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Kim Jong Un’s nuclear aim is to save his regime, not to attack Los Angeles

Kim’s Nukes Aren’t a Bargaining Chip. They’re an Insurance Policy Climb into the North Korean dictator’s mind, and you can see that his aim isn’t to destroy Los Angeles but to save his regime. Bloomberg Michael Schuman, 7 Sept 17, 
North Korea looks pretty scary at the moment, firing off missile after missile, threatening to target Guam, and, on Sept. 3, testing what the regime claims was its first hydrogen bomb. And the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un—so ruthless he may have had members of his own family murdered—might be just crazy enough to push the button to initiate a catastrophic war.
Or maybe not. Look deeper, and you’ll find a North Korea that isn’t as much of an immediate danger to the U.S. as the headlines and rhetoric suggest. That’s because Pyongyang isn’t very likely to use its nukes and missiles against the U.S.—or anyone else.

 Don’t get me wrong: North Korea still presents a huge security risk to East Asia and the world. Kim’s neighbors include three of the world’s 11 largest economies and two of America’s closest allies, Japan and South Korea. No U.S. president would want to see Pyongyang lob a missile into Tokyo or Seoul, let alone Hawaii.

But climb into the mind of Kim—as terrifying as that may sound—and we can conclude that his aim isn’t to destroy Los Angeles but to save his own skin. This is a regime that was never expected to still be around in 2017. When the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union unraveled more than a quarter century ago, North Korea was supposed to vanish with them. The regime has since outlasted economic and political isolation, stiff international sanctions, and famines so severe that they may have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. But through it all, the Pyongyang government has persisted. That speaks to the cunning of the Kim family, which has lorded over the country since its founding by the current Kim’s granddaddy in 1948. They’re survivors.

 And that’s what Kim is striving to do today: survive. He’s not out to conquer the world or even expand his influence in his own neighborhood. Kim and the Pyongyang elite must recognize that the odds are against them and their backs are to the wall. …….

Here’s where the nukes come into play. Pyongyang believes they’re the best, and possibly only, deterrent against evaporation, absorption, or annihilation. That’s why the regime has never been truly willing to trade its nuclear program for other benefits—something Washington has tried to do since the 1990s. The nukes aren’t a bargaining chip. They’re an insurance policy.

Yet the very same weakness that drives Kim’s mania for nuclear weapons is why he can never use them, at least not as an aggressor. As President Trump has already warned, any such attack would be met by “fire and fury.” That comment was irresponsible, but the point is true nevertheless. Kim likely isn’t delusional enough to think his country could survive an all-out war with the U.S. and its allies. Proactively launching a nuclear-topped ballistic missile against the U.S. would mean his own destruction. That’s why it won’t happen. The U.S. Defense Department in its 2015 report said that even though the country remains a continuing threat, “North Korea is unlikely to attack on a scale that would risk regime survival.”

If we see Pyongyang’s motivations in this light, the policy course the Trump administration is taking is all wrong. Threats of fire and fury will only make Kim more paranoid and more certain that he needs nukes to defend himself or deter an aggressive Washington—……

At this stage, with Kim already in possession of nukes and maybe the ability to deliver them, the only viable option for Washington is to accept this reality and deal with Pyongyang as it does with any of the world’s other nuclear powers. This may sound terribly distasteful, and the course presents its own risks—mainly, that North Korea’s neighbors, especially Japan and South Korea, will feel the need for nuclear weapons of their own, leading to a regionwide, potentially destabilizing arms race. Washington would also have to work hard to ensure Pyongyang doesn’t spread its know-how to other rogue states or terrorist organizations that might be less wary of using it—such as Islamic State.

But the U.S. has successfully dealt with the appearance of other nuclear powers, whether China, India, or Pakistan, and it may have to do so again, this time by containing the North Korean threat instead of attempting to eliminate it. ……https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/kim-s-nukes-aren-t-a-bargaining-chip-they-re-an-insurance-policy

September 9, 2017 Posted by | North Korea, politics, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nikki Haley Falsely Accuses Iran

 Consortium News Israel and the neocons still seek an excuse to bomb Iran, now citing false claims about its supposed noncompliance with the nuclear deal. The new water carrier is U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes. By Paul R. Pillar

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear program, is for Donald Trump one more of the Obama administration’s achievements to be trashed. It goes alongside the Affordable Care Act, the Paris climate change agreement, and other measures (most recently the “dreamers” program involving children of illegal immigrants) as targets for trashing because fulfilling campaign rhetoric is given higher priority in the current administration than whether a program is achieving its purpose, whether there are any realistic alternatives available, or what the effects of the trashing will be on the well-being of Americans and the interests and credibility of the United States.

