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US ready for direct talks with sanctions-bashed N. Korea

RT | February 12, 2018

Washington is no longer opposed to the idea of talks with Pyongyang without preconditions, but still favors ramping up sanctions pressure against North Korea until it agrees to relinquish its nuclear arsenal, Mike Pence said.

The US vice president disclosed this subtle change in US Korean policy to Washington Post correspondent Josh Rogin while flying back from South Korea after a state visit. Apparently, Pence was convinced that actually talking to North Korea may be a good idea. Previously, senior US officials – starting with President Donald Trump – have insisted that talking to the North Korean government was of no use to America.

“The point is, no pressure comes off until they are actually doing something that the alliance believes represents a meaningful step toward denuclearization,” Pence said as cited by the newspaper. “So the maximum pressure campaign is going to continue and intensify. But if you want to talk, we’ll talk.”

So the US still wants to hurt North Korea as much as possible without starting an actual shooting war, but now it looks like it is willing to eventually hear Pyongyang’s plea for mercy. Which is admittedly a step in the right direction compared to obstructing any talks.

Washington previously signaled it was willing for direct talks with Pyongyang in December, when State Secretary Rex Tillerson said as much – only to be disavowed by his own department a day later. Trump at one point called talking to North Korea a waste of time and tweeted that he had told his top diplomat to “save your energy.”

Tillerson gave a lukewarm comment to Pence’s suggestion, saying it was “too early to judge” if such talks would be possible.

“We’ll have to have some discussions that precede any form of negotiations to determine whether the parties are in fact ready to engage in something that is meaningful,” he said.

Apparently Washington is at least willing to give a nod to a Kim-Moon meeting, allowing the current truce between the leaders of the two Koreas to extend beyond the Olympics. But it is unlikely to let Pyongyang score any political points, for example, by extending the pause in joint US-South Korean military exercises, which North Korea considers a major threat to its national security. Pyongyang may feel a need to counter such a show of force with more tests, which would further undermine whatever diplomatic effort comes after the end of the games.

There is a lot of mistrust between the US and North Korea, including over the failed diplomatic agreements of the past. For instance, the 1994 Agreed Framework was to see North Korea freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid and help in developing civilian nuclear industry. Pyongyang did dismantle its 5 MWe pilot nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, but somehow the US Congress went against the deal, obstructing the lifting of sanctions and funding the construction of light-water nuclear reactors North Korea was promised. The deal finally collapsed when George W. Bush labeled Pyongyang part of the “Axis of Evil.”

The story is somewhat reminiscent of what is currently happening with the Iranian nuclear deal – negotiated by a Democrat president and currently being undermined by a Republican one. So the North Korean government may require a very good incentive to relinquish its nuclear arsenal, which it considers a better guarantee of its survival than any promises given by the US.

February 12, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

US feels uneasy about inter-Korean amity

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | February 11, 2018

The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has upset all doomsday predictions that once the Winter Olympics Games are over, the tensions on the Korean peninsula would reappear. Kim’s invitation to South Korean President Moon Jae-in to Pyongyang can be regarded as a ‘game changer’. Moon has been non-committal, saying conditions need to be created first. The important thing is that Moon neither accepted Kim’s invitation nor declined. As a senior South Korean official put it, Moon has “practically accepted” the invitation. Thereby hangs a tale.

Left to himself Moon may want to visit Pyongyang. But a number of factors come into play. First and foremost, North Korea should refrain from missile tests, especially nuclear tests. Kim’s invitation to Moon implies that Pyongyang intends to hold back on missile and nuclear tests even after the Winter Games are over. On the contrary, if the joint US-South Korean military drills resume, all bets are off.

Therefore, Moon faces the daunting challenge of persuading the Trump administration to defer military drills. Now, that is not going to be easy. The US insists that North Korea should unilaterally suspend its missile and nuclear tests and does not accept any linkage with the US-South Korean military drills. Indeed, the sensible thing to do is to follow the suggestion by China and Russia on ‘double suspension’ – ie., US and South Korea suspending military drills and North Korea reciprocally suspending missile and nuclear tests.

China can be expected to play a major role here in bridge-building. Xinhua news agency reported that during the visit by Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi to Washington on February 8-9, he “exchanged ideas on the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula.” Yang was received by President Trump and he also had meetings with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Advisor HR McMaster and the president’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Xinhua cited Yang as calling for “global support for the inter-Korean rapport in a bid to maintain the tension-easing momentum on the peninsula.” Yang said Beijing hopes to keep “communication and coordination” with Washington with a view to seek a solution to the North Korean issue.

Significantly, Chinese president Xi Jinping also deputed a special envoy to meet Moon in the weekend. Accordingly, on Saturday Han Zheng, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, met Moon. (Moon received Han before hosting a lunch for the high-ranking North Korean delegation led by Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly on Saturday.) Xinhua reported Han as voicing support for the “conciliation and cooperation” between North and South Korea and expressing hope that “relevant parties would meet each other half way and make joint efforts to further ease tensions”

While things look hazy as of now and it is difficult to foresee how things may work out, the odds are that Moon will visit Pyongyang eventually. Put differently, South Korea may not be in a tearing hurry to resume the military drills with the US anytime soon. According to reports, Moon already had a testy exchange with the Japanese Prime Minister on the matter. They sparred, with Moon bluntly rejecting Abe’s call to resume the US-South Korean military drills without delay.

Meanwhile, the popular opinion in South Korea is visibly changing. It turned out to be a brilliant maneuver on the part of the North Korean leader to depute his younger sister Kim Yo Jong as part of the high-level delegation to attend the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. She is the first member of the ruling family in Pyongyang to visit the South since the Korean War broke out in 1950, and South Koreans were enthralled. Clearly, North Korea’s participation in the Olympics has already broken the momentum of the US’ pressure campaign. Some sanctions against North Korea are already suspended temporarily until the Winter Olympics ends. The big question is whether the US’ pressure campaign can be resumed in the changed climate between the two Koreas.

Moon is walking on eggshells. Surely, he won’t want to miss the window of opportunity for a peace engagement with Kim. But then, it is far too risky to go to Pyongyang unconditionally. By going out on a limb, not only would Moon be angering the Trump administration, but the reality is that Kim has not given any signals so far that he is willing to discuss denuclearization. Equally, it could be that Kim is simply buying time for his country’s nuclear weapon program. Above all, US backing is vital for Moon to negotiate with Kim.

However, Washington is not exactly pleased about the recent improvement in inter-Korean ties. There are already signs of discord in the US-South Korean alliance. Read a dispatch by Associated Press – Pence’s bid to isolate North Korea at Olympics falls flat.

February 11, 2018 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | 4 Comments

North Korea War Plan: Chrystia Freeland is more dangerous than Tony Blair

By Cameron Pike | OffGuardian | January 28, 2018

The day before the Foreign Ministers’ meeting on Security and Stability in Vancouver on January 16, 2018, a forum was held at the University of British Columbia’s Institute of Asian Research entitled “Getting North Korea Right:  Canadian Options and Roles”. This was a publicly held event with the “expert” “talking heads” of think-tanks. The moderator was an Asian International Relations expert, Dr. Paul Evans, who is now the head of the Institute of Asian Research.

The five speakers were Eric Walsh: Canadian Ambassador to the Republic of South Korea, Scott Snyder: Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy, and New York Council of Foreign Relations, Kyung-Ae Park: Korea Foundation Chair, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs Director, and Canada-DPRK Knowledge Partnership Program, Brian Job: Professor of Political Science, UBC, Brian Gold: Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta. All panel participants were to attend the following days’ Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on North Korea.

The events’ speakers discussed Canada’s role in mediating the “International Community’s” response to North Korea through sanctions, non-proliferation and diplomacy. The stated goal of the pre-meeting was to have public discourse on the crisis in North Korea, a day in advance of the major international diplomatic event being held in Vancouver. The actual purpose of the pre-meeting was to soft sell the major military role that Canada plans to play in open sea interdiction to a Canadian audience on tightening sanctions on North Korea. This soft sell was necessary to back the hard sell for military action being made by Chrystia Freeland to 20 foreign ministers the following day.

Canadians mostly consider themselves non-militaristic, but as intelligence and military officials know around the world, the Canadian Navy are experts at interdictions at sea and are more preferred in interdiction than the U.S. Navy. Canada has had much experience perfecting these capabilities in interdictions off the coast of Africa, as well and in the Persian Gulf during the two Gulf Wars.

Further, what most Canadians and perhaps the general population in the West do not know, is that Canada is an important partner in the NATO/NORAD and UN command and intelligence structures and does most of the top military coordination in exercises and operations between the nations of NATO currently exercising on the border with Russia, and especially in the Ukraine. Most officers in the Canadian military are trained in a comprehensive way that allows them to operate in an integrated manner with US, UK, NATO, and U.N. forces around the globe. Throughout all U.S. global military actions, whether in the Gulf and Afghan wars, or currently all over the world, Canada’s military and military intelligence, considered the best in the world, has worked hand in hand with the U.S. military in special operations and counter intelligence.

Of the five speakers, the presentation by Scott A. Snyder of the NY Council on Foreign Relations was the most revealing of the actual intentions of the following days’ conference organizers. Snyder used the concept of a rheostat to describe the situation. He said, China was holding the rheostat over North Korea, that the U.S. was holding the rheostat over China, and that the “International Community” was holding the rheostat over the U.S. The significance of this is the acknowledgement that pressure on the U.S. is coming from the “collective” global community of extra-governmental, international, and non-national institutions and structures, including NGO’s, civil society, and the international financial community. Canada, as the host nation for this Foreign Minister’s meeting, is leading the “International Community”, which means that Canada is one of the leading countries holding the rheostat over the U.S.

It should be noted that the New York Council on Foreign Relations, where Snyder is a senior fellow, is an outgrowth of the British Liberal Imperialist Fabian Society. Its core thinkers over the last century, especially since WWII, created the unipolar doctrine of the “International Community” which Snyder references. This “International Community” does not include, at its core, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Russia, now Turkey, and possibly France, and India; that is most of the world. In other words, the “International Community” that Scott Snyder references is not international; nor are the Colour Revolutions, the illegal invasions, and the sanctions that are being carried out in the name of the “International Community” International.

These actions are hybrid warfare designed to pressure or break apart countries from within, who may have the potential of working within the new “multipolar” world framework being promoted by Russia and China. This “multipolar” framework is based on the New Paradigm, which is being introduced to the world economically by China via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI.)

Snyder, in his presentation, said he expected pressure to be placed on North Korea and suggested it be done as a “nut cracker” with the intention to split North Korea internally, especially its elite, in order to open the door for civil society groups (NGO’s, churches etc.) to come in under the guise of humanitarian assistance, and foment internal dissent, hand in hand with the brutal blockade and interdiction being organized by Chrystia Freeland at the Korean Security Conference the following day. Snyder also further elaborated on the need for “maximizing the thresholds of pressure” to bring North Korea to diplomacy, as a “calibrated scalpel, not a blunt instrument like a hammer.”

At the pre-conference meeting, Brian Gold responded to a question about China and Russia not being invited to the Vancouver Summit. He stated that “China and Russia are irrelevant” to the situation, at which Dr. Paul Evans suggested that he should get a job with the Canadian government. [Editor’s Note: The claim that China and Russia had not been invited is itself an obfuscation: both countries condemned the conference as harmful and officially refused the invitation to attend a post-conference meeting on the evening of January 16, as reported by RT here.]

Brian Job said this is a “convening opportunity” for Canada, and that it involves “delicate interdiction.” That is, Canada will proceed “delicately” as a perceived neutral power backed up by the “International Community” to interdict and board ships with cargo for North Korea. Would Canada do so to Chinese or Russian vessels? Would Canada’s involvement in interdiction be perceived as “neutral” interdiction? Canada’s Privy Council and shadowy neo-cons like Chrystia Freeland certainly hope so. But that is not the reality from China and Russia’s perspective, nor was this accepted by the audience attending the pre-meeting.

UBC Professor, Kyung-Ae Park, from South Korea, said that the U.S./North Korea relationship is none of China’s business. Park is head of a South/North Korean educational exchange program operating out of Canada. She had been scheduled to be part of a “civil society” activation meeting with Chrystia Freeland in downtown Vancouver after the pre-conference meeting.  How do “civil society” activists penetrate a country like North Korea? Precisely through the well-practiced method of Colour Revolutions, enacted already several times over by the “International Community”. Snyder referenced Egypt, Syria, Georgia, Ukraine, former Yugoslavia as just a few examples.

Many other Colour Revolutions, all of which have been funded by George Soros’ Open Society and Tides Foundations, have been tried and failed. A recent example of this is in Iran. George Soros, a very close friend of Chrystia Freeland, is a Hungarian Jew who worked for the Nazi’s during WWII helping to confiscate his own people’s property. In an interview on 60 Minutes in 1998, Soros openly admits that this was the best time of his life. Chrystia Freeland was commissioned to write George Soros’ biography before running for public office under the Liberal Party. Freeland is also known in Canadian government circles as being the Minister of Everything.

It should be noted that many on the panel spoke of creating the “coalition of the willing” to deal with North Korea. This is the exact same operational language that was used to manipulate the people of the Western world under Bush to agree to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Are we really supposed to fall for this again?

Following the speakers’ presentations, questions were allowed from the audience. The first three questions were technical questions with no substance and were under the general spell of professional decorum.  A Director for the Society for the New Humanist Paradigm (SNHP), which represents the New Paradigm in Canada, asked the fourth question.

In that question, the Moon-Putin plan was described for the audience. This plan is the exact opposite of what the panel discussion described was being planned for the next days’ talks at the Foreign Minister’s meeting.  The Moon-Putin plan was announced last September at the Vladivostok Eastern Economic Forum.  This is a plan agreed to by Russia and South Korea.  It is a plan to bring South and North Korea together through physical infrastructure and trade mechanisms, involving the neighbouring countries of Russia and China.

Bridges of cooperation linking South Korea to Russia via North Korea: gas, railroads, ports, electricity, a northern sea route, shipbuilding, jobs, agriculture, and fisheries. Siberian oil and gas pipelines would be extended to Korea, both North and South, as well as to Japan. Both Koreas would be linked up with the vast rail networks of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, including high-speed rail, and the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes the Trans-Siberian Railway. According to Gavan McCormack, “North Korea would accept the security guarantee of the five (Japan included), refrain from any further nuclear or missile testing, shelve (‘freeze’) its existing programs and gain its longed for ‘normalization’ in the form of incorporation in regional groupings, the lifting of sanctions and normalized relations with its neighbour states, without surrender.”

The panel of speakers were also reminded that North Korea has been sanctioned since 1948 and has been suffering ever since at the behest of an illegal UN resolution, 195, and that the Belt and Road and the Moon-Putin plan were for building up their physical economy. As the SNHP director pointed out, in this context, sanctions were the exact opposite. He also pointed out that the January 16 meeting in Vancouver, along with Canada’s new Hard Power Foreign Policy initiatives (announced last year with record military spending for Canada) under Chrystia Freeland, was unprecedented in the history of Canada’s traditional peacekeeping role, and there is no confidence that Canada will play a positive role in this situation, or that Canada is a neutral Middle Power any longer given this shift.

Further, that Canadians deserve to have a national dialogue considering the consequences of such actions. He then went on to address Brian Gold directly, stating that Russia and China, considering the positive resolutions (Sunshine Policy, Olympics, etc.) made with South and North Korea over the last few weeks, were relevant and their absence from these meetings is a mistake. Finally, the SNHP representative asked, “When will Canada wake up to the fact that Freeland is a neo-con war-mongerer?” and “… if the Moon-Putin plan has already been discussed and such positive results are on the horizon, why the Foreign Ministers meeting in Vancouver was taking place at all?”

While the audience clapped, the panel was stunned. Four speakers responded to the intervention with a feeble attempt to change the subject. Most of the questions from the audience that followed the intervention were not questions but denunciations of the war policy that Canada was supporting. After each denunciation there was applause. In response to this, the panel started to back pedal and went limp. Even Brian Gold had to back pedal on Russia and China being irrelevant, and, as he was commenting, had to admit that he was making a case for why Russia and China should have been invited to the Foreign Minister’s meeting even as he was trying to defend his original statement. Subsequently, Brian Gold wrote an article printed in The Hill Times on January 22, 2018.

This article, highlighting Canada’s role as a ‘Middle Power’, serves to deflect attention from the neo-conservative and far-right views of the government of Canada under Chrystia Freeland, especially towards both Russia and China. Contrary to Gold’s article, it is in fact Chrystia Freeland, a frequent contributor to the NY CFR’s policy publication Foreign Affairs, the promoters of the ‘unipolar’ world doctrine, that did not want China and Russia present at the Foreign Minister’s meeting. President Trump has been at war with the likes of the CFR and the neo-liberal/neo-conservative mainstream media outlets that promote their unipolar worldview since before he took office and has consistently promised the American people better relations with Russia and a closer working relationship with China. In recent bold statements, however, Secretary Mattis outlines clearly that Russia and China are the main economic threat to the unipolar world in the National Defense Strategy 2018 policy paper.

Another SNHP Director who attended raised the issue of the THAAD missiles, and asked the panelists how they would not have been seen by North and South Korea as a threat? Snyder responded that the THAAD missiles were for defense and a non-issue, but he did acknowledge that South Korea was against the installation from the beginning. What Snyder should have acknowledged was that massive opposition by South Koreans of the THAAD missile deployment had forced the ouster of President Park Geun-hye in 2017.

What is important to note was the dearth of support from the audience for what the panelists were trying to soft peddal. The reaction by the audience, both in private to the SNHP Directors and following open denunciations to the panel, clearly shows that Canadians are not accepting the pablum they are being fed any more.

Cameron Pike studied Communications and Philosophy at the University of Winnipeg, and has worked in a variety of corporate fields in management before becoming Director at the Society for the New Humanist Paradigm, a Not-For-Profit, in Vancouver, Canada.

January 28, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | 1 Comment

Seoul says military solution to N Korea crisis ‘unacceptable’

Press TV – January 25, 2018

South Korea has hinted for the first time since the start of a standoff with the North over Pyongyang’s nuclear program last year that a military solution would be no answer to the crisis and that differences should be settled diplomatically.

South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said on Thursday that talks were the only viable option for resolving the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program.

“The nuclear issue has to be solved through negotiations and diplomatic endeavors. This idea of a military solution is unacceptable,” said Kang while addressing reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The top diplomat said she was positive the United States, her country’s main ally in the standoff with North Korea, would obtain South Korea’s approval before any military action on the issue.

“I‘m assured that anything the US administration does on this front is done in close consultation with us,” Kang said, adding, “This is our fate that is at stake. Any option that is to be taken on the Korean peninsula cannot be implemented without us going along.”

The remarks come amid a relative ease in the months-long tensions over North Korea’s weapons and nuclear activities. A series of advanced missile and nuclear tests by the country last year prompted the US and its allies in the region to pile maximum pressure on Pyongyang.

Washington has engineered rounds of international sanctions on North Korea. It has also expanded the scope of its joint military drills with Seoul. Many fear that an all-out war could break out in the region as the North and the US have on a number of occasions threatened each other with nuclear attacks.

However, Seoul has offered an olive branch to Pyongyang by inviting the North’s athletes to this year’s Winter Olympics while representatives from the two countries have held limited talks on some military issues.

January 25, 2018 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

The North calls for unification of all Koreans without foreign aid

Press TV – January 24, 2018

North Korea has called on “all Koreans at home and abroad” to make a “breakthrough” for unification without foreign assistance.

The rare announcement, which was made via the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Thursday morning, called on all Koreans to “promote contact, travel and cooperation between North and South Korea.”

It added that the North will “smash” all obstacles on the path towards the reunification of the Korean Peninsula, while stressing that military tensions on the peninsula were the “fundamental obstacle” for the better ties with the South.

Joint military drills with “outside forces” were also hindering the progression of ties between the two Koreas, it added.

The report noted that Koreans should engage in an energetic drive aimed at defusing military tensions and establish a peaceful climate on the peninsula.

The announcement was issued following a joint meeting of North Korean government and political parties.

The two Koreas have long had strained ties. Tensions recently skyrocketed with repeated North Korean missile and nuclear tests and increased South Korean joint military action with the United States. But tensions then subsided with bilateral dialog and mutual overtures.

Under a deal approved by the International Olympic Committee, the Koreas will field their first unified Olympic team in women’s hockey, and will have their athletes parade together under a single flag during the February 9 opening ceremony in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

The two Koreas have also agreed to hold joint cultural events at the North’s Diamond Mountain and have their non-Olympic skiers practice together at a North Korean ski resort

January 24, 2018 Posted by | Aletho News | | 1 Comment

‘Executed’ North Koreans return to life

RT | January 21, 2018

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is famous in Western media for executing people that fall out of his favor – though some seem to have found the knack of returning from the dead.

Reports regularly surface on Kim’s latest means of execution, ranging from the relatively mundane firing squad to the theatrical, or even cartoonish – such as feeding foes to packs of starving dogs or roasting them with flame-throwers.

The pop star and ‘former lover’

The most recent case is North Korean popstar Hyon Song-wol, spotted alive and well in South Korea on Sunday despite having reportedly been killed in a purge of singers, musicians and dancers back in 2013.

The performer was reportedly executed along with 11 others, including other members of her group, the Moranbong Band, the head of Unhasu Orchestra, and several dancers from the Wangjaesan Light Music Band.

The 12 victims had allegedly been accused of, among other offenses, recording themselves having sex and selling the footage. The reported victims hadn’t been seen since, until Hyon Song-wol, with whom Kim had reportedly been romantically entwined, publicly resurfaced on Saturday to inspect Olympic venues in South Korea ahead of the Winter Games.

The military chief

Back in 2016, N. Korean army chief Ri Yong Gil was reportedly executed for “factionalism, misuse of authority, and corruption.” As with a lot of information emanating from the isolated country, this turned out to false.

South Korean intelligence officials seemed to take his removal as head of the army as confirmation of his execution. The only problem was that a couple of months later Ri Yong Gil apparently returned from the dead, with an array of new senior-level positions, when he attended the Workers’ Party Congress in May that year.

The uncle ‘executed by a pack of dogs’

Apparently Kim really has it in for his older relatives, if Western media reports are to believed. So much so, it seems, that Kim was willing to execute his own uncle, by setting a pack of 120 starving dogs on him as part of yet another purge back in 2014.

Though it appears that Jang Song Thaek was indeed executed, the ‘ripped apart by dogs’ story was a complete fabrication that first raised its head on a satirical Chinese microblogging website.

The aunt ‘poisoned on request’

Further to ‘feeding his uncle to dogs’, as mentioned above, he reportedly then turned his murderous gaze towards his aunt, Kim Kyong-hui.

Kyong-hui, Kim’s father’s sister and the wife of uncle Jang Song Thaek, was reportedly executed by poisoning on the leader’s orders.

However, once again these reports turned out to be false. South Korean news agency Yonhap reported last year that she is very much alive, although she is being treated for illnesses ranging from depression to cancer.

January 21, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 7 Comments

Washington and Allies Go Orwellian on Korea Peace Talks

By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 19.01.2018

Just as North and South Korea achieve important peaceful exchanges, Washington and its NATO allies appear to be moving with determination to sabotage the initiative for averting war on the East Asian peninsula.

Further, the reckless, gratuitous provocations beg the conclusion that the United States is indeed trying to start a war.

Meanwhile, unprecedented accusations this week by US President Donald Trump that Russia is supporting North Korea to evade United Nations sanctions also point to the danger that any conflict could spiral out of control to engulf world nuclear powers.

Moscow rejected the unsubstantiated claims leveled by Trump, saying that Russia is abiding by UN trade restrictions over North Korea, and that the American president’s allegations were “entirely unfounded”.

Trump’s verbal broadside suggests that Washington is trying to undermine the nascent talks between the two Koreas, talks which Russia and China have both applauded as a long-overdue diplomatic effort to resolve the Korean conflict.

Separately, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov deplored a summit held in Vancouver, Canada, earlier this week in which the US and 19 other nations – most of them NATO members – called for sharper sanctions on North Korea that go beyond the remit of the United Nations. The conference, co-hosted by Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, issued a stridently bellicose statement, calling in effect for North Korea to surrender its nuclear weapons or face US-led military action.

Significantly, and pointedly, China and Russia were not invited to the Canadian summit.

Most of the attending states were part of the original US-led military force which fought against North Korea during the 1950-53 war. A war which killed as many as two million North Koreans.

Russia admonished that the conference was “harmful” to current peace talks between North and South Korea. China rebuked the Canadian event as being stuck in “Cold War thinking”.

The anachronism of countries like Britain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands and Norway attending a conference on the Korean crisis while Asia-Pacific powers Russia and China being excluded was noted by Russia’s Sergei Lavrov. The anachronism is not only absurd, he said, it reprises a provocative “war summit” message.

Disturbingly, what the Vancouver gathering demonstrated was the willingness by the US and its allies to circumvent the United Nations Security Council and the previously established regional Six-Party forum involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US.

At the Vancouver event, Tillerson laid out a belligerent agenda that was endorsed by the other attendees. The agenda included the precondition of North Korea giving up its nuclear program unilaterally; and it also flatly rejected the proposal made by Russia and China for a “freeze” in all military activities on the Korean Peninsula as a step to get comprehensive settlement talks going.

Tillerson made the following sinister ultimatum: “We have to recognize that that threat [of North Korea’s nuclear weapons] is growing. And if North Korea does not choose the path of engagement, discussion, negotiation, [that is, surrender] then they themselves will trigger an option [US military action].”

The US diplomat also warned that the American public must be “sober” about the possibility of war breaking out. Tillerson said the risk of such a war on the Korean Peninsula “continues to grow”. This was echoed by President Trump a day later in an interview with the Reuters news agency in which he also warned of possible war. It was the same interview in which Trump blamed Russia for aiding and abetting North Korea.

This sounds like US leaders are intensifying the conditioning of the American public to accept use of the military option, which they have been threatening for the past year in a pre-emptive attack on North Korea.

The Vancouver summit also called for proactive interdiction of international ships suspected of breaching UN sanctions on North Korea. That raises the danger of the US and its allies interfering with Russian and Chinese vessels – which would further escalate tensions.

These reprehensible developments are a reflection of the increasingly Orwellian worldview held by Washington and its partners, whereby “war is presented as peace” and “peace is perceived as war”.

Just this week, North and South Korea held a third round of peace negotiations in as many weeks. Even Western news media hailed “Olympic breakthrough” after the two adversaries agreed to participate in the opening ceremony of the forthcoming winter games next month as a unified nation under a neutral flag.

After two years of no inter-Korean talks and mounting war tensions on the peninsula, surely the quickening pace of peace overtures this month should be welcomed and encouraged. Russia, China and the UN have indeed endorsed the bilateral Korean exchange. Even President Trump said he welcomed it.

Nevertheless, as the Vancouver summit this week shows, the US and its NATO allies appear to be doing everything to torpedo the inter-Korean dialogue. Issuing ultimatums and warning of “military options” seems intended to blow up the delicate dynamic towards confidence and trust.

Two reports this week in the New York Times conveyed the contorted Orwellian mindset gripping Washington and its allies.

First, there was the report: “Military quietly prepares for a last resort: War with North Korea”. The NY Times actually reported extensive Pentagon plans for a preemptive air assault on North Korea involving a “deep attack” manned by 82nd Airborne paratroopers and special forces. The paper spun the provocative war plans as a “last resort”. In other words, war is sold here as peace.

Which raises the question of who is trying to wreck the Olympic Games being held in South Korea in February. For months, Western media have been warning that North Korea was intending to carry out some kind of sabotage. Now, it looks like the sabotage is actually coming from the US, albeit sanitized by the NY Times.

The second report in the NY Times had the telling headline: “Olympic détente upends US strategy on North Korea”.

So, let’s get our head around that display of dubious logic. A peaceful development of détente between two adversaries is somehow presented as a pernicious “upending of US strategy on North Korea”. In other words, peace is sold here as war.

Take for example this choice editorial comment from the NY Times in the second report: “This latest gesture of unity, the most dramatic in a decade, could add to fears in Washington that Pyongyang is making progress on a more far-reaching agenda.”

And what, one wonders, would that “far-reaching agenda” entail?

Again the NY Times elaborates: “White House officials warn that the ultimate goal of [North Korean leader] Mr Kim is to evict American troops from the Korean Peninsula and to reunify the two Koreas under a single flag… For the United States, the fear has been that North Korea’s gestures will drive a wedge between it and its ally, South Korea.”

Only in a perverse Orwellian worldview would an initiative to calm tensions and build peaceful relations be construed as something to “fear” and be opposed to.

Only in a perverse Orwellian worldview would peaceful dialogue provoke plans for pre-emptive war.

But that is precisely the kind of dystopian world that Washington and its lackeys inhabit.

January 19, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , , , | 2 Comments

‘When US sidelined, Koreas can work towards peace & stability, talks suggest’

RT | January 18, 2018

US policy is a distraction from the ongoing Korean talks, which Seoul hopes will eventually lead to the denuclearization of the entire peninsula, security analyst Charles Shoebridge told RT.

The third session of inter-Korean talks in a week signalled a significant breakthrough in the frosty ties between the two Koreas. And while the thaw in relations was welcomed by Seoul, the recent rapprochement was greeted with skepticism by 20 foreign ministers of the so-called “Vancouver Group,” which defended South Korea during the Korean War more than five decades ago.

“It is particularly ironic… That while this… Thawing of tensions is going on between North and South… It’s happening… In Vancouver, the former allies of South Korea are tightening the noose, increasing the rhetoric, raising the temperature,” Shoebridge told RT after the US-led group decided to consider unilateral sanctions against Pyongyang Tuesday.

The US is adamant that it will apply not only economic and diplomatic pressure, but also issue military threats to force N. Korea to disarm. On Wednesday, Seoul and Washington “reaffirmed its security commitment to the defense of South Korea using all categories of its military capabilities,” the Ministry of National Defense said. The allies also “agreed to continue the rotational deployment of US strategic assets to South Korea and nearby areas as long as North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats persist.”

The decision to keep up with military threats comes the same day as Donald Trump expressed doubt that the intra-Korean talks will lead to “anything meaningful.” The US president also warned that it is “very possible” that the standoff with North Korea might not be resolved peacefully. Charles Shoebridge criticized Washington’s foreign policy, pointing out that Seoul and Pyongyang can achieve much more if the US stops interfering in their “considerable diplomatic achievement.”

“These talks themselves started on the back of South Korea agreeing to persuade America to at least pause its military exercises,” Shoebridge told RT. “It appears to be the case when the interests and the foreign policy, and the actions of the United States are put to one side, local players are, to some degree at least, able to start finding local solutions, [and] make some progress towards securing their local interests, which are usually peace and stability.”

China and Russia – two major regional players who were not invited to participate in the Vancouver summit this week – criticized Washington’s pessimistic outlook of the Korean diplomatic process. Participants that gathered in Canada, while rejecting the Chinese-Russian ‘double freeze’ roadmap for easing Korean tensions, failed to provide any alternative, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

In July 2017, Moscow and Beijing proposed the initiative that would see the US and its allies halting all major military exercises in the region in exchange for Pyongyang suspending its nuclear and ballistic missile program. The ‘double freeze’ initiative, however, was once again rebuffed by Washington Tuesday during the Vancouver summit.

Beijing also slammed the meeting, saying it was driven by a Cold War mentality. “When major parties to the Korean Peninsula issue are not present, such a meeting will not contribute to properly resolving the issue,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang pointed out Wednesday. “All parties should cherish the hard-won momentum of easing tension on the peninsula, support the efforts made by the DPRK and the ROK in improving ties, and double their commitment in alleviating the situation and promoting dialogues.”

On Wednesday, North Korea agreed to allow a joint women’s ice hockey team to participate at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics (February 9-25) and march together as one with their southern neighbor under a “unified Korea” flag at the opening ceremony.

The North also consented to send a 150-member delegation of athletes and cheerleaders to the Paralympic games in March. South Korean President Moon Jae-in once again expressed hope Wednesday that the inter-Korean talks will pave the way for broader dialogue between the United States and the North which could eventually lead to the resolution of the North Korean nuclear standoff.

January 18, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Vancouver summit on N. Korea failed to provide alternative to Russian & Chinese proposals – Moscow

RT | January 17, 2018

The joint US-Canada summit is just a “heavy-handed attempt” to undermine the decisions of the UNSC, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said. It added that the meeting failed to provide an alternative to the Russian-Chinese initiative.

Participants at the Vancouver summit failed to provide any alternative to the existing Chinese-Russian roadmap for easing the Korean knot, the ministry said in statement. It noted that instead of coming up with any “constructive” results, the gathering demonstrated “absolute disrespect” for the authority of the UN Security Council (UNSC).

What’s more, the decision to consider imposing unilateral sanctions against North Korea that overstep the demands outlined by the UNSC resolutions are “absolutely unacceptable and counterproductive,” the statement added. The ministry said further that a situation, in which some countries adopt roles as interpreters of UNSC resolutions without any permission or mandate – thus undermining the role of the UN – is “absolutely inadmissible.”

Back in July 2017, Moscow and Beijing put forward a proposal known as the ‘double-freeze’ initiative that envisaged the US and its allies halting all major military exercises in the region in exchange for Pyongyang suspending its nuclear and ballistic missile program. The initiative was, however, turned down by Washington – which was reiterated on Tuesday during the Vancouver summit.

The same day, the Russian Foreign Ministry again drew attention to the fact that the initiative is aimed at “resolving the entire range of problems [around the Korean Peninsula] solely through the political and diplomatic means.”

The Vancouver meeting, on the contrary, did not contribute to the normalization of the situation on the peninsula and only exacerbated existing tensions, the ministry said. Notably, neither Russia nor China was invited to the gathering despite being major players in the region as well as immediate neighbors of North Korea.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that he was told Russia and China would only be “briefed” on the results of the meeting, calling such an attitude “unacceptable.” He also said that it would be a “great result already” if the meeting merely avoided leading to anything “counterproductive.”

Beijing also slammed the summit by saying that it had “not the slightest legality and representativeness.” It also accused the meeting participants of evoking Cold War ghosts. Pyongyang denounced the Vancouver summit as a “provocation” which is not helping the talks between North and South Korea.

In the meantime, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard noted that it was the US regime change policy that prompted Pyongyang to develop its nuclear and missile arsenal in the first place. She turned to Twitter to call on Washington to put an end to such practices as well as to cast away “unrealistic preconditions” that the US government has been setting for decades to negotiate with North Korea.

January 17, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Why “Coercive Diplomacy” is a Dangerous Farce

By Gareth Porter | Dissident Voice | January 16, 2018

With his recent “my (nuclear) button is bigger than yours” taunt, Donald Trump’s rhetoric has fully descended into school yard braggadocio, with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as a convenient foil. But his administration’s overwhelming reliance on military and economic pressure rather than on negotiations to influence North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ICBM programs is hardly new. It is merely a continuation of a well-established tradition of carrying out what the national security elite call “coercive diplomacy”.

As Alexander George, the academic specialist on international relations who popularized the concept, wrote:

The general idea of coercive diplomacy is to back one’s demand on an adversary with a threat of punishment for noncompliance that he will consider credible and potent enough to persuade him to comply with the demand.

The converse of that fixation on coercion, of course, is rejection of genuine diplomatic negotiations, which would have required the United States to agree to changes in its own military and diplomatic policies.

It is no accident that the doctrine of coercive diplomacy acquired much of its appeal on the basis of a false narrative surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962—that John F. Kennedy’s readiness to go to war was what forced Khrushchev’s retreat from Cuba. In fact, a crucial factor in ending the crisis was JFK’s back-channel offer to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey, which were useful only as first strike weapons and which Khrushchev had been demanding. As George later observed, enthusiasts of coercive diplomacy had ignored the fact that success in resolving a crisis may “require genuine concessions to the opponent as part of a quid pro quo that secures one’s essential demands.”

The missile crisis occurred, of course, at a time when the United States had overwhelming strategic dominance over the Soviet Union. The post-Cold War period has presented an entirely different setting for its practice, in which both Iran and North Korea have acquired conventional weapons systems that could deter a U.S. air attack on either one.

Why Clinton and Bush Failed on North Korea

The great irony of the U.S. coercive diplomacy applied to Iran and North Korea is that it was all completely unnecessary. Both states were ready to negotiate agreements with the United States that would have provided assurances against nuclear weapons in return for U.S. concession to their own most vital security interests. North Korea began exploiting its nuclear program in the early 1990s in order to reach a broader security agreement with Washington. Iran, which was well aware of the North Korean negotiating strategy, began in private conversations in 2003 to cite the stockpile of enriched uranium it expected to acquire as bargaining chips to be used in negotiations with the United States and/or its European allies.

But those diplomatic strategies were frustrated by the long-standing attraction of the national security elite to the coercive diplomacy but also the bureaucratic interests of the Pentagon and CIA, newly bereft of the Soviet adversary that had kept their budgets afloat during the Cold War. In Disarming Strangers, the most authoritative account of Clinton administration policy, author and former State Department official Leon Sigal observes: “The North Korean threat was essential to the armed services’ rationale for holding the line on the budget,” which revolved around “a demanding and dubious requirement to meet two major contingencies, one shortly after the other, in the Persian Gulf and Korea.”

The Clinton administration briefly tried coercive diplomacy in mid-1994. Secretary of Defense William Perry prepared a plan for a U.S. air attack on the DPRK Plutonium reactor after North Korea had shut it down and removed the fuel rods, but would not agree to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to determine how many bombs- worth of Plutonium, if any, had been removed in the past. But before the strategy could be put into operation, former President Jimmy Carter informed the White House that Kim Il-sung had agreed to give up his plutonium program as part of a larger deal.

The Carter-Kim initiative, based on traditional diplomacy, led within a few months to the “Agreed Framework”, which could have transformed the security situation on the Korean Peninsula. But that agreement was much less than it may have seemed. In order to succeed in denuclearizing North Korea, the Clinton administration would have been required to deal seriously with North Korean demands for a fundamental change in bilateral relations between the two countries, ending the state of overt U.S. enmity toward Pyongyang.

U.S. diplomats knew, however, that the Pentagon was not willing to entertain any such fundamental change. They were expecting to be able to spin out the process of implementation for years, anticipating the Kim regime would collapse from mass starvation before the U.S. would be called upon to alter its policy toward North Korea.

The Bush administration, too, was unable to carry out a strategy of coercive diplomacy toward Iran and North Korea over their nuclear and missile programs because its priority was the occupation of Iraq, which bogged down the U.S. military and ruled out further adventures. Its only coercive effort was a huge March 2007 Persian Gulf naval exercise that involved two naval task forces, a dozen warships, and 100 aircraft. But it was aimed not at coercing Iran to abandon its nuclear program, but at gaining “leverage” over Iran in regard to Iran’s role in the Iraq War itself.

On nuclear and missile programs, the administration had to content itself with the highly subjective assumption that the regimes in both Iran and North Korea would both be overthrown within a relatively few years. Meanwhile, however, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose primary interest was funding and deploying a very expensive national missile defense system, killed the unfinished Clinton agreement with North Korea. And after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice got Bush’s approval to negotiate a new agreement with Pyongyang, Cheney sabotaged that one as well. Significantly no one in the Bush administration made any effort to negotiate with North Korea on its missile program.

Obama Whiffs on Iran and North Korea

Unlike the Bush administration, the Obama administration pursued a carefully planned strategy of coercive diplomacy strategy toward Iran. Although Obama sent a message to Supreme Leader Khamenei of Iran offering talks “without preconditions,” he had earlier approved far-reaching new economic sanctions against Iran. And in his first days in office he had ordered history’s first state-sponsored cyber-attack targeting Iran’s enrichment facility at Natanz.

Although Obama did not make any serious efforts to threaten Iran’s nuclear targets directly in a military attack, he did exploit the Netanyahu government’s threat to attack those facilities. That was the real objective of Obama’s adoption of a new “nuclear posture” that included the option of a first use of nuclear weapons against Iran if it were to use conventional force against an ally. In the clearest expression of Obama’s coercive strategy, in early 2012 Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that the Iranians could convince the U.S. that its nuclear program was for civilian purposes or face the threat of an Israeli attack or an escalation of covert U.S. actions against the Iranian nuclear program.

In his second term, Obama abandoned the elaborate multilayered coercive diplomacy strategy, which had proven a complete failure, and made significant U.S. diplomatic concessions to Iran’s interests to secure the final nuclear deal of July 2015. In keeping with coercive diplomacy, however, the conflict over fundamental U.S. and Iranian policies and interests in the Middle East remained outside the realm of bilateral negotiations.

On North Korea, the Obama administration was even more hostile to genuine diplomacy than Bush. In his account of Obama’s Asian policy, Obama’s special assistant, Jeffrey Bader, describes a meeting of the National Security Council in March 2009 at which Obama declared that he wanted to break “the cycle of provocation, extortion and reward” that previous administrations had tolerated over 15 years. That description, which could have come from the lips of Dick Cheney himself, not only misrepresented what little negotiation had taken place with Pyongyang, but implied that any concessions to North Korea in return for its sacrifice of nuclear or missile programs represented abject appeasement.

It should be no surprise, therefore, that Obama did nothing at all, to head off a nuclear-armed North Korean ICBM, even though former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter acknowledged to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last November, “We knew that it was a possibility six or seven years ago.” In fact, he admitted, the administration had not really tried to test North Korean intentions diplomatically, because “we’re not in a frame of mind to give much in the way or rewards.” The former Pentagon chief opined that no diplomatic concession could be made to North Korea’s security interests “as long as they have nuclear weapons.”

The Obama administration was thus demanding unilateral concession by North Korea on matters involving vital interests of the regime that Washington certainly understood by then could not be obtained without significant concessions to North Korea’s security interests. As Carter freely admits, they knew exactly what the consequences of that policy were in terms of North Korea’s likely achievement of an ICBM.

This brief overview of the role of coercive diplomacy in post-Cold War policy suggests that the concept has devolved into convenient political cover for maintaining the same old Cold War policies and military posture regarding Iran and North Korea, despite new and essentially unnecessary costs to U.S. security interests. The United States could have and should have reached new accommodations with its regional adversaries, just as it had with the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War. To do so, however, would have put at risk Pentagon and CIA budgetary interests worth potentially hundreds of billions of dollars as well as symbolic power and status.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare was published in 2014.

January 17, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Intra-Korean Talks: Who Got Whom To Blink First?

By Andrew KORYBKO – Oriental Review – 15/01/2018

Intra-Korean talks resumed in the run-up to the PyeongChang Winter Olympics and immediately following Trump’s threatening tweet about his big nuclear button.

The American President claimed in a later tweet that his tough stance was the reason why Kim Jong-Un decided to return to the negotiating table, but the truth is that North Korea did this immediately following news that the US and South Korea delayed a planned military drill until after the upcoming Olympic Games. In hindsight, it’s possible that Trump’s “nuclear brinksmanship” on social media was meant to divert the attention of the global masses from this ‘politically inconvenient’ fact and provide a ‘face-saving’ distraction from a pragmatic move that could have otherwise misleadingly been painted by his opponents as “backing down”.

As it stands, Trump believes that the implementation of his “Madman Theory” in practice is the reason why it was Kim who backed down, not himself, while Kim seems to think that his year of successful nuclear and missile tests was responsible for the US taking the first step in de-escalating the situation by delaying its upcoming military exercises with South Korea. Both sides can brush off any criticism over who blinked first by actually embracing this charge and justifying it on the basis of being in the “Olympic spirit”, thereby turning any potential attack into a soft power advantage if they’re clever enough.

It’s highly likely that this incipient “détente” will only last until the end of the Olympics, if at all, but there’s also the chance that it could provide China with a golden opportunity to make progress in mediating the crisis on the peninsula. Beijing has previously called for a so-called “double freeze”, or the simultaneous suspension of US-South Korean military drills and North Korean nuclear & missile tests, which is actually what in fact has just temporarily happened despite none of the parties openly recognizing this. Depending on the outcome of the intra-Korean talks, South Korean President Moon Jae-In might even feel encouraged to revive last year’s campaign pledge to initiate a “New Sunshine Policy” towards North Korea.

