Just a few years after U.S. warships forced Japan to open its borders, another conflict arose in the Pacific region between the United States andKorea. While a New York newspaper called it "The Little War with the Heathens," Koreans referred to it as the "Barbarian Incursion of 1871." Not only was this the first time Americans seized Asian territory and raised the flag there, but it revealed how U.S. political leaders and their foreign policy unthinkingly dismissed different cultures, especially of nonwhite peoples, while presuming that their own values and national aspirations were universally appealing.(1)
In 1866 when heavily armed American merchant vessels arrived in Koreanwaters seeking a trade agreement, the Korean government had just driven out French Catholic missionaries, not to mention having been threatened by both China and Japan. Koreans sent a clear message to the Americans indicating they wanted neither Christianity nor trade, let alone a military invasion followed by a lengthy war. However, the U.S. ignored the message and landed at Pyongyang. When a crowd formed, U.S. sailors fired on them. The Koreans retaliated by killing those whom they presumed guilty and by burning a ship. Although there was talk of war in Washington, no action was taken.
Four years later the Grant Administration asked China's assistance to open negotiations with Korea, admitting that "little is known...of the people who inhabit that country." Yet Americans did have strong opinions about Asians, mainly that they were "cunning and lacked imagination."(2) The U.S. also believed that if it practiced restraint, "orientals" were likely to misunderstand it, merely serving to invite a Korean use of force. Orders were given to the U.S. secretary of state that the U.S. might have to use and display force if necessary. As expected, a flotilla of warships and supporting vessels anchored at the mouth of the Yomha River and Seoul did not appear benign but as a threat.
Although Korea maintained formal relations with China, it believed both China and Japan had been corrupted by having regular relations with theChristian West. Korea prided itself by upholding the true Confucian morality of familial piety and of practicing right relationships, right thinking, and right behaviors. Korea also sought self-sufficiency and pursued a policy of self-strengthening. Therefore, it wanted to remain isolated from much of the world. Initially, Korea ignored the U.S. believing that a dialogue with Americans would violate their longstanding policy of seclusion and commitment to non-intercourse with the West.
Even without a reply the U.S. was determined to visit the emperor and started to sail its warships and merchant vessels up the Han River. They also surveyed the river and coast. Although such actions appeared provocative, even hostile, the Korean emperor had ordered his people to avoid conflict and bloodshed. The Americans misunderstood this restraint, and, finding no resistance, they pressed on, confident of the purity of their motives and rightness of their mission.(3) They supposed that international treaties and trade relations were central to a civilized life and were offering the people of Korea an option to what Americans assumed were better technologies and a superior faith.
Such actions, though, marked the Koreans as uncivilized and that their policies, such as isolationism and self-sufficiency, were wrong. The Korean emperor finally sent a message to the U.S. which read that he wanted friendly relations but had no interest in meeting the Americans or in negotiating any treaties. The Americans affirmed their peaceful intentions and indicated they would continue the surveys. As the U.S. warships proceeded upstream towards the emperors palace, the Koreans opened fire. The Americans landed a contingent of almost 700 Marines, who defeated the Korean force on shore and then departed.
Both Korea and the U.S. believed each side had provoked the attack. "Koreans," wrote the U.S. secretary of state, "were no more and no less than a semi-barbarous and hostile race" who resisted the Americans' reasonable aspirations.(4) Americans were also made to believe that for the Koreans "human life is considered of little value, and soldiers, educated as they have been, meet death with the same indifference as the Indians of North America."(5) The Koreans, on the other hand, credited America's withdrawal to their superior moral virtues and fierce struggle, even overcoming the Westerners' advanced technologies and superior warships.
As the U.S. continues to send a number of advanced aircraft and guided missile destroyers, including nuclear submarines and B-52 bombers andB-2 stealth planes and F-22 Raptor fighter jets, to counter North Korea's nuclear test, its start-up of Yongbyon nuclear complex, and its claim that it is entering a "state of war" with South Korea; it is obvious that policies of containment and self-restraint have failed for both the U.S. and North Korea. Such failures always arise from ethnocentric presumptions and misinterpreting another's culture and moral values. At issue too are racist and religious presuppositions that, in the end, can lead to needless violence.
History reveals that changes in degrees and technologies, at some point, move so far as to become uncontrollable. The destructive nature of nuclear war dictates that war itself can no longer be regarded as the continuation of policy by other means. Just as nuclear weapons are a status symbol to the U.S., the same is true of North Korea. This security dilemma, or the propensity of armaments undertaken by one state for ostensibly defensive purposes to threaten other states, which arm in reaction, actually weakens national security. Technological fanaticism, or mutually assured destruction at any cost, whether it be nuclear missiles or drones, can never by materially or emotionally contained.
Fanaticism and advanced weapons technologies call for national sacrifices and the forgoing of important life-sustaining resources. Sadly, this is the new international order. Tragically, it is incompatible with both Confucian and Western beliefs. "The experience of dead generations," wrote Karl Marx, "weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living." A nation and its individuals are subjected by ghastly forces beyond their control, by events and misunderstandings of the past that still influence the present. Regarding Korea's and the U.S.' "not so" long ago wars, including their fanatical provocations, will a middle ground for peace and justice be attempted before another hellish war occurs?
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