Page 37 - NKHR Hawaii Conference 2023

COL. GRANT NEWSHAM, USMC (Ret)
(President, CPAC Korea)
T e way that I would look at it is at least half psychological and half political. It’s not just
a question of hardware and numbers of troops and aircraft. You have to consider the other
parts of this and that’s where human rights f ts. I would say that human rights should
be an issue of as equal importance as nuclear weapons and missiles, particularly when it
comes to North Korea. When looking at it from the military perspective, the f rst thing
you have to have is people. People must understand why you’re f ghting or why you might
have to f ght, and that includes both your military but also your public; you want them to
understand exactly why you need to do this. It’s not just because we feel like it—when you
can articulate the nastiness of a regime, the human rights atrocities as part of the reason
why we are f ghting.

Americans did something like this in World War Two, the Why you Fight series of
movies, but you have to articulate that so the public will support what you do and human
rights is one very important aspect of that. Also, you want other countries and other
publics and peoples to support what you’re doing. And once again, if you say,

“We want to do it because they’re bad.”

that isn’t quite enough. You have to be able to lay out exactly what the human rights issue
is here. T is is important to a certain type of nation, to our kind of nation, free nations. To
some other nations, it’s not as big an issue but to us, it’s absolutely important.

And if you make that case that this is, in large part, about human rights, you can bring
other countries and other public populations onto your side. You can also bring this across
to those people who would otherwise aid and abet. I could name those countries, but they
know very well who they are. T ey are considered decent good countries, but they seem
pretty happy to do business with North Korea to keep that regime af oat. By publicizing
its human rights abuses and constantly making the case through different channels,
you keep human rights up front and center. You don’t do like some administrations,
unfortunately, have done and said,

“Well, this is just about nuclear weapons; we will take care of human rights
later.”

You never take care of human rights in that case. T e other side sees that it doesn’t matter.
One thing to always keep in mind is the moral and human rights aspect of why you are

NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS HAWAII CONFERENCE 2023 37