Page 10 - aruba-today-20171209

A10 WORLD NEWS
Saturday 9 december 2017

Amid skepticism: U.S. foresaw a costly victory in

Jordan planning a shiny city in the desert war with North Korea - in 1994

By KARIN LAUB meeting with local journal- he said. But it is needed, he
Associated Press ists in late October. argued, to relieve pressure By MATT PENNINGTON
MADOUNEH, Jordan (AP) — This perceived secrecy and on the capital. Associated Press
A shiny new city is to arise “top-down” approach has Amman was a hamlet just WASHINGTON (AP) — In a nuclear standoff with North
from Jordan’s desert over drawn widespread criti- a century ago and is seen Korea more than two decades ago — long before the
the next three decades, cism. as an upstart among the reclusive government had atomic weapons that could
potentially rivaling the king- Few Jordanians have region’s ancient cities, threaten America — U.S. officials planned for war.
dom’s capital of Amman, shown much enthusiasm, such as Baghdad and Cai- Declassified documents published Friday show the Unit-
a rapidly growing and in- even among Amman resi- ro. Today, Amman is home ed States believed its military and South Korea’s forces
creasingly unwieldy me- dents who complain con- to more than 40 percent of would “undoubtedly win” a conflict on the divided Ko-
tropolis of 4 million people. stantly of the city’s traffic. Jordan’s population of 9.5 rean Peninsula, with the understanding it would cost
Announcing plans for what Some suspect the new city million. many casualties.
The Pentagon estimated at the time that if war broke
with Korea, some 52,000 American service members
would be killed or wounded in the first three months.
South Korean military casualties would total 490,000 in
that time. And the number of North Korean and civilian
lives claimed would be enormous, according to “The
Two Koreas” by Don Oberdorfer, a definitive modern
history of Korean Peninsula.
Today, with North Korea almost able to directly threat-
en the U.S. mainland with nuclear strikes, the possibil-
ity of conflict looms as it had in 1994. President Don-
ald Trump has vowed to stop the North Koreans from
reaching such capability.
Twenty-three years ago, the stakes were different.
At that time, President Bill Clinton’s administration con-
sidered a cruise missile strike on a North Korean nuclear
complex after it began defueling a reactor that could
provide fissile material for bombs for the first time. For-
mer President Jimmy Carter headed off a conflict,
meeting with founding North Korean leader Kim Il Sung
and helping seal an aid-for-disarmament agreement.
The pact endured for nearly a decade, despite fre-
quent disputes and periodic flare-ups on the peninsula.
“We had taken a very strong position that we would
This Nov. 30, 2017 photo, shows densely built apartment buildings and steep hills that are common not permit North Korea to make a nuclear bomb,” Wil-
in Amman, Jordan. A shiny new high-tech utopian city is planned to rise from Jordan’s bleak liam Perry, who was defense secretary during the crisis,
desert over the next three decades, potentially rivaling the capital of Amman, a congested, said this week. “We have said that many times since
increasingly unwieldy metropolis of 4 million people. Critics say it’s often more efficient to address then, but then we really meant it.”
problems in existing cities and that new city projects tend to be risky endeavors.
(AP Photo/Lindsey Leger) A declassified transcript published by the National Se-
curity Archive at George Washington University records

it portrays as a high-tech is largely meant to benefit Almost every hour of the Perry’s discussion on the standoff with South Korea’s
utopia, Jordan joined other Jordan’s powerful and their day is rush hour and urban president in 1998. Perry was by then Clinton’s special
Middle Eastern countries business cronies. Govern- sprawl is rapidly devour- envoy for North Korea.
betting on multi-million- ment officials deny that. ing precious green areas. Perry told President Kim Dae-jung that the U.S. had
dollar mega projects as an This week, Amman Mayor Districts of mid-rise, sand- planned for a military confrontation and that “with the
investment magnet and Yousef Shawarbeh de- colored residential build- combined forces of the ROK and U.S., we can undoubt-
quick economic fix. fended the rocky rollout ings spread over hills and edly win the war.” ROK refers to the abbreviation of the
Yet some urban plan- in a meeting with business valleys, with a few high-rise South’s official name, the Republic of Korea.
ners warn that “cities from people, diplomats and rep- towers marking the city Speaking to South Korea’s Kim, who pursued a “sun-
scratch” are risky endeav- resentatives of the energy center. shine” policy of diplomatic outreach to North Korea,
ors and argue it’s more ef- and environmental sectors, Rapid growth has been Perry said the “war involves many casualties in the pro-
ficient to improve existing many of whom seemed driven by an influx of hun- cess. As a former defense secretary, I am well aware
cities. skeptical. dreds of thousands of Pal- of the negative aspects of war, and will do my best to
In Jordan, the government “The topic hasn’t been fully estinian, Syrian and Iraqi avoid war.”
promises the yet-to-be- studied yet,” the mayor refugees in recent de- North Korea has since made leaps and bounds in its
named city will draw popu- said when pressed for de- cades. nuclear and missile development, particularly under its
lation away from Amman, tails. “When we conclude It is also linked to acceler- current young leader, Kim Jong Un. Last week, it tested
relieve its crippling traffic the studies, we will an- ated urbanization across an intercontinental ballistic missile with a likely range
jams, provide middle-class nounce plans and have the Middle East and North of more than 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers), moving
housing and inject momen- clear roles for government, Africa, where populations it closer to perfecting a nuclear-tipped projectile that
tum into a sluggish econo- citizens, investors, and so flock from underdevel- can strike all corners of the U.S. mainland.
my plagued by high unem- on.” oped rural areas into cities Trump has not ruled out using force to stop the North
ployment. Shawarbeh insisted that looking for greater job op- from achieving that capability if diplomacy fails. Back-
But authorities have re- Amman would not be ne- portunities. ing up the threat, the U.S. has stepped up its military
leased only snippets of in- glected as Jordan, buckling drills with allies, which Pyongyang condemns as prepa-
formation since the prime under record public debt, rations for invasion. This week, the U.S. and South Korea
minister mentioned the shifts scarce resources to Continued on Page 27 held air force drills involving more than 200 aircraft, in-
new city for the first time, the new project. “The new cluding six U.S. F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighters.q
seemingly casually, in a city is not a new Amman,”