The challenge to this happening has always been the US, which has sought to provoke North Korea over the past year in order to provide South Korea with the ‘plausible pretext’ for shelving this policy and agreeing to more THAAD deployments on the peninsula, so it remains to be seen whether America will ruin the possibly positive progress that both sides might make. Even if it tries to, however, then it’ll be important for North Korea not to take the bait, since this “goodwill gesture” could build enormous trust and confidence in the South Koreans and show them that Pyongyang is serious about abiding by China’s “double freeze”, which could conceivably enter into effect so long as Seoul is convinced to continue delaying military drills with the US or outright suspending them like Beijing proposed.

To revisit the analysis’ original question, it can be argued in conclusion that neither Trump nor Kim backed down in paving the way for the intra-Korean talks, but that both have an interest in making it seem like their rival was the one who did, though the ultimate judge of character will be in seeing which of the two subverts the “Olympic spirit” either during the games or afterwards in returning to the status quo of much-ballyhooed rhetorical hostility.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Jan 12, 2018.

January 15, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Sabotaging Peace in Korea

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 3, 2018

It just might be that the two Koreas are figuring out a way to avoid war, much to the anger and chagrin of President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment, who are obviously increasingly viewing war as inevitable and even in the best interests of the United States.

Why, even the U.S. mainstream press, which oftentimes seems to operate as an ex officio spokesman for the U.S. government, appears irritated over North Korea’s initiation of talks with South Korea. The press describes North Korea’s overtures not as an attempt to avoid war but instead as a cynical attempt to “drive a wedge” between the United States and South Korea.

Actually, it’s President Trump, who is obviously upset that the Koreas are marginalizing him, that is using his ridiculous and dangerous tweeting abilities to further provoke North Korea, with the obvious intent of “driving a wedge” between North Korea and South Korea, a wedge that could conceivably sabotage talks between them.

Let’s first get to the root of the problem in Korea. That root is the U.S. government, specifically the U.S. national-security branch of the government, i.e., the Pentagon and the CIA. That’s the reason there is a crisis in Korea. That’s the reason why war could suddenly break out, killing hundreds of thousands of people and more if it the war turns nuclear.

The U.S. government and its acolytes in the mainstream press say that the problem is with North Korea’s nuclear development program.

Balderdash! The problem is with the Pentagon’s and CIA’s decades-old aim to effect regime change in North Korea, a Cold War aim that they have never been able to let go of. That’s why the Pentagon has some 35,000 troops stationed in South Korea. That’s why they have regular military exercises over there. That’s why they have those bomber fly-overs. They want regime change, bad, just like they still do in Cuba and Iran, and just like they wanted (and got) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and so many other countries.

That’s why North Korea wants nuclear bombs — to protect its communist regime by deterring the United States from attacking and fulfilling its decades-old aim of regime change. North Korea knows that a nuclear deterrent is the only thing that might deter the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking.

The nuclear deterrent strategy certainly worked for Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Once the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, that stopped the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking and invading the island again and even caused President Kennedy to vow that the Pentagon and the CIA would not again invade the island.

North Korea also has seen what happens to impoverished Third World regimes that don’t have nuclear weapons, like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. They go down quickly to defeat and regime change at the hands of an all-powerful First World country.

Here’s the big point: Korea is none of the U.S. government’s business. Never has been and never will be. The Korean conflict was always nothing more than a civil war. A civil war in an Asian country is none of the U.S. government’s business. It wasn’t in the 1950s when the war broke out. It still isn’t. Korea is the business of the Korean people.

Keep in mind also that U.S. interventionism into the Korean War was always illegal under our form of constitutional government. The Constitution, which the president, the Pentagon, and the CIA, swear to uphold, requires a congressional declaration of war. There was never a congressional declaration of war against North Korea. That means that U.S. troops and CIA agents had no legal right to kill anyone in Korea, not with rifles, artillery, carpet bombing, or with the use of germ warfare against the North Korean people.

The Pentagon and the CIA claimed that it was necessary to illegally intervene in Korea because the communists were coming to get us. It was a lie, just as the entire Cold War was a lie. It was all just one great big fear-mongering racket to solidify the power and control of the military and intelligence services over the American people.

Those 35,000 U.S. troops in Korea today have no business being there, not only because the communists are still not coming to get us but also because they are simply the outgrowth of the original illegal intervention in the 1950s. The Pentagon has those troops there for one reason and only one reason: No, not to defend and protect the South Korean people, who are of minor importance to U.S. officials compared to the United States, but rather to serve as “tripwire” to guarantee U.S. involvement should war once again break out between the two Koreas.

In other words, no congressional deliberation on a declaration of war on whether to get involved should war break out. No national debate. Once tens of thousands of troops are automatically killed, the United States is, as a practical matter, stuck, trapped, committed. That’s why the Pentagon and the CIA have those troops there — to box in the American people — to deprive them of a choice on whether to get involved in another land war in Asia or not.

That makes U.S. soldiers in Korea nothing more than little pawns. Their assigned role is to die in order to ensure that Congress has no say on whether the U.S. gets involved in another land war in Asia. The Pentagon and the CIA, not Congress, remain in charge.

Why hasn’t the U.S. already attacked North Korea? One big reason: China. It says that if the United States starts the war, it’s coming in on the side of North Korea. China has lots of troops that could easily be sent into Korea to fight against U.S. forces. It also has a nuclear capability that can easily hit the United States.

So, that leaves Trump and his national security establishment doing their best to provoke North Korea into “firing the first shot,” or at least making it look like they have fired the first shot, like what happened at the Gulf of Tonkin or what the Pentagon hoped to accomplish with Operation Northwoods and a concocted war against Cuba.

If Trump can successfully taunt, tease, antagonize, and provoke North Korea into attacking first, then he and his national-security establishment can exclaim, “We’ve been attacked by the communists! We’re shocked! We’re innocent! We have no choice but to protect America by carpet-bombing North Korea again, this time with nuclear bombs.”

And as long as it’s not the United States that suffers the death and destruction, it will all be considered acceptable. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be dead. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans will also be dead. Both countries will be devastated. But the United States will remain intact and, equally important, will no longer be threatened by North Korea’s growing nuclear capability. It will all be considered a victory as far as the United States is concerned.

That’s why the South Koreans are smart in agreeing to talk to North Korea. If they were really smart, they would give Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA the boot. The best thing South Korea could ever do is immediately kick out every U.S. soldier and every CIA agent out of their country. Send them packing back to the United States.

Sure, Trump would be hopping bad, just as the Pentagon and the CIA would be. So what? It would be the best thing that could ever happen to Korea, the United States, and the world.

January 4, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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