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Top Armed Services Dem: Russia, China ‘Spectacularly Disingenuous’ on North Korea

July 5, 2017

Top Armed Services Dem: Russia, China ‘Spectacularly Disingenuous’ on North Korea, PJ Media, Bridget Johnson, July 5, 2017

(Please see also, North Korean Missiles Reaching USA. President Trump seems to have decided that joint action with China and Russia won’t work and that unilateral action by America will be needed. — DM)

South Korean army K-1 tanks move during the annual exercise in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea, on July 5, 2017. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

China and Russia issued a joint statement calling Pyongyang’s ICBM test “unacceptable.”

“The two sides propose that the DPRK (North Korea) as a voluntary political decision declares a moratorium on testing nuclear explosive devices and ballistic rocket launches, and the US and South Korea refrain from carrying out large-scale joint exercises,” the statement said. “Parallel to this, the opposing sides should start negotiations and affirm general principles of their relations including the non-use of force, rejection of aggression and peaceful co-existence.”

“Neither one of them is doing a darn thing to stop North Korea. And they want to use it as an excuse to push us out of the region,” he added. “What we have to make clear to them is it’s going to have the exact opposite effect. Once North Korea is able to threaten us and even now, as they threaten our allies, we have to be in there to protect our own interests. 

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The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee declared this morning that the “threat from North Korea, regrettably, is not going to be removed” by the “global action” proposed by the Trump administration to curb Kim Jong-un’s behavior.

Pyongyang said Tuesday that it successfully test-fired Hwasong-14, a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile. According to Chosun Ilbo in South Korea, state TV in the North declared the regime “a full-fledged nuclear power… possessed of the most powerful intercontinental-ballistic rocket capable of hitting any part of the world.”

Kim reportedly watched the launch at the scene. The missile, said to be capable of reaching Alaska or Hawaii, flew for 39 minutes before hitting open waters.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a statement Tuesday evening condemning the July Fourth launch. “Testing an ICBM represents a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region, and the world,” he said. “Global action is required to stop a global threat.”

“Any country that hosts North Korean guest workers, provides any economic or military benefits, or fails to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions is aiding and abetting a dangerous regime. All nations should publicly demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to their pursuit of nuclear weapons. We intend to bring North Korea’s provocative action before the UN Security Council and enact stronger measures to hold the DPRK accountable,” Tillerson continued.

“The United States seeks only the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the end of threatening actions by North Korea. As we, along with others, have made clear, we will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.”

President Trump and his national security team “are continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our allies and partners,” he added.

Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) doubted that Tillerson’s vow would put pressure on North Korea.

“If there is an idea floating around out there for how we can remove that threat, I’m open to it. But we have been circling around this discussion of what we want China to do and what we want sanctions to do and all these other different pieces,” Smith said. “The bottom line is, what we need against North Korea, we need to put the best economic sanctions we can. I think it’s perfectly appropriate for the secretary of state to try to put pressure on other nations to do the same. But the most important thing we need is a credible military deterrent, so that whatever North Korea does in terms of building a missile, they know that if they act against South Korea or against Japan or against us, we will obliterate them.”

“That’s why THAAD [missile defense system] is important. That is why our alliance with South Korea and Japan is important, to have that credible military force, because what’s been proven — and all of the options have been discussed with your previous guests — is that North Korea is going to do it. They want to build nuclear weapons. They want to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile. And short of an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula, we don’t really have an option for stopping them.”

China and Russia issued a joint statement calling Pyongyang’s ICBM test “unacceptable.”

“The two sides propose that the DPRK (North Korea) as a voluntary political decision declares a moratorium on testing nuclear explosive devices and ballistic rocket launches, and the US and South Korea refrain from carrying out large-scale joint exercises,” the statement said. “Parallel to this, the opposing sides should start negotiations and affirm general principles of their relations including the non-use of force, rejection of aggression and peaceful co-existence.”

Smith slammed the statement as “spectacularly disingenuous.”

“Neither one of them is doing a darn thing to stop North Korea. And they want to use it as an excuse to push us out of the region,” he added. “What we have to make clear to them is it’s going to have the exact opposite effect. Once North Korea is able to threaten us and even now, as they threaten our allies, we have to be in there to protect our own interests. China’s not acting against North Korea. And the reason they’re not acting against North Korea is, they don’t want to cut off North Korea’s economic aid. They don’t want North Korea to collapse because they don’t want millions of North Korean refugees pouring across their border. They’re not happy that North Korea is causing such instability in the region, but the alternative of them trying to crush the regime somehow is something they’re not willing to do, and they haven’t been willing to do it through four administrations. So, we need a credible military deterrent, and that is our only option.”

Smith noted that Kim’s actions have been “all about ensuring regime survival,” as he’s “looked at Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya, and they feel that unless they have a nuclear weapon and a credible deterrent of their own, that their regime is in jeopardy.”

“So, all the economic sanctions, all that needs to be done. But understand what I’m saying here. As you have discussed, there is not a good military option,” he said. “Thinking that we can preemptively go in there and somehow take out their capabilities, whatever we do leads to a massive war in the Korean Peninsula… we need our THAAD system in the region. We need a system to give us a shot at shooting down that missile if they decide to launch it. And then we also need a clear diplomatic policy that we will destroy them.”

After the THAAD system was installed in South Korea, Trump said Seoul should fork over a billion dollars for the missile defense. New South Korean President Moon Jae-in recently suspended further THAAD deployment pending a review of the program.

Smith stressed that Russia and China must “stop screwing around.”

“If you guys really want us to be less involved in the region, then you have got to figure out a way to control North Korea,” he said. “Now, I don’t think they’re going to do that. But that means that we have to stay active in the region.”

Categories: China and North Korea, North Korea - negotiations, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Russia and North Korea, South Korea, THAAD, Trump and North Korea
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North Korean Missiles Reaching USA

July 5, 2017

North Korean Missiles Reaching USA, Front Page Magazine, Matthew Vadum, July 5, 2017

(Peace talks have failed and the leftist view seems to be “if at first you don’t succeed try the same thing again.” President Trump does not agree and is no longer willing to rely on China. He recently tweeted, “Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us – but we had to give it a try!” Please see also, Trump Hits China Over Trade Relationship With North Korea. If, as is now apparent, China wants more fruitless negotiations, it’s time to employ our military resources to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities. An EMP attack could be effective.– DM)

But Americans are finally being disabused of left-wing arms control fantasies, and fortunately, after eight years of dithering and appeasement, we now have a president who actually wants to defend the country from external threats.

And alongside President Trump there are serious adults in the White House and Foggy Bottom willing to respond with an appropriate show of force to the latest provocation from Pyongyang and take other necessary action.

Pentagon spokesman Dana White said “we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies and to use the full range of capabilities at our disposal against the growing threat from North Korea.”

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Less than six months into Donald Trump’s presidency America has awakened to the nightmare of a North Korea armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles that the Trump administration says are capable of reaching Alaska.

U.S., South Korean, and Japanese officials say the North Korean Hwasong-14 ICBM flew approximately 580 miles in 40 minutes and achieved an altitude of 1,500 miles, besting previously reported North Korean test results. North Korea’s successful but unexpected test is a sobering reminder of how urgently the United States needs to ramp up its antiballistic missile program after years of reckless military downