea froze plutonium development. Meanwhile, its trade with China was booming as the Iraq war paralyzed U.S. action against such adversaries as Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and Libya.

Chapter 3: “The Barack Obama Years: A New Phase of the Conflict”

Abrams writes that the Barack Obama administration which commenced in January 2009 “brought a new global cold war.” Stable ties with China were disrupted by Obama’s “Pivot to Asia.” This was the start of comprehensive war planning by the Western powers against a part of the world increasingly dominated by China. Bush-era improvements in relations with Syria and Libya were reversed and relations with Russia shattered by the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine. Relations were also destabilized with Pakistan, Yemen, and Turkey.

Obama said of East Asia: “America should write the rules. America should call the shots. Other countries should play by the rules America and our partners set and not the other way around.” Regarding North Korea, the Obama administration decided that “full and unilateral disarmament was a precondition for any talks.”

Behind Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. moved to implement a new range of financial and trade sanctions. North Korea now detonated another nuclear bomb and accelerated testing of ballistic missiles. The U.S. predicted North Korean collapse due to the ailing health of Chairman Kim Jong Il.

In mid-2009 the U.S. used the Stuxnet Worm in a major cyberattack on North Korea’s nuclear program. There was also a joint Israel-U.S. cyberattack against North Korea and Iran. The attack against North Korea failed, as they had “near-unique resistance” to Western cyberattacks.

Chairman Kim Jong Il died and was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Un, who had been educated in Switzerland. Despite U.S. propaganda, North Korea remained stable, with major cultural, economic, and technological advances. North Korea escalated its nuclear testing, with the aim of becoming capable of ballistic missile launches.

Major U.S. military exercises in March 2013 caused North Korea to decide on developing an ICBM that could be aimed at the U.S. mainland. On March 13, North Korea announced it was nullifying the original Korean War Armistice Agreement and would now be engaging in “merciless retaliation” to any Western attack. On April 1, North Korea declared itself a “full-fledged nuclear weapons state.” North Korea’s reliance on indigenous resources was seen as making its weapons program virtually immune to sanctions.

In 2014, President Obama personally ordered the stepping up of cyber and electronic attacks on North Korea, but from 2014-2017, its missile program advanced tremendously, marking a major U.S. policy failure.

In 2014, North Korea announced development of a submarine-launched missile, another game-changer. When North Korea asked the Obama administration to abandon its hostilities and negotiate for peace, the U.S. refused. The U.S. Department of Defense now assessed that North Korea was capable of reaching the U.S. mainland with nuclear weapons. January 6, 2016, saw North Korea’s first test of an H-bomb-fission-type device.

President Obama now said the U.S. “could obviously destroy North Korea,” while a U.S. State Department official said that Chairman Kim would “immediately die” if they initiated a nuclear attack. But by the later stages of the Obama administration, the U.S. had concluded that North Korea was not “a backwards state anymore.”

Chapter 4: “The Obama Administration on the Offensive”

Toward the end of Obama’s term, his administration still wanted to launch an attack on North Korea’s nuclear facilities, while Obama himself wanted “to attack and eliminate the North Korea leadership.” The Council on Foreign Relations issued a paper advocating destruction of North Korea and its absorption by South Korea, also promising economic benefits to China if it remained neutral.

CFR’s preferred U.S. strategy for this era of world history was disclosed in a January 2017 article in Foreign Affairs by CFR President Richard N. Haass entitled “World Order 2.0.” Haass advocated moves “to amend the concept of self-determination on the part of an entity seeking a state of its own and replace it with the notion that statehood is something to be granted rather than asserted.” States accused of humanitarian abuses should have their statehood stripped through military intervention, [an extension of a standing U.S. doctrine that such “abuses” justified U.S.-enforced regime change]. The article had a photo of Chairman Kim Jong Un and other North Korean leaders. Haass’s article defined the outlook of the U.S. foreign policy establishment as President Donald Trump entered the White House.

Two factors had prevented Obama from ordering an attack on North Korea in 2016: 1) North Korea was more heavily armed and fortified than any immediate adversary since World War II; and 2) options to degrade its nuclear missile program with air strikes were non-existent due to dozens of its nuclear warheads being placed deep underground. Also, North Korea was “without parallel the toughest intelligence target in the world,” so any attack would be hit-or-miss.

Consequently, Obama’s doctrine was called, somewhat disdainfully, “Strategic Patience,” at a time when asymmetric warfare was on the ascendant. It was also a time when the U.S. was reluctant to send massive armies abroad as it had done in Afghanistan and Iraq, so was now utilizing state and non-state proxies, such as ISIS in the Middle East, along with emergent technologies like the internet as instruments of war.

Information warfare targets multiplied, including Hong Kong, Ukraine, Syria, and Iran. A NATO policy paper stated: “Information can be used to disorganize governance, organize anti-government protests, delude adversaries, influence public opinion, and reduce an opponents’ will to resist.” Google Ideas became one avenue of information warfare.

Information attacks against North Korea were part of the Department of Defense’s budget, with broadcasts of American soap operas an example of attempts to induce favorability to Western interests. An NGO with the goal of overthrowing the North Korean government was the North Korea Strategy Center, which invested heavily in smuggling flash drives across the border with such content as Wikipedia and programs such as Friends, Superbad, and Sex and the City. The New York-based Human Rights Foundation oversaw the dropping of 10,000 copies of the anti-North Korean film The Interview into North Korea via balloon. There were also suggestions among NGOs of dropping $1 bills infected with the COVID virus.

Meanwhile, ubiquitous atrocity stories appeared on YouTube, all fabricated, that were heavily promoted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (See A.B. Abrams, Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order, Clarity Press: 2023.) A constant flow of fake newspaper articles “also reached entirely new levels in the Obama years.” These were “all closely coordinated with military and diplomatic efforts to isolate the country.” Under President Donald Trump, slander toward North Korea became even worse behind Stephen Miller, Senior Adviser to the President and White House Director of Speechwriting.

Chapter 5: “Fire and Fury: The Military Standoff that Ended an Era”

Open warfare between the U.S. and North Korea has never been so close as it was during the last year of the Obama administration and the first two years of the Trump presidency. But by the end of this period, North Korea had won its battle for independence behind a nuclear deterrent the U.S. was unable to prevent.  

This period saw major advances in North Korea’s ballistic missile development, while its miniaturized H-bomb put it on course to flight test an ICBM capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. Economic sanctions had reached their limit, with no further way to pressure North Korea to back off its deterrent program.

The U.S. now turned to pressuring China to take a stand against North Korea. The Council on Foreign Relations raised the threat of a major war on China’s border. But China paid only lip service, while non-Western trading partners continued to deal with North Korea behind the scenes.

Obama told Trump that North Korea would be his “toughest foreign policy challenge.” But within six months, North Korea had gained intercontinental range nuclear delivery capability. Trump now expressed willingness to personally negotiate with Chairman Kim and even invite him to the White House. Trump had also pledged to pull troops out of Afghanistan and Syria. This showed that “as president, Trump quickly came into conflict with the foreign policy establishment.”

On July 4, 2017, North Korea conducted its first confirmed launch of an ICBM. This was the first time in history a medium or small state had gained a long-range nuclear deterrent. A U.S. general stated that this “changed the entire structure of the world.” North Korea would soon be able to launch up to 60 nuclear warheads.

Trump’s strategy on North Korea now became “tough talk.” Using the same words Truman spoke against Japan, he said: “North Korea best not make any more threats to the U.S. They will be met with fire and fury the world has never seen.” Chairman Kim chided back that the U.S. thought its mainland to be “an invulnerable Heavenly Kingdom,” even threatening a pre-emptive attack.

On September 19, 2017, Trump went before the UN General Assembly where he threatened “to totally destroy North Korea.” North Korea responded that its “ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power” with the U.S. Some U.S. advisers said they at least wanted to give North Korea “a bloody nose.”

The U.S. then assembled an unprecedented armada offshore from Korea with three carrier strike groups and disclosed they still had nuclear silos in South Korea. Navy SEALS were deployed capable of launching assassination missions. North Korea had instituted a missile testing moratorium which it now ended, saying Trump was “begging for nuclear war.”