Nikki Haley, whose foreign policy experience has consisted of these past few months as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, has assumed the role of chief public trasher of the JCPOA for the administration. Evidently no demands on the time of the U.S. ambassador in New York, from the issue of North Korea (which has real, not imagined, nuclear weapons) to the war in Syria were too important to keep her from giving a speech at the American Enterprise Institute that represented the administration’s most concerted and contrived public effort so far to lay groundwork for withdrawing from the JCPOA.

Haley has warmed to this cause both because of her own previous parochial interests, including those associated with financial contributions she has received, and because it is a convenient vehicle for playing to Trump’s urges. Haley evidently feels no obligation to perform as one of the “adults” in the administration to whom the country looks to contain those urges.

The speech at AEI was Trumpian in some of the tactics it employed. The performance should cement the ambitious Haley’s place on Trump’s short list of candidates to become Secretary of State once Rex Tillerson’s unhappy and probably short tenure in the job ends. The speech also used more twisted versions of familiar rhetorical twists that have been heard before from diehard opponents of the JCPOA…….https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/06/nikki-haley-falsely-accuses-iran/

September 9, 2017 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Past and present world nuclear state leaders brought the North Korea crisis on themselves

How the nuclear-armed nations brought the North Korea crisis on themselves https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/05/nuclear-armed-nations-brought-the-north-korea-crisis-on-themselves

Failure to honour terms of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty has helped create ground for Kim Jong-un’s recklessness, Guardian, Simon Tisdall, 5 Sept 17,  North Korea’s defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities, dramatised by last weekend’s powerful underground test and a recent long-range ballistic missile launch over Japan, has been almost universally condemned as posing a grave, unilateral threat to international peace and security.

The growing North Korean menace also reflects the chronic failure of multilateral counter-proliferation efforts and, in particular, the longstanding refusal of acknowledged nuclear-armed states such as the US and Britain to honour a legal commitment to reduce and eventually eliminate their arsenals.

In other words, the past and present leaders of the US, Russia, China, France and the UK, whose governments signed but have not fulfilled the terms of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), have to some degree brought the North Korea crisis on themselves. Kim Jong-un’s recklessness and bad faith is a product of their own.

The NPT, signed by 191 countries, is probably the most successful arms control treaty ever. When conceived in 1968, at the height of the cold war, the mass proliferation of nuclear weapons was considered a real possibility. Since its inception and prior to North Korea, only India, Pakistan and Israel are known to have joined the nuclear “club” in almost half a century.

To work fully, the NPT relies on keeping a crucial bargain: non-nuclear-armed states agree never to acquire the weapons, while nuclear-armed states agree to share the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology and pursue nuclear disarmament with the ultimate aim of eliminating them. This, in effect, was the guarantee offered to vulnerable, insecure outlier states such as North Korea. The guarantee was a dud, however, and the bargain has never been truly honoured.

Rather than reducing their nuclear arsenals, the US, Russia and China have modernised and expanded them. Britain has eliminated some of its capability, but it is nevertheless renewing and updating Trident. France clings fiercely to its “force de frappe”. Altogether, the main nuclear-weapon states have an estimated 22,000 nuclear bombs. A report by the non-governmental British-American Security Information Council in May said nuclear security was getting worse.

“The need for nuclear disarmament through multilateral diplomacy is greater now than it has been at any stage since the end of the cold war. Trust and confidence in the existing nuclear non-proliferation regime is fraying, tensions are high, goals are misaligned and dialogue is irregular,” the report said.

“Internationally, relationships between the nuclear-weapon states have deteriorated, in particular between the US and Russia, and to some extent, China … All nuclear-armed states are modernising their nuclear forces, at a worldwide cost of $1tn per decade … Attention tends to be focused on specific cases of proliferation concern, such as North Korea and Iran, at the expense of the bigger picture.”

Multilateral forums for advancing nuclear disarmament are in crisis. The next NPT review conference is not due until 2020. Like its 2015 predecessor, it is not expected to achieve much. The UN-backed conference on disarmament, which helped produce conventions banning biological and chemical weapons and initiated the 1996 comprehensive test ban treaty, is politically polarised and struggling to agree key measures such as a fissile material cut-off treaty.

Meanwhile, as South Korea and Japan consider acquiring nuclear weapons, Donald Trump appears irrationally determined to scrap one of the few recent arms control successes – the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

There has been one big breakthrough this year, the under-reported adoption by 122 countries at the UN in July of a new treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which envisages an outright ban on the use of all nukes. It has, however, been potentially fatally undermined by a boycott by the nuclear powers. The US, Britain and France declared, cynically as critics saw it, that they preferred to stick with the never-ending NPT route to disarmament. “This initiative clearly disregards the realities of the international security environment,” they said in a joint statement.

The ineffectiveness of current arms control and counter-proliferation efforts has helped to create an environment in which North Korea, allegedly using smuggled, Russian-designed ballistic missile engines, is rapidly advancing its nuclear ambitions with apparent impunity, at great risk to international stability.

Multilateral arms control failures also mean the Korean “solution” Trump talks about with increasing frequency – the use of preventive military action, notwithstanding its illegality under international law – could, if applied, spell the end of deterrence and the beginning of an unchecked global nuclear arms race.

September 6, 2017 Posted by | 2 WORLD, North Korea, politics international | Leave a comment

America bullying Sweden because Sweden signed the UN nuclear weapons ban treaty

Mattis reportedly threatened Sweden with retaliation over signing a nuclear-weapons ban, Business Insider CHRISTOPHER WOODY, SEP 6, 2017 US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis reportedly warned Sweden of severe consequences if the country followed through on signing a UN treaty banning nuclear weapons.

The Scandinavian country is one of 122 states backing the treaty, and Stockholm also recently signed a statement of intent to increase military cooperation with the US.

But a letter from Mattis reportedly warned Sweden’s defence minister, Peter Hultqvist, that signing on to the treaty could affect US-Sweden military cooperation as well as US military support in the event of war.

Mattis’ letter also suggested signing the treaty could have an impact on the country’s ties to NATO, of which it is a Gold Card program member, meaning it has some privileges within the defence alliance even though it is not a full member.

Sweden’s Gold Card program status faces renewal in October, and Mattis warned his Swedish counterpart that signing the treaty would foreclose the option of joining NATO, according to Defence News…….

The US, which adheres to a policy of nuclear deterrence, has criticised the nuclear-weapons ban, but Mattis’ letter is seen as an unusual step in bilateral relations, particularly between the US and Sweden.

 A Pentagon spokesman told Defence News that while the US “values its defence relationship with Sweden,” it has discouraged countries from signing on to the ban, which has measures that “could potentially affect our ability to cooperate with parties to the treaty on issues of mutual interest.”…..

Jim Townsend, who was deputy assistant secretary of defence for European and NATO policy for eight years, told Defence News that pressuring Sweden with threats about defence cooperation is a flawed approach…..https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mattis-threatened-sweden-over-a-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-2017-9?r=US&IR=T

September 6, 2017 Posted by | politics international, Sweden, USA | Leave a comment

Russian president, Vladimir Putin, warns against escalating nuclear crisis: more sanctions on North Korea are useless,

North Korea nuclear crisis: Putin warns of planetary catastrophe  As Kim Jong-un reportedly prepares further missile launch, Russian president says further sanctions would be ‘useless’, Guardian, Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Tom Phillips in Beijing, 6 Sept 17, The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has warned that the escalating North Korean crisis could cause a “planetary catastrophe” and huge loss of life, and described US proposals for further sanctions on Pyongyang as “useless”.

“Ramping up military hysteria in such conditions is senseless; it’s a dead end,” he told reporters in China. “It could lead to a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life. There is no other way to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, save that of peaceful dialogue.”

On Sunday, North Korea carried out its sixth and by far its most powerful nuclear test to date. The underground blast triggered a magnitude-6.3 earthquake and was more powerful than the bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the second world war.

Putin was attending the Brics summit, bringing together the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Speaking on Tuesday, the final day of the summit in Xiamen, China, he said Russia condemned North Korea’s provocations but said further sanctions would be useless and ineffective, describing the measures as a “road to nowhere”.

Foreign interventions in Iraq and Libya had convinced the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, that he needed nuclear weapons to survive, Putin said.

“We all remember what happened with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. His children were killed, I think his grandson was shot, the whole country was destroyed and Saddam Hussein was hanged … We all know how this happened and people in North Korea remember well what happened in Iraq.

“They will eat grass but will not stop their [nuclear] programme as long as they do not feel safe.” …….https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/05/south-korea-minister-redeploying-us-nuclear-weapons-tensions-with-north

September 6, 2017 Posted by | North Korea, politics international, Russia | 1 Comment

North Korea’s latest threats against USA

Pyongyang issue new threats against the US http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/international/2017/09/06/pyongyang-issue-new-threats-against-the-us.html, 6 September 2017 Amid international uproar over North Korea’s latest and biggest nuclear weapons test, one of its top diplomats says it’s ready to send ‘more gift packages’ to the United States.

