The whole nail-biting standoff between North Korea and the US may be so much kabuki theater, staged chiefly by the Americans to intimidate a smaller power, but we can never be sure things won't get out f hand given Trump's egomaniac personality, appalling ignorance, and almost sociopathic recklessness. Sad day for humanity when the locus of restraint and common sense is in the hands of generals.
When US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, stated of North Korea (4th September 2017): “When a rogue regime has a nuclear weapon and an ICBM pointed at you, you do not take steps to lower your guard. No one would do that”, she unwittingly put her finger on why the DPRK has been conducting missile tests and stating that they have ever bigger, better and longer range capabilities. There is no certainty that either of the latter is the case, but the tiny country has been subject to nearly seventy years of vilification and ever more threatening behavior from the US and allies, with the language of Donald Trump, from near day one of his Presidency of the US regime reaching ever more apocalyptic heights.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stressed that dialogue and communication are vital: “Confrontational rhetoric may lead to unintended consequences … The solution must be political. The potential consequences of military action are too horrific.”
One can only hope “diplomat” Haley - who told the UN Security Council: “The time has come to exhaust all of our diplomatic means …” and that North Korea was “begging for war” - was listening. This of a country which in living memory had every town, village and it’s capitol city near erased from the map by the United States and lost at least twenty percent, some estimates state nearer thirty percent, of it’s population of then just nine million people.
Trump saying some stupid things about Korea. It will be a cold day in hell when he says something really coherent.
In 1953 when the US had destroyed all and there was nothing left to bomb they turned to bombing the dams, flooding the rice fields and causing starvation. North Korea’s government and the country’s collective and inherited memory have not forgotten and are simply attempting to insure such a horror never again afflicts their small nation.
There has been no empathy, knowledge of history, compassion in the Trumposphere. The five times draft dodger, has threatened “fire and fury” along with legality-detonating assassination of the Head of State, referring to him as “Little Rocket Man”, adding that he and his government: “won’t be around much longer.”
Trump is also threatening generating the potential extinction of life on earth. His obsession with “if we’ve got nuclear weapons why don’t we use them” argument goes back decades - but his kindergarten level rhetoric shows a frightening disconnect from statesmanship, diplomacy - and reality. This is not conjecture. Twenty seven eminent psychiatrists have put their reputation on the line writing in the just published book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” (1) “that he is dangerously mentally ill and presents a clear and present danger to the nation … (exploring) Trump’s symptoms and potentially relevant diagnoses (they) find a complex, if also dangerously mad, man.”
Kim addressing his people about the dangerous moment they face as a result of a heightening of tensions by Washington.
When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told journalists whilst on a recent visit to Beijing that the State Department had: “a couple of, three channels open to Pyongyang” and “We can talk to them … we do talk to them”, Trump tweeted: “save his energy” as “we’ll do what has to be done!”
“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” wrote the President from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. How cheap human life is to a man who has never witnessed, indeed five times evaded, seeing the carnage even one bullet can do. In context, it has just come to light (3) that:
“President Donald Trump said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest ranking national security leaders, according to three officials who were in the room …
“According to the officials present, Trump’s advisers, among them the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, were surprised. Officials briefly explained the legal and practical impediments to a nuclear buildup and how the current military posture is stronger than it was at the height of the build-up. In interviews, they told NBC News that no such expansion is planned.
“The July 20 meeting was described as a lengthy and sometimes tense review of worldwide U.S. forces and operations. It was soon after the meeting broke up that officials who remained behind heard Tillerson say that Trump is a ‘moron.’ “
Trump has vociferously denied the report, predictably falling back on his seemingly miniscule vocabulary and calling it “fake news”, even threatening the broadcaster’s licence. So far he hasn’t threatened to nuke their New York headquarters.
Back to North Korea and the President’s chilling ignorance. On 1st October he tweeted: “Being nice to Rocket Man hasn't worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won't fail.”
Kim Jong-un is thirty three and was formally announced as his father's successor on 26th December 2011. He has thus been power just short of six years. Twenty five years ago would have been eight years old.
The US simulates invading North Korea annually. In the last such manoeuvres in August one South Korean defense official told the newspaper Chosun Ilbo that this year’s excercises would include: “a nuclear war game for the first time.”