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov now said the U.S. was “playing with fire” and that Russia would “do its utmost” to prevent the U.S. from starting a war. The Chinese Global Times warned that China would intervene to support North Korea if the U.S. attacked, while China and Russia both staged military exercises in the region.

While President Trump insulted Chairman Kim as “Little Rocket Man,” and “Washington had left no clear path to negotiations,” the Trump administration now began to shift against a military attack. Even so, Senator Lindsey Graham lobbied for war as did top military brass. In January 2018, Foreign Affairs published an article entitled: “It’s Time to Bomb North Korea.” But by now, “U.S. intelligence believed that North Korea had developed the capability to deliver nuclear retaliation against much of the American mainland.”

Abrams makes clear that it was North Korea’s nuclear deterrent and determination to use it that prevented war. “Had North Korea failed to develop an ICBM capability when it did, the possibility of the U.S. initiating a war in Northeast Asia to the severe detriment of all regional states and populations would have been considerably greater.” This would have involved the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, particularly in South Korea.

Chapter 6: “North Korea Wins: Coming to Terms with a New Status Quo”

The beginning of 2018 saw the end of a two-year standoff between North Korea and the U.S. Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “I believe Mr. Kim Jong Un has certainly won this round.” On January 1, 2018, Chairman Kim said, “The nuclear button is on my office desk all the time.” What was left, according to Abrams, was only “to mass-produce nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.”

Having reached this point, North Korea now froze testing of all missiles. South Korea also attempted to de-fuse the situation, with the “Olympic Détente” coming next. The Trump administration could not admit its failure to stop North Korea from acquiring a nuclear deterrent. North Korea also released three U.S. citizens serving prison sentences.

On June 12, 2018, President Trump and Chairman Kim met in Singapore, “a major landmark in the softening of the American position.” Trump also thanked China’s Chairman Xi Jinping for his help. Trump wrote on Twitter, “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”

Claiming a win for his administration, Trump met with Kim a second time in Hanoi on February 27, 2019, but without a normalization agreement. North Korea had asked for a lifting of sanctions, while Trump followed the advice of National Security Advisor John Bolton in demanding that North Korea transfer its entire nuclear arsenal and all nuclear fuel to the U.S. and “declare all its chemical and biological inventories.” Talks collapsed, with Kim walking away. Secretary of State Pompeo demanded that North Korea completely denuclearize unilaterally, but Trump refused to approve any new punitive sanctions.

North Korea now resumed its missile development and testing program, focusing on defeating U.S. missile defense systems. Trump said he was not concerned: “I am in no rush….I am very happy with the way it’s going.” On June 30, 2019, Trump met Kim for the 3^rd time in the DMZ, the first president in history to enter North Korea. “Trump reportedly invited Chairman Kim to visit Washington, ‘when the time is right,’ and used conciliatory language unprecedented and entirely unheard of from an American president.”

The Atlantic called the meeting: “The day denuclearization died.” Still, North Korea was being seen by some as Trump’s only “major foreign policy or geopolitical success,” while John Bolton referred to Kim as “a dictator of a rat-shit little country.”

Détente ended with failure of October 2019 talks in Stockholm, where North Korea broke off the meeting, with the U.S. resuming offshore military exercises. Kim announced resumption of testing of strategic weapons, as North Korea “unveiled a new heavier class of ballistic missile submarine.”

Then came COVID in early 2020. North Korea closed its borders on January 22, 2020, with the New York Times applauding this as achieving what Trump could not: “choking the North’s economy.” But North Korea survived the lockdowns, shocking observers. “This tremendous demonstration of resilience to any possible future economic warfare efforts seriously undermined Western hopes for the future of the sanctions regime.”

After the election of Joe Biden on November 3, 2020, the U.S. began to press for disarmament talks, which North Korea rejected as another U.S. “delaying-time trick.” But the Biden administration was at an impasse as it faced growing criticism for not having a viable policy on North Korean arms control. On March 25, 2017, Foreign Affairs wrote: “It is time for a realistic bargain with North Korea,” though Biden himself spoke of total denuclearization.