Han Tae Song, ambassador of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the UN in Geneva, on Tuesday addressed the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament two days after his country detonated its sixth nuclear test explosion.

‘I am proud of saying that just two days ago on the 3rd of September, DPRK successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test for intercontinental ballistic rocket under its plan for building a strategic nuclear force,’ Han told the Geneva forum.

‘The recent self-defence measures by my country, DPRK, are a ‘gift package’ addressed to none other than the US,’ Han said. ‘The US will receive more ‘gift packages’ from my country as long as its relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK,’ he added without elaborating.

Military measures being taken by North Korea were ‘an exercise of restraint and justified self-defence right’ to counter ‘the ever-growing and decade-long US nuclear threat and hostile policy aimed at isolating my country’.

US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said North Korea had defied the international community once again with its test.

‘It can no longer be business as usual with this regime.’

The White House said on Monday President Donald Trump had agreed ‘in principle’ to scrap a warhead weight limit on South Korea’s missiles in the wake of the North’s latest test.

The United States accused North Korea’s trading partners of aiding its nuclear ambitions and said Pyongyang was ‘begging for war’. Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Tuesday that a US aim for the United Nations Security Council to vote on Monday on new sanctions on North Korea over its latest nuclear test is ‘a little premature’.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister spoke by telephone on Tuesday and agreed that sanctions against Pyongyang should be stepped up.

‘She agreed with Prime Minister Abe that North Korea’s latest nuclear test threatened the security of the entire world and that this massive violation of the UN Security Council’s resolution must result in a resolute reaction from the international community as well as tougher sanctions,’ spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

September 6, 2017 Posted by | North Korea, politics international | Leave a comment

North Korea’s nuclear ramp-up is damaging to China’s ambitions to be major power in Asia

North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal Threatens China’s Path to Power, NYT, By JANE PERLEZ, SEPT. 5, 2017 “………China has made little secret of its long-term goal to replace the United States as the major power in Asia and assume what it considers its rightful position at the center of the fastest-growing, most dynamic region in the world.

But North Korea, which defied Beijing by testing a sixth nuclear bomb on Sunday, has emerged as an unexpected and persistent obstacle.

Other major hurdles litter China’s path. The United States, despite signs of retreat in Asia under the Trump administration, remains the dominant military power. And India and Japan, China’s traditional rivals in the region, have made clear that they intend to resist its gravitational pull.

Yet North Korea — an outcast of the international order that Beijing hopes to lead, but also a nuclear state in part because of China’s own policies — presents a particularly nettlesome challenge.

China’s path to dominance requires an American withdrawal and a message to American allies that they cannot count on the United States for protection. But North Korea threatens to draw the United States more deeply into the region and complicate China’s effort to diminish its influence and persuade countries to live without its nuclear umbrella.

At the same time, the strategic location of the North — and its advancing nuclear capabilities — make it dangerous for China to restrain it.

“North Korea may not be the biggest problem to China, but it does add a unique and very serious dimension to China’s task of supplanting America in East Asia,” said Hugh White, a former strategist for the Australian Defense Department. “That’s because it is the only East Asian power with nuclear weapons.”

Even if the United States steps back from the region, Mr. White added, “North Korea’s capability means China can never be able to dominate the region as much as its leaders today probably hope.”

The Trump administration has bet on China to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, shunning talks with Mr. Kim and gambling that Beijing can be persuaded to use its economic leverage over the North to rein it in.

But in doing so, the White House may be misreading the complexity of China’s relationship with North Korea, one that successive generations of Chinese leaders have struggled to manage.

A New Cold War

There is growing resentment against Mr. Kim inside China, both in the general public and the policy establishment. China keeps North Korea running with oil shipments and accounts for almost all its foreign trade. But to many Chinese, the young leader seems ungrateful.

A three-day academic seminar in Shanghai last month brought together some critics, who question North Korea’s value to Beijing as a strategic buffer against South Korea and Japan — and warn that the North could prompt them to develop nuclear weapons of their own.

“The cost is to continue to alienate Japan, enrage the United States and irritate South Korea,” said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University. “If Japan and South Korea feel forced to go for radical options like nuclear weapons, it will badly affect regional diplomacy.”

The spread of nuclear weapons, he added, would thrust China into “a new Cold War” in Asia, perhaps with a beefed-up American military presence. That would frustrate Beijing’s ambitions for regional supremacy while also leaving it vulnerable to being labeled an enabler of nuclear proliferation, tarnishing its international reputation…..