Currently, in addition to the massive war games, the US has been overflying North Korea with B-52 bombers, with further excercises taking place in and with South Korea and in the last days also with Japan. It should also be remembered that the US has in the Pacific (3):
Total military personnel
87,000
US 7th Fleet
50-70 ships and subs including ...
Up to 14 destroyers and cruisers
1 aircraft carrier
Up to 12 nuclear powered submarines
140 aircraft
In South Korea
23,468 personnel
300+ tanks
In Guam
3,831 personnel
B52 bombers and fighter jets
In Hawaii
40,000 military personnel
200 ships including ...
5 aircraft carriers
1,060 aircraft
Moreover, as has been pointed out (4): “In Donald Trump’s first six months in office, he dropped over 20,650 bombs in approximately seven countries, which killed thousands of civilians. By comparison, Kim Jong-un bombs the ocean.”
The same source makes a vital point, ignored by media and politicians:
“The media’s insistence that North Korea will never give up its weapons systems is completely disingenuous when one reads the entire context of the statements offered by Kim Jong-un’s government. On July 4, Kim’s statement read as follows:
“The DPRK would neither put its nukes and ballistic rockets on the table of negotiations in any case nor flinch even an inch from the road of bolstering the nuclear force chosen by itself unless the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK are definitely terminated.”
Trump receiving South Korean official in a show of unity.
Indeed - and with arch hawk retired Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters writing an op-ed in the New York Post (4th September): “Better a million dead North Koreans than a thousand dead Americans” and with the Pyongyang government and people well aware of what happened to Libya which was persuaded to give up its weapons programme and Iraq which had done the same after 1991. Of course Kim Jong-un and his colleagues are going to try to persuade that they can give as good as they fear getting in hope of avoiding annihilation.
Given the reckless rhetoric of Trump and others, as the New York Times puts it (5): “Congress has been sufficiently alarmed to consider legislation that would bar the president from launching a first nuclear strike without a declaration of war by Congress.
“ … As things stand now, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, passed when there was more concern about trigger-happy generals than elected civilian leaders, gives the president sole control. He could unleash the apocalyptic force of the American nuclear arsenal by his word alone, and within minutes.”
Moreover: “A New York Times analysis found the U.S. could use 1,103 nuclear warheads and decimate China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Iraq, and Syria ... and still have 2,897 left.”
Given that the man who tweets casually about “fire and fury” and smirks as he talks of “calm before the storm”, took the nuclear “football” (briefcase) down to his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort and allowed its minder to have “selfies” taken with it, him and guests, it seems pretty clear that the current incumbent of the White House still resides in the fantasy land of reality shows with no grasp of the potential global pyromaniacal armageddon he jokes about unleashing. Twenty seven eminent psychiatrists of course, have far more disturbing diagnoses.
Apparently he likes watching movies. Perhaps someone should give him a copy of “The Day After.”
- https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Case-Donald-Trump-Psychiatrists/dp/1250179459
- https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-wanted-dramatic-increase-nuclear-arsenal-meeting-military-leaders-n809701
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/04/north-korea-nikki-haley-sanctions-nuclear-test-begging-for-war
- https://nworeport.me/2017/09/17/north-korea-offers-to-give-up-their-nukes-media-blackout/
- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/opinion/trump-korea-war-competence.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
FELICITY ARBUTHNOT, Senior Contributing Editor, Middle East Affairs, & London Correspondent • Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist specialising in social and environmental issues with special knowledge of Iraq, a country which she has visited thirty times since the 1991 Gulf war. Iraq, she describes as: ‘sliding from the impossible, to the apocalyptic.’ With former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Co-ordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, she was senior Iraq researcher for John Pilger’s Award winning documentary: “Paying the Price – Killing the Children of Iraq” (Carlton/ITV March 2000), which has been aired worldwide and sent shockwaves through Washington and Whitehall. Read more about Felicity on our AUTHORS page. 
FELICITY ARBUTHNOT—“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” wrote the President from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. How cheap human life is to a man who has never witnessed, indeed five times evaded, seeing the carnage even one bullet can do.
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