I've maintained for some time that the US aggressive attitude toward North Korea is a foil - a way to increase tensions in the region in order to pump-up the fear and allow the Pentagon to increase its military encirclement of China and Russia. They are the real targets.
The Pentagon knows that North Korea only has four nuclear warheads and only medium-range missiles. So despite all the hype North Korea is not a military threat to the US.
The Pentagon has 6,800 nuclear warheads and obviously has all kinds of missiles of every conceivable range. North Korea is not going to start a war - if it did the US would pulverize it in a very short time.
I got an email today from International Law professor Francis Boyle who wrote:
I have just had a look at Article 2 of the China/DPRK Mutual Assistance Treaty.... In the event the USA attacks DPRK, China is obligated to come to the Defense of DPRK and has so stated publicly and recently and repeatedly. So it appears that the USA is provoking DPRK to attack USA first, whereupon China has said it will not come to the Defense of DPRK, and it is not obligated to do so under the Treaty.
Thus North Korea has no incentive to attack the US or any of its allies unless the Pentagon hits them first. North Korea is all about survival of its regime and that is why they are developing nukes. They've seen what happened to Iraq and Libya and know that if they have the ability to hit back hard they will have a better chance of survival.
Now if I was asked I'd advise North Korea not to sound so belligerent which only gives the US the ability to spin things its way even more. But easy for me to say......
North Korea was devastated during the 'American War' as they called it during 1950-1953. Coming out of that war the US refused to sign a peace treaty and to this day the war is technically still on. Only an Armistice (cease fire) was signed on July 27, 1953.
The US has 83 bases in South Korea that have 23,000 American troops stationed on them. The US-South Korea-Japan continually hold war games along North Korea's border. Imagine if some other country was holding war games along our Canadian and Mexican borders. Washington would never stand for that but when we do that to others it is supposed to be acceptable.
In recent days we paid to boost the Global Network's Keep Space for Peace Week poster on Facebook and there has been a whirlwind of comments, shares and likes. Somehow a bunch of US military soldiers got ahold of the post and many of them have been commenting. Today two of us from the Global Network had an extended discussion with one of the soldiers about the Korea issue.
US troops in South Korea and Japan would be high on the list for immediate targeting if a war started between the US and North Korea-China. American GI's must be a bit afraid at this point and they are not likely to be hearing much opposition to war as the western corporate controlled media is non-stop promoting a US 'decapitation' strike.
I posted a really good Korea issues/history interview on Facebook today (see it here) and one woman commented:
I made the mistake of turning on CNN for few minutes this morning.I don't know how all this will turn out but having Trump in the White House and a team of ready-to-kill military generals surrounding him is not very reassuring. At this point we all need to be speaking out loudly and often against going to war with anyone - especially not in Korea!
A bunch of warmongering, mainly women, mouthpieces. Nauseating.
Thanks for the antidote!
Bruce
Thank you so much for this analysis. The UK media is taking a similar line to CNN and I have to turn it off. Insanity that they are encouraging the warmongers in the US (and our pathetic warmongering government).
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