President Xi Jinping is said to be aware of such risks and to have privately expressed disdain for Mr. Kim.

But like his predecessors, he has resisted punishing sanctions that might cause North Korea’s collapse and lead to a destabilizing war on its border, a refugee crisis in China’s economically vulnerable northeast, or a unified Korean Peninsula controlled by American forces.

All these possibilities could pose as much a problem for China’s plans for ascendancy in Asia as an arms race in the region. And if North Korea somehow survived, it would remain on China’s border, angry and aggrieved.

From Mr. Xi’s perspective, a hostile neighbor armed with nuclear weapons may be the worst outcome…….https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-china.html

September 6, 2017 Posted by | China, North Korea, politics international | Leave a comment

Tension increased as USA and South Korea deploy more fire power on the Korean Peninsula

Allies seek to deploy aircraft carrier, strategic bomber in response to N.K. nuke test, Yonhap News, 2017-09- SEOUL, Sept. 4  — South Korea and the United States will seek to deploy a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, strategic bombers and other powerful assets to the Korean Peninsula as a response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test, Seoul’s defense ministry said Monday.

In its report to the National Assembly’s defense committee, the ministry also said that its military will stage a unilateral live-fire drill, which involves Taurus air-to-surface guided missiles mounted on its F-15K fighter jets, this month. The missile with a range of 500 kilometers is capable of launching precision strikes on the North’s key nuclear and missile facilities.

“We will push for the option of deploying strategic assets such as the U.S. carrier strike group and strategic bombers after consultation with the U.S.,” the ministry said.

The show-of-force measures were unveiled a day after Pyongyang conducted what it claims to be a test of a hydrogen bomb mountable onto an intercontinental ballistic missile, sharply raising military tensions.

At the parliamentary session, Defense Minister Song Young-moo said that during his recent talks with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, he demanded that the U.S. deploy its strategic assets to Korea on a “regular” basis. He made the demand, citing local politicians’ calls for the redeployment of U.S. tactical nukes.

But he dismissed the news report that he actually demanded the redeployment of the U.S. nuclear arsenal withdrawn from the peninsula in the early 1990s…….http://m.yna.co.kr/mob2/en/contents_en.jsp?cid=AEN20170904010952315

September 6, 2017 Posted by | politics international, South Korea, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, lays the groundwork for Trump to abandon the Iran nuclear deal

Haley: Trump ‘has grounds’ to say Iran violating nuclear deal, Politico, By NAHAL TOOSI, 09/05/2017
Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador says the president “has grounds” to declare that Iran is not complying with the 2015 nuclear deal, stoking doubts about whether Trump intends to keep an international agreement and core legacy achievement for former President Barack Obama.

Nikki Haley, speaking Tuesday in Washington, said she did not know what Trump plans to do next month when he is due to certify to Congress whether Tehran is complying with the agreement. But she appeared to lay the groundwork for Trump to declare that Iran is in violation of the deal……..http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/05/trump-iran-violate-nuclear-deal-nikki-haley-242331

September 6, 2017 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

The problem facing the world – dealing with a nuclear North Korea

North Korea: What can actually be done to deal with a nuclear Pyongyang? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-03/north-korea-is-it-time-to-accept-it-will-remain-a-nuclear-threat/8868138, ANALYSIS By chief foreign correspondent Philip Williams, From the first tweak of the seismograph it was clear this was no ordinary tremor — it signalled the most powerful bomb of all.

The North Korean TV newsreader announced with a flourish this was the state’s first hydrogen bomb.If that now means Pyongyang has the weapon and the delivery system that could wipe out a Los Angeles, a San Francisco or a Sydney in a flash, then the world is now a different place.

Nuclear weapons are supposed to be a deterrent — make yourself so dangerous no-one will ever dare challenge you — and it is a fact that barring some Scuds aimed at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War and some border skirmishes between China and Vietnam and India and Pakistan, no nuclear-armed state has ever faced a serious attack by another country.

Clearly the thinking for three generations of Kim is that the regime is made safe if everyone fears you. And the clear impression you are crazy helps too — no-one wants to aggravate a disturbed mind.

But what to do? US President Donald Trump has described the test as hostile and dangerous and said Pyongyang “only understands one thing”.

Appeasement was not working, he said, and the rogue nation has become a “great threat and embarrassment” to China. He later tweeted the US was considering “stopping trade with any country doing business with North Korea”.

That would include both China and Russia. While both signed on to the latest UN sanctions, cutting trade altogether would be a far more serious step.

Beijing would have to cut off oil supplies and Moscow send back the North Korean labourers who “volunteer” to work in Siberian forestry camps in what have been described as slave-like conditions.

The whole region and beyond is in a fix. China especially is feeling the squeeze from the United States, and even Australia has argued Beijing has not applied full muscle against North Korea to mend its errant ways.

But the Chinese Government has agreed to the latest sanctions and deeply resents the assertion it could stop Kim Jong-un if it really wanted to. There is nothing for the Chinese to gain from a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.

Not only would there be the risk of nuclear contamination, what really worries Beijing is the thought of millions of refugees pouring over the border seeking shelter from a nuclear storm. Not to mention the terrible human and economic cost of shattered neighbours.

The constant refrain from Mr Trump and Malcolm Turnbull for China to do more and do it now could soon become counterproductive. Beijing’s influence on North Korea’s leadership is often overstated.

Its troublesome neighbour has repeatedly embarrassed China by testing bombs or missiles at an inopportune moment. This latest test happened at the opening of a major BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) conference held in China and hosted by President Xi Jinping.

Not only was his thunder stolen, he and guest Vladimir Putin were forced to issue a joint statement condemning the test but urging a negotiated solution. Mr Trump underlined that via a tweet, saying: “North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.”

For his part, the US leader has wedged himself with rhetoric — it was only a couple of days ago he said the time for talking was over. But what does that leave?

The US military will have its plans ready, just in case. And Mr Trump is the only person with power to order what would be the destruction of North Korea. Is he really contemplating the death of millions, the ruin of cites on both sides of the 38th parallel?

Only if North Korea crosses his red lines. Do they exist in the seas off Guam, Hawaii, or the West coast of the mainland itself?

Surely Mr Kim and his predecessors have not come all this way to self-destruct. After all, these bombs and missiles are supposed to protect, not trigger an end game conflict. No party to this conundrum wants this to happen.

But the scene is set, the main players less than predictable and the talk tough. North Korea will never willingly trade away its newfound military clout, it is seen as vital for survival, but successive US presidents have made it clear they will never live with a nuclear armed and able North Korea.

It is a country that revels in regular threats to wipe out entire US cities. It is no longer trash talk that can be ignored and no-one, it seems, has a plausible answer.

One commentator suggested arming both South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons to act as a foil to the North. That would mean five countries in the region with the ability to erase entire cities from the planet.

Our once relatively safe and increasingly prosperous neighbourhood is taking a serious turn for the worse. Only two people on the planet can change all that, and neither is showing signs there is a safe way out.

Asked by a reporter if the US would attack North Korea, Mr Trump said: “We’ll see.”

September 4, 2017 Posted by | North Korea, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nikki Haley , US Ambassador to the United Nations shows her ignorance of the Iran nuclear agreement

Haley’s remarks show US envoy’s ignorance of JCPOA text: Iran FM, Press TV, 3 Sept 17 Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the recent remarks by US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley show her lack of familiarity with the content of the historic nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.

“What Ms.Haley has declared mostly show her ignorance of the text of the [nuclear] agreement in all fields, about which she expressed her opinion,” Zarif said in an interview with the official news website of the Iranian administration, dolat.ir, published on Saturday.

He added that the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is a “completely clear and transparent” agreement, adding that the level of monitoring has been determined in it.

He said the JCPOA has been negotiated and written very precisely and has a complete framework with specified approaches in all fields.

Underlining the Islamic Republic’s stance, Zarif tweeted later on Saturday that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) certifies Iran’s commitment to the nuclear agreement according to the provisions and conditions outlined in the deal, “not the ulterior motives of US officials, nor of lobbyists.”

Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China plus Germany – signed the JCPOA on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16, 2016.

Under the nuclear agreement, Iran undertook to put limitations on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions against Tehran.

Speaking at a news conference in New York on August 25, Haley called on the IAEA to request access to Iranian military sites, in what is regarded as an attempt by Washington to undermine the JCPOA, which is a multilateral nuclear deal.

“We are encouraging the IAEA to use all the authorities they have and to pursue every angle possible with the JCPOA, and we will continue to support the IAEA in that process,” she said.

The IAEA is tasked with monitoring Iranian compliance with the deal, a basically technical matter that falls within the agency’s area of expertise. The IAEA has consistently verified that Iran has been in compliance since the start of the implementation of the deal.

In reaction to Haley’s comments, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on August 27 that the European countries of the P5+1 group must counter the US unilateral policies and said they should not allow any country to unilaterally undermine the JCPOA.  ……http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/09/02/533804/Iran-US-IAEA-JCPOA-Mohammad-Javad-Zarif-Nikki-Haley

September 4, 2017 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Trump is considering abandoning trade agreement with South Korea – (strange timing!)

Amid Nuclear Tensions, Trump Mulls Exit From South Korea Trade Deal, NYT,  By GLENN THRUSH and GARDINER HARRIS, SEPT. 2, 2017, WASHINGTON — President Trump is considering pulling out of a major trade agreement with South Korea as he tries to fulfill get-tough campaign pledges on international trade. But he has not yet made a final decision, two senior administration officials said Saturday.

The president’s top economic advisers remain deeply divided over a possible withdrawal from the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement, as negotiators from both countries struggle to rewrite the five-year-old deal.

The debate comes as the United States and South Korea are working together to try to combat a growing nuclear threat from North Korea, which said on Sunday that it had tested a hydrogen bomb that could be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile. It is a more powerful weapon than the atomic bomb it had tested in the past.

In recent days, a frustrated Mr. Trump has pushed his staff to take bold action against a host of governments, including the one in Seoul, that he has accused of unfair trade practices. But many of his more moderate advisers, including the chairman of the National Economic Council, Gary D. Cohn, believe that such a move could prompt a trade war that could hurt the United States economy…….

Scrapping the deal would also have profound geopolitical implications in the region, said Michael Green, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who oversaw issues on the Korean Peninsula during the administration of President George W. Bush.

“One of the big reasons we decided to go forward with the agreement was to demonstrate to the South Koreans, North Koreans and Chinese that the U.S. was committed to this relationship for the long haul,” Mr. Green said.

That the administration would even consider canceling the agreement in the midst of the North Korean missile and nuclear crisis is astonishing, Mr. Green said.

“It’s probably all theater, but it has negative strategic consequences as we try to manage the North Korean threat,” he said. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/world/asia/us-south-korea-trade.html

September 4, 2017 Posted by | politics international, South Korea, USA | Leave a comment

As USA and South Korea run mock bombing drill, Putin warns on futility of pressuring North Korea

Putin says putting pressure on North Korea is a ‘dead-end road’, By James Griffiths, CNN , 1 Sept 17 

Story highlights

  • US and South Korea conducted a mock bombing drill on the peninsula Thursday
  • North Korea described the exercise as a “rash act”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has weighed into the North Korea crisis, warning the US and others against going down a “dead-end road” and calling for talks to resolve the issue.
“Russia believes that the policy of putting pressure on Pyongyang to stop its nuclear missile program is misguided and futile,” Putin said in an article released Thursday by the Kremlin, ahead of the BRICS summit in Xiamen, China.
“The region’s problems should only be settled through a direct dialogue of all the parties concerned without any preconditions. Provocations, pressure and militarist and insulting rhetoric are a dead-end road,” Putin said.
His comments were published hours after the US and South Korea conducted a mock bombing raid on the Korean Peninsula that was denounced by Pyongyang as a “rash act.”
Russia was a participant in the six-party talks, which took place in the mid-2000s in an attempt to get North Korea to abandon its then burgeoning nuclear program.
In his published comments, the Russian president said the situation on the Korean Peninsula was “balancing on the brink of a large-scale conflict.”

‘Rash act’

On Thursday, four US F-35B fighter jets joined two US B-1B bombers and four South Korean F-15 fighter jets in a joint US-South Korean drill, which simulated a surgical strike on key enemy facilities, over the Pilsung Range in the eastern province of Gangwon, South Korea.
In a statement, US Pacific Command said the flyover was a “direct response” to North Korea’s launch Tuesday of an intermediate range ballistic missile over Japan.
Pyongyang denounced the drill Thursday, with state news agency KCNA described as “wild military acts.”…….

War games

South Korea and the United States are currently engaged in joint military exercises, which kicked off last week.
At a news conference Thursday, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying seemed to be referring to the largely simulated drills when she said the situation in the Korean Peninsula “is not like a movie script or computer game.”
The annual exercises always infuriate Pyongyang, and some have called for them to be called off or scaled back as a show of good faith that might bring North Korean leader Kim Jong Un back to the negotiating table…….

Show of force

In the wake of Tuesday’s missile launch, Pyongyang said it would stage future military operations directed at the American territory of Guam.
Guam has long been a focal point of North Korea’s anger against the US and is often a target of North Korean saber-rattling.
It was threatened specifically by North Korea in 2013 and again in August 2017, following a fiery exchange of threats and insults between Trump and the North Korean regime.
The small island in the Western Pacific is the closest US territory to North Korea and hosts two important US military installations.
One is Andersen Air Force Base, from which the US B-1B bombers flew Thursday. They were joined by F-35 fighters flying from a US Marines base in Iwakuni, Japan.
The F-35 stealth fighters would be a key part of any US pre-emptive strike on North Korea designed to neutralize the country’s defensive and counterstrike capabilities, Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told CNN earlier this month.
Corey Wallace, a security analyst at Freie University in Berlin, told CNN this week the use of the F-35s out of Japan showed the United States had various options for potentially striking North Korea.
“(Washington has) platforms from Guam and Japan linking up and operating together over South Korea with South Korean assets, with all of the governments supporting this,” he said.

CNN’s Taehoon Lee, Josh Berlinger, Karen Smith, Radina Gigova, Zachary Cohen and Brad Lendon contributed reporting.  http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/31/asia/putin-north-korea/index.html

September 2, 2017 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

France urges dialogue with North Korea

NORTH KOREA MISSILES COULD HIT U.S., EUROPE ‘WITHIN MONTHS’ IN NUCLEAR STRIKE, FRANCE SAYS, NewsWeek, BY JOSH LOWE ON 9/1/17 North Korea could have the ability to strike the U.S. and Europe with nuclear weapons within months, France’s foreign minister has warned.

Jean-Yves le Drian, in charge of foreign affairs in President Emmanuel Macron’s government, said that following a string of missile tests by Pyongyang and increasingly bellicose rhetoric, “We see a North Korea whose objective is to have missiles capable of transporting a nuclear weapon tomorrow,” according to Agence France-Presse.

The situation, le Drian said, is “extremely serious.” He urged North Korea to open new dialogue with other states in an attempt to defuse tensions and prevent nuclear conflict…..

China and Russia have both urged calm from all sides and suggested that U.S. military drills in the region may be provoking North Korea. The two countries have proposed that diplomatic talks resume, while missile tests in North Korea and joint military exercises by the U.S. and South Korea both be put on pause.

The U.N. Security Council has denounced Pyongyang’s latest tests and called for an end to its missile program.

Macron has previously warned against an “escalation” of tensions between the rogue state and its opponents.

In a statement, Macron expressed “concern at the ballistic and nuclear threat coming from North Korea,” saying the international community had to try to get Pyongyang to “resume the path of dialogue without conditions.” http://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-missiles-strike-us-europe-france-months-658311

September 2, 2017 Posted by | France, politics international | Leave a comment

Texas’ Secretary of State would rather have ‘their prayers’ than material help from Canada

Texas’ secretary of state turned down Quebec’s aid offer, asked for “prayers” instead   http://www.salon.com/2017/09/01/texas-secretary-of-state-turned-down-quebecs-aid-offer-asked-for-prayers-instead/  Hurricane Harvey is illustrating America’s tense international relationships, MATTHEW ROZSA, May God help Texas, because Canada sure won’t.

The Canadian province’s  Minister of International Relations, Christine St-Pierre, offered to send equipment, power crews, sleeping materials and hygenic products to Texas. But Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos turned down her offer and simply asked for “prayers from the people of Quebec.”

Hurricane Harvey has also had the incidental effect of shedding light on the newly complicated and tense relationships that America has with the rest of the world under President Donald Trump.

Mexico and Venezuela have both offered to help the United States despite facing hostility from the Trump administration, according to Politico. Mexico was insulted by Trump during the 2016 campaign when he said they sent rapists and drug dealers to the United States, and after taking office Trump later had an infamously tense conversation with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. Venezuela on the other hand has been the subject of harsh sanctions by the Trump administration.

They aren’t alone among nations alienated by Trump who are coming to America in its time of need. For instance, the European Union has shared its satellite mapping with emergency responders, even though Trump has created tension in America’s relationship with Europe due to his harsh criticisms of NATO.

All of this is well and good, but as Hoover Institution visiting fellow Markos Kounalakis told Politico, “Foreign governments are holding back, and that hasn’t been the case historically. They appear to be much more cautious, whether it’s for domestic political reasons or displeasure with President Trump. Do they want to be seen as helping Trump?”

Texas and Quebec have a close relationship thanks to both trade and the aerospace industry, and despite Pablos’ response, St-Pierre still said of Texas, “They are our friends, this is what friendship means.” As America is learning, however, those bonds of friendship may not be as strong as they used to be.   Matthew Rozsa is a breaking news writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and his work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.

September 2, 2017 Posted by | Canada, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

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