Meanwhile, North Korea continued to advance with rail-based missiles, missiles to elude defensive systems, hypersonic glide missiles, highly maneuverable cruise missiles, and improved air defense systems. On November 18, 2022, North Korea resumed ICBM testing. North Korea was now poised to have one of the most formidable nuclear deterrents in the world. North Korea also made major advances in conventional weaponry and defense. In response, the U.S. now “announced the full resumption of large-scale military exercises.”

Abrams summarizes: “The Biden administration’s tenure in many respects marked a return to the Cold War era.” But by the 2020s, North Korea “was far less of an outlier in the world order,” while the U.S. position was “increasingly unfavorable.”

Chapter 7: “The Second Cold War: A New Era for North Korea”

The North Korean economy was far ahead of South Korea in the 1950s and 60s, but was surpassed by the 80s as the Soviet Union stagnated. In the 1990s and early 2000s, North Korea came under intensive siege from the West. But under Obama, the global order began to fracture, leaving North Korea with more potential partners. Many countries looked at North Korea favorably as it had “remained a fortress unlike any other.”

The tremendous economic growth of China in the 21^st century has benefited North Korea greatly. China’s trade policies have significantly undercut Western economic and trade sanctions. Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping visited North Korea in 2019. Tourism and technology transfer from China have increased. North Korea opened its channels to Chinese media and culture to offset U.S. and South Korean fare. North Korea has also moved closer to China militarily.

Russia, on the other hand, collapsed in the 1990s and was a much weaker strategic partner than had been the Soviet Union. But North Korea “proved to be among Russia’s most reliable supporters in its conflict with NATO and Ukraine from 2022” and began to send workers to Donetsk and Lugansk by 2024.

On September 5, 2022, U.S. intelligence revealed that Russia was purchasing “millions of North Korean artillery shells and rockets” for use in Ukraine. Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu visited North Korea in July 2023. Later in September, Chairman Kim visited Russia’s Far East to review military aircraft production facilities with an eye to acquisition. Another area of interest was space satellite technology.

Russia also intensified its use of North Korean ballistic missiles against Ukrainian targets and began to acquire North Korean combat vehicles to use against U.S.-supplied Javelins.  

On June 18-19, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid his first visit to North Korea in 24 years. The two countries then signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” treaty providing for “military and other assistance” in time of war. North Korea now recognized Russia as “unprecedently vital to its security interests.” Relations also continued to open between North Korea and other states targeted by the U.S., including Syria and Iran.

North Korea also believed that the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world would bring significant benefits. Chairman Kim called North Korea “a powerful independent country.” An example of this transition is the growth of national payment systems away from the U.S. dollar as the world’s trading currency.

Chapter 8: “Future Trajectories in the U.S.-DPRK Conflict”

2016-2024 also saw a vast modernization of North Korea’s conventional warfare capabilities, showing its attention to the military concept of the “escalation ladder.” North Korea realized that if it relied too heavily on its nuclear deterrent, lower-level conventional attacks by the U.S. might come into play. Thus “Pyongyang’s adversaries could continue to contemplate provocations such as a ‘bloody nose’ strike.” Escalation management has been used effectively elsewhere in the world, as with Hezbollah vs. Israel and by Russia in Ukraine.  

Thus North Korea focused on creating a multi-tiered arsenal. It unveiled its first tactical nuclear warhead on March 24, 2023. Another key element was development of drones. The West now judged that North Korea was capable of knocking out U.S. bases on Guam, Hawaii, Okinawa, and the U.S. 7^th Fleet in Japan.

By 2020, the U.S. had lost its ability to fight a near-peer adversary as it would have to against North Korea, due to its focus on fighting only insurgencies, guerrillas, and terrorists for a generation. The U.S. was poorly equipped “to engage in conventional war against major militaries,” while both China and North Korea had built their militaries specifically against the U.S. in case of an East Asian war. By 2020, the U.S. was “a much weakened superpower in a world where Western dominance was facing challenges unprecedented in centuries.”

North Korea represented “one of the most direct contradictions to the idea of a new world order centered on the economic and military power of the Western world and the global triumph of Western values.” It was viewed by the West as the “ultimate outlier,” while retaining “the military capacity to devastate cities across the Western world with thermonuclear strikes…seemingly indefinitely.”

