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Nuclear tinderbox’: Kim’s threats put North Korea on wrong side of history

Simon Tisdall 26 Nov 23

As a distracted world looks elsewhere, US and China have a common interest in halting Asia’s accelerating nuclear arms race.

For western liberals and progressive champions of open, democratic government, a clutch of recalcitrant regimes around the world seems firmly stuck on what Barack Obama once called “the wrong side of history”. Iran’s misogynistic theocrats and Myanmar’s genocidal generals are among the worst offenders………

Yet for sheer malignity, few can match autocratic, anachronistic North Korea, personal fiefdom and Kafkaesque playground of dictator Kim Jong-un, oddball scion of a dysfunctional dynasty. Like his father and grandfather before him, jailer Kim imprisons North Koreans in a sort of darkness-at-noon, cold war hell……………………………………………………

Preferring fear and force to peaceful development, Kim and his nuclear arsenal grow evermore threatening. Tests of ballistic missiles, some capable of striking the US, have proliferated rapidly. Last week’s first successful launch of a military spy satellite dangerously upped the ante once again

…………………………………………….One worry is that wars in Ukraine and Palestine, and high-profile US-China sparring over Taiwan, are obscuring greater, existential dangers posed by Kim. “While the world’s attention is focused elsewhere, north-east Asia has become a nuclear tinderbox,” Susan Thornton, former US assistant secretary of state for east Asia, warned this month.

“A full-scale arms race is under way. North Korea’s stockpile of nuclear weapons and missiles has grown and Kim has called for an ‘exponential increase’ in its arsenal,” she wrote. With all the regional actors moving towards “hair-trigger strategies”, some American officials believed nuclear annihilation was only “one bad decision away”.

The threat is ubiquitous and covert, too. UK security chiefs last week accused Kim of orchestrating cyber-attacks around the world. The claim came during a visit to London by South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, partly intended to boost defence ties…………………………………………………………………………………….

Biden is trying to contain the North Korea menace and simultaneously respond to China’s rise, partly by strengthening regional alliances…………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/25/nuclear-tinderbox-kims-threats-put-north-korea-on-wrong-side-of-history

November 28, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized