We all want peace, though these days it is getting increasingly more difficult to define what it is. Does peace mean “in our time” as Chamberlain once said, as if it were something we already possess and must preserve by not rocking the boat? Or is it something we have yet to attain since it has been taken from us? What price are we willing to pay to have peace? Because, whether we choose to placate or fight, there is a price.

It is stunning that many people living in the U.S. don’t seem to realize we are in a state of war. To be sure, this has partially to do with the kind of war we’re in: often covert, involving espionage, quietly breaking up terrorist cells in U.S. cities, tracking down the financing system of terrorism, as well as the bungling efforts to notify Americans of what level of danger they’re in with a rainbow colored warning system.

Where are the battlefields of old? Where is Gettysburg? The Marne? The Bulge? For some, even the charge against the Taliban was more of a police action than real war. In fact, the insistence that the military campaign was ultimately a failure because Osama bin Laden was not captured makes the engagement seem more a posse than a war. No wonder there is opposition to deposing Saddam Hussein. That would be a real war. And we don’t want that since we are not in a state of war. Right?

In some respects, there is an air of unreality to this war that not even the attacks on September 11^th, the first broad-scale butchery of American civilians in the nation’s history, can dispel. Perhaps the very fact of having been so brutally attacked, with the possibility of future attacks, is the source of this unreality itself.

To contemplate the terrible known and the terrible unknown has a numbing effect. Why can’t we just go back to being normal? Except that the normal we once knew has been irretrievably taken from us.

As the saying goes, we was robbed.

But wishing for peace, or believing it’s possible to have peace if we focus our peace-loving intentions, isn’t enough though it is certainly an understandable human failing. Take, for example, South Korea’s willingness to make peace with its dark northern twin.

The new incoming South Korean president, Roh Moo-hyun, wants to replace the armistice between the two Koreas with a peace treaty. Such a treaty couldn’t come at a more symbolic time. The 50^th anniversary of the armistice approaches this July 27^th.

How the new president proposes to secure the peace is not clear but he lays down three key elements of his plan: “the settlement of North Korean nuclear issue; the acceleration of inter-Korean cooperation; and the establishment of lasting peace by signing a peace treaty.” The plan calls for international cooperation among leading players in the conflict.

“The transition team advised Roh to make constant efforts to regularize inter-Korean talks, including leader’s summits, and ease military tension on the heavily fortified peninsula. The report also recommended the establishment of a consultative body for peace in Northeast Asia, comprising the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia.”

The easing of military tension along the border is especially unnerving. It is the sort of wishful thinking that gives false hope, a fantasy that suggests if you want peace bad enough all you need do is think real hard about it while trying to ignore the elephant in the room you’re not supposed to think about: Kim Jong-Il and his vampirish regime.

Dictators don’t just disappear or receive olive branches from its enemies, unless to take something far more costly later on. As long as Kim Jong-Il is in power there will be no peace. He has made it clear North Korea will pull out of the armistice agreement in the face of what it believes is unwarranted U.S. aggression. Yet the past decade of U.S. appeasement of North Korea has forced this crisis in light of that country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons in violation of international treaties.

Why would a peace treaty be the right response to a violation of the armistice? Seoul seems to believe the Americans exaggerate the problem. This is how one South Korean official described it. "[Y]ou've got a lot of people who haven't watched the North-South situation in the past" in Washington. "Suddenly you've got these amateurs with lots of ideas."

There is some truth to this. America has ignored the real threat of a rogue state and chose, instead, to play footsy. In a way, though, the errors of the past have clarified the situation: we simply can’t afford to continue an appeasement policy with North Korea.

Does this mean war? One hopes not. More likely, the regime will implode if the right pressures are applied, given its internal rot. China remains a wild card. Its role seems uncertain but, like it or not, it will be pivotal in the coming showdown. In contrast, the path of Roh Moo-hyun will leave the North intact. Signing a peace treaty, in effect, would be killing oneself softly.

The real danger in the present crisis can be attributed to “armistice fatigue” or the cold knock of eventuality. The status quo has become unbearable. Either appease or play hard ball. The norm is now untenable. South Korea is tired of the DMZ, the American presence, and the constant threat from the North its leaders largely deny. This unworkable peace, now 50 years old, might make anyone embrace the delusional and pursue a treaty.

Korea’s armistice fatigue bears relation to the air of unreality felt in America after September 11^th. It is the same hope that all this war-business would go away if we just packed our bags and went home. Isolationism has always been seductive to Americans even though, as a doctrine, it was forever shattered on that fateful day.

Yet it is the unfinished business of armistices that leads to the ennui and defeatism of appeasement. The historian, Victor Davis Hanson, has remarked on how armistices cause bigger problems in the future. Two of our most pressing current crises evolved out of armistice: the Korean (1953) and the Gulf (1991).

Evils lurk in the world and command our attention. Whatever cautions and strategy we must take should lend to the demise of the current regime in Pyongyang. Anything less is petting the hungry lion.

Speaking of anniversaries, what about our American soldiers who fought and died in the conflict whose armistice Kim Jong-Il holds in such contempt? The veterans of that war will also commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Korean armistice, only not to see it lead to a false, unworkable, and very dangerous peace.