US Targets
Russia and China with North Korea Pretext
By Finian
Cunningham
February
13, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"SCF"
- The
North Korean state is routinely mocked in the West
for engaging in hyperbole and bombast. Ironically,
the Western reaction to its latest satellite launch
is a carnival of knee-jerk hysteria and hyperbole.
But all the bluster has conveniently given
Washington an opportunity to proceed with its global
missile shield plans. That is far more destabilizing
to international security than any alleged North
Korean violation.
In an interview this
week on CBS, US President Obama repeated
denunciations of North Korea’s rocket launch into
outer space last Sunday, which Pyongyang claimed was
for the purpose of putting an observation satellite
into orbit.
Obama
said: «I think we have
been concerned about North Korea’s behavior for a
while. This is an authoritarian regime. It’s
provocative. It has repeatedly violated UN
resolutions, tested and produced nuclear weapons and
now they are trying to perfect their missile launch
system».
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond lambasted
North Korea, saying its
actions «continue to
present a threat to regional and international
security».
Within
hours of the satellite launch by the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the US and its
South Korean ally unveiled their plans to install
the Pentagon’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)
missile system. The system is designed for
intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs) as high as 200 kilometers. It is part of the
global «missile shield» network that Washington is
pushing elsewhere in Europe.
Aware of
the sensitivity of the move, a South Korean official
immediately qualified the planned deployment of the
THAAD as being «against North Korea’s advancing
threats», according to
a report in the Financial Times.
The
inference is that the US missile system is not
related to China’s security. But that’s not how
Beijing sees it. While China rebuked its North
Korean ally for its rocket-satellite launch, it also
strongly protested the subsequent US move towards
deploying the THAAD.
China, like
Russia, has consistently opposed any such deployment
of a missile shield by the Americans near its
borders as a provocative step towards giving
Washington a «first strike nuclear capability»
because the THAAD in theory can take out any Chinese
warheads, thus giving the US a license to hit first,
unburdened by a threat of retaliation.
Moscow has
similarly admonished US-led NATO plans to install
Aegis-class ballistic missile interceptors in
Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin previously argued that
Washington’s claims for a missile shield in Europe
and South Korea, as providing a defense against
Iranian and North Korean ICBMs, are bogus. The real
purpose, said Putin, is for the Americans is to be
able to target both Russia and China with a
perceived nuclear-threat dominance. Such military
power is a corollary of political and economic
hegemony.
This week –
apparently unrelated to the Korean controversy –
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov reiterated Moscow’s
concerns that US attempts to «create a global
missile defense system» are aimed at acquiring a
«global first strike» capability.
The
apparent «response» by Washington to Pyongyang’s
satellite launch, involving the installation of its
THAAD in East Asia is in reality an ominous shift in
the balance of nuclear power. As well as South
Korea, America’s other ally Japan is also preparing
to deploy the same missile shield. Fortuitously for
Washington, North Korea’s «rogue behavior» has given
it a cover for moving ahead with its missile system.
Lt
General Thomas Vandal, Commander of the US Eighth
Army based in South Korea, said Pyongyang’s
«provocative» satellite launch now paved the way for
the deployment of the THAAD system, adding with a
notable tone of haste: «It’s
time to move forward on this».
A New
York Times report,
headlined: «North Korea Launches Rocket Seen as
Cover for a Missile Test», had this to say: «Hours
after the North declared the success of its launch
on Sunday, the United States and South Korea jointly
announced that they had begun discussing deployment
of the American THAAD ballistic missile defense
system».
The irony
of the New York Times report is that the North Korea
rocket launch appears rather more like a cover for
the US moving ahead with its controversial and
destabilizing missile shield.
It is a
measure of how problematic the issue has been in the
past that the South Korean government of President
Park Geun-hye has up to now spurned American
requests to deploy the missile system. President
Park has made strenuous efforts in recent years to
build stronger relations with China, becoming
Beijing’s top trading partner. Although formally a
US ally, Seoul has nonetheless been mindful of
China’s security objections over the US missile
system on South Korean territory as it would
neutralize China’s nuclear capability.
As
Britain’s Independent newspaper reports: «South
Koreans have long been lukewarm about US insistence
on the need to deploy multibillion-dollar missile
launchers capable of shooting down enemy missiles
hurtling more than 100 miles overhead. One of South
Korea’s objections has been concern about offending
Beijing, which has repeatedly expressed alarm about
THAAD and its potential for use against China».
However, South Korea’s military establishment
appears to be augmenting the US agenda of hamming up
the North Korea threat. Immediately following the
rocket launch by Pyongyang, the BBC reports: «South
Korean MPs were told in a behind-closed-doors
briefing by the country's spy agency later on Sunday
that the launch should be treated as a ballistic
missile test as the satellite it put into orbit
would be useless… They were also reportedly told
North Korea has the technology for inter-continental
ballistic missiles and is preparing a fifth nuclear
test».
Let’s
unpack those claims a bit. Yes, North Korea’s latest
rocket action was in violation of United Nations
resolutions banning the use of ballistic technology.
The latest rocket launch – the second since December
2012 – was no doubt a satellite cover story used by
Pyongyang to assay the dual capability of ballistic
power. And yes, North Korea did conduct a fourth
nuclear test explosion last month – again in
violation of UN resolutions.
But there
is chasm between all of this and the claims put out
by Washington that North Korea presents an imminent
threat from being able to launch a nuclear warhead
on a ballistic missile. The North has evidently
developed nuclear warheads, with the first test back
in 2006. But there is a vast way to go before it can
ever build an ICBM charged with a nuclear weapon.
Most international ballistic experts contend that
Pyongyang is very far off reaching that level of
sophisticated technology.
AFP news agency quoted aerospace
engineer John Schilling, who has closely followed
the North's missile program, as saying: «An
ICBM warhead, unlike a satellite, needs to come down
as well as go up. North Korea has never demonstrated
the ability to build a re-entry vehicle that can
survive at even half the speed an ICBM would
require».
In short,
despite what the US, its British ally and heaps of
Western media coverage would have us believe, North
Korea is not a threat to international security.
Sure, the secretive state of Kim Jong-un can be said
to be in breach of UN resolutions. But a nuclear
enemy of the world it is most certainly not.
There is a
bizarre lack of intelligent perspective on the real
issues. Washington possesses more than 1,500
actively deployed nuclear warheads across the globe,
ready to launch at the touch of a button. Nearly 40
years after the Non-Proliferation Treaty mandating
nuclear disarmament, the US is in a process of
upgrading its nuclear arsenal at a cost of $1
trillion over the next 30 years. And it is pushing
ahead with a global missile shield system that is
profoundly destabilizing international security, in
particular with regard to Russia and China.
As for the
matter of violating international norms and
obligations, it is not removed from the subject to
ask about Washington and London’s illegal bombing of
sovereign countries like Syria. Or, as international
lawyer Christopher Black wrote recently,
to refer to Washington’s repeated acts of aggression
towards China when its missile destroyer Wilbur
Curtis flagrantly breached territorial waters in the
South China Sea on January 30.
On the
specific issue of resolving Korea’s historical
tensions, what is needed is a return to earnest
dialogue between the North and the South, and their
respective allies China and the US. However,
Washington’s hidebound policy of isolating Pyongyang
and refusing to demilitarize the Korean Peninsula is
the main obstacle to a negotiated resolution.
Indeed, it
can be reasonably deduced that Washington does not
want to ever resolve the conflict in the region for
the precise reason that it needs to keep North Korea
isolated and hostile in order to maintain its
military presence in the Asia Pacific.
Under the
cover of a «chivalrous protector» of allies, the US
is cynically exploiting a much overblown «threat»
from North Korea for pursuing its much more concrete
and malevolent threat of nuclear aggression towards
Russia and China.
Paradoxically, North Korea is presented as a rogue
state, when it is Washington that is the global thug
hiding behind a suit of shining armor. |