Of course, in State Department-friendly Western media, its North Korea and its leadership who are routinely portrayed as the nut jobs. But you dont have to carry a torch for the North Korean government or be a card-carrying member of the Kim Jong-un Appreciation Society to acknowledge that the countrys leadership has actually been behaving very rationally. Because recent history tells us that the best way to deter an attack from the US and its allies is not to disarm, dress up as John Lennon and make statements about how much you desire peace, but to do the exact opposite.
John Wight@JohnWight1The crisis on the Korean Peninsula is due to the actions of a rogue state ruled by madmen with nukes. This rogue state is of course the USA.https://twitter.com/foxandfriends/status/895586911275712512
2:09 PM - Aug 11, 2017
Consider what happened to Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Like the DPRK, all three were US target states. And all three were destroyed and their leaders killed. Do we honestly think these countries would have been attacked had they possessed nukes or missiles that could reach US targets? Of course not. Detailed analysis of these conflicts shows us that the Empire gets its way through a mixture of bluff followed by the use of military force, but only when it believes the risks are minimal, or non-existent. If it believes the risks are too high, it backs off and starts talking about the need for dialogue and diplomacy.
To understand how the global hegemon acts in the international arena we dont need to study huge academic textbooks, only remember what happens in the school playground.
In 1999, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic not only lacked ICBMs, but strong international allies who were prepared to stand by his country in its hour of need. Even though the Russian military were champing at the bit to help their historical Slavic allies in Belgrade, Yeltsin and the ruling elite in Russia werepurportedlygiven financial inducements to stay out. Whether or not that is true, a new IMF loan was convenientlyagreedjust a week after NATO began its illegal aerial bombing campaign.
The US only expected military action to last a few days before Slobo would cave in and accept the Western military alliances right to occupy mineral-rich Kosovo and have free unhindered access over the whole of Yugoslavia.
I dont see this as a long-term operation. I think this is something that is achievable within a relatively short space of time,boasted Secretary of State Madeline Albright.
But Slobo and the stoical Serbs did not cave in. As the bombing campaign continued, splits began to emerge in NATO between the hawks, comprised of the US and Britain, and the countries from continental Europe who favored dialogue with Belgrade.
On April 15, 1999, the GuardianreportedthatAmerican officials rejected a six-point German peace plan which included a 24-hour bombing pause, a United Nations peacekeeping force and civilian monitors.It went on to note how British Prime Minister Tony Blairalso gave the plan a polite cold shoulder.
NATO atrocities, such as the killing of 16 civilians in the bombing of Serbian State Television - a clear war crime - and the bombing of a passenger train and a convoy of Kosovan Albanians, were beginning to turn public opinion against the humanitarian operation. With the war not going to plan, it was time once again for the US to make threats. To increase the pressure on Milosevic- the Yugoslav President was indicted as a war criminal, a process I describedhere.
In addition, hints were made that NATO was planning a ground invasion. President Clinton declared on 18th May 1999 that hewould not take any option off the table.
Victor Chernomyrdin, Yeltsins envoy, flew to Belgrade to persuade Milosevic to accept NATOs terms - or face an escalation of the war.
But would there really have been boots on the ground or was it one big bluff? Evidence suggests the latter. NATOs supreme commander Wesley Clark revealed in his memoirs that the Alliances top political leaders had reached no consensus over sending in ground troops. And would NATO have gotten away with intensifying its air campaign? Clark alsoadmittedthat by mid-May, NATOhad gone about as far as possible with the air strikes.
Im sure that seven years later, as he lay in his prison cell a sick man, denied the proper medical treatment which his heart condition required, Milosevic regretted not saying nyet to Chernomyrdin in 1999 and calling Washingtons bluff.
Four years later it was the turn of oil-rich Iraq to be attacked.
Saddam Hussein and his Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz repeatedly told the worlds media that their country possessed no WMDs.
They were accused of lying by western neocons, but the endless war lobby knew the Iraqi leadership was telling the truth. Saddams country was attacked not because it possessed weapons of mass destruction, but because it didnt. With its air defenses severely weakened after years of Allied bombing, and its own air force decimated in the first Gulf War, Iraq was a sitting duck. Bush and Blair lied about the country being athreat- and 1m Iraqis eventually died.
Over in oil-rich Libya, Muammar Gaddafi drew absolutely the wrong conclusions about what had happened to Iraq. Eagerly seeking the end of US sanctions on his country, he foolishly agreed in December 2003 to eliminate his WMDs program. He should have reacted to Shock and Awe by building up his arsenal, but instead, falling for the silver-tongued promises of Western leaders who were going to end his countrys isolation, he did the opposite.
George W. Bush hailed his decision as a"wise and sensible choice."
Tony Blair, for his part,said:This courageous decision by Colonel Gaddafi is an historic one. I applaud it. It will make the region and the world more secure.
But of course, it didnt. It only paved the way for the destruction of Gaddafis country by the same countries whose leaders had hailed him as wise and sensible a few years earlier.
Again, Im sure that eight years later, as Gaddafi lay in his underground hideout, trying to escape capture from US-backed rebels(who eventually killed him in the most brutal way imaginable), he bitterly regretted his decision to disarm.
Which brings us back to North Korea.
Its clear that Kim Jong-un has seen what happened to Milosevic, Saddam and Gaddafi and the devastation wreaked on their countries and acted accordingly. North Koreas strategy is clearly based on the belief, borne out by events described above, that the US is a bully which only attacks the weak. Thus, saber-rattling and generally playing a high line is the best way to avoid attack. We must remember too that North Korea lost around 1m people in the Korean War 1950-53, many from an intensive US bombing campaign.
David Traynier ?@DTraynier#bbcpmdiscussing Trump's constitutional authority to attack N. Korea. International law, of course, is not even mentioned.
8:50 PM - Aug 11, 2017
Of course, the neocons in Washington dont like it when a country stands up to them in this way, which is why the former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who never let his guard down for one moment, got such a terrible press. The Empire seeks to prevent target states developing nuclear weapons capabilities as it knows that if they do it wont be able to threaten them. Its revealing to note that the strongest supporters of nuclear deterrence in the West are also the strongest opponents of countries such as Iran or DPRK acquiring nuclear weapons.
We need nukes to defend ourselves from attack, but it is deemed totally outrageous if countries in the global south, which we threaten on a routine basis, seek to acquire such weapons for the same reason.
To deter a US attack, North Korea, or indeed any other country in the line of fire, has to convince the serial warmongers in Washington that the cost of launching such an assault would be too high. Being nice and singing Give Peace a Chance wont cut the mustard. Remember that John Lennon, who wrote and sang that song, lost his life from a gunshot.
While Saddam implored the West, Believe me, I have no WMDs, Kim Jong-un has done the exact opposite and talked up his countrys capabilities. However, Kim knows that words alone are not enough; he also needs to demonstrate that North Korean projectiles can be a threat to the US. Hence the announcement on Wednesday that it was carefully considering a plan to fire four missiles into the sea off the island of Guam, home to two US bases.
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Paddy Briggs
@PaddyBriggsIf you were wondering where the hell#Guamis...
11:58 AM - Aug 10, 2017South East, England
Of course, Pyongyangs strategy is high risk, especially with such a volatile individual as Donald Trump - who seems desperate to earn neocon approval to avoid a possible impeachment - in The White House.
Recent history though suggests that North Korea, by keeping its fists clenched and continuing to indulge in missile willy-waving is doing absolutely the right thing. The big lesson of the last thirty years is surely that deterrence works. If youre a target state and cant deter the warmongers in Washington, youre in grave danger. Just ask the ghosts of Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.