North Korea also professed having learned the lessons from Iraq and Libya that giving up its strength “to make the West happy” was a fatal mistake. So North Korea remains “one of the few places in the world where Western states had never imposed their rule.” And the U.S. retains its central policy of advocating for North Korea’s “total destruction.” Thus “the Western world is expected to sustain longer-term efforts to gradually weaken the country with the aim of achieving a…final collapse.” Whether that policy will ever succeed is the question.

Conclusion

The preceding synopsis is only the tip of the iceberg. A.B Abrams’ book is a highly effective case study of a world on the more-or-less constant brink of nuclear war.

During the 71 years between the end of the Korean War and today, there were only two instances of a U.S. presidential administration moving toward a rapprochement with North Korea.

The first was the Clinton administration’s “Agreed Framework” negotiated by former President Jimmy Carter, and the second was when President Donald Trump reached out personally to Korean Chairman Kim Jung Un. Trump can be credited for taking steps for peace in the face of the hostility of the entire foreign policy establishment of the U.S. and its Western allies.

Otherwise, this is the story of a determined and resilient small nation-state brooking the hostility of the U.S. superpower to chart an independent course in a world dominated by Western interests that is now experiencing challenges from a worldwide revolt. A multipolar world is emerging that the U.S. has tried to prevent since the start of World War II and that the Anglo-American-Zionist imperial sphere has tried to smother for over a century.

Despite the demonization of North Korea by the Western media, its motivated and gifted population has stood by the country’s leadership in making its stand. In so doing, the nation has had the benefit of a compact, homogeneous population, ideologically committed, well-educated, and technologically-oriented that is also able to resist the blandishments of Western corruption such as internet propaganda and pornography. To reach this point, of course, has required near-total military mobilization.

These characteristics have also enabled North Korea to function in an increasingly complex military environment where cyberwarfare, electronic warfare, information warfare, and escalation management play a larger role than ever before. On top of everything else are its airtight security systems.

Finally, in light of Abrams’ book, recent developments between North Korea and Russia can also be understood. Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked the State Duma to ratify the new strategic partnership with North Korea signed during Putin’s visit in June that pledged each nation to assist the other in case of foreign aggression. Notably, the treaty makes a stand against Western sanctions, which opens the Russian-Korean border to free movement of all persons and commodities. Along with trade between North Korea and China, the Western sanctions regime has been defeated. Parallel with this, North Korea has taken new measures to seal and fortify its border with South Korea, thus preventing any ground attack from that direction should rising tensions in East Asia lead to open warfare.  

One could indeed argue that 21^st century North Korea has been one source of stability around which the multipolar world in the making has crystallized. A.B. Abrams’ book, Surviving the Unipolar Era: North Korea’s 35-Year Standoff with the United States, shows how this has come to pass and thus should be high on the must-read list for all students of geopolitics and the history of our era.

Disclosure and Disclaimer

Clarity Press is the publisher of my own book, Our Country, Then and Now. The book here under review, Surviving the Unipolar Era: North Korea’s 35-Year Standoff with the United States by A.B. Abrams, is the third book published by Clarity Press that I have reviewed. I have received no consideration for these reviews nor any editorial suggestions nor requirements. Nor have I utilized any other than public open sources.

Richard C. Cook is co-founder and lead investigator for the American Geopolitical Institute.  Mr. Cook is a retired U.S. federal analyst with extensive experience across various government agencies, including the U.S. Civil Service Commission, FDA, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary. As a whistleblower at the time of the Challenger disaster, he exposed the flawed O-ring joints that destroyed the Space Shuttle, documenting his story in the book “Challenger Revealed.” After serving at Treasury, he became a vocal critic of the private finance-controlled monetary system, detailing his concerns in “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform.” He served as an adviser to the American Monetary Institute and worked with Congressman Dennis Kucinich to advocate for replacing the Federal Reserve with a genuine national currency. See his new book, Our Country, Then and Now, Clarity Press, 2023. Also see his Three Sages Substack at https://montanarcc.substack.com/publish/posts and his American Geopolitical Institute articles at https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/category/agi/.

“Every human enterprise must serve life, must seek to enrich existence on earth, lest man become enslaved where he seeks to establish his dominion!” Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943), translation by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, 2014. Also download the Kober Press edition of The Book on the Living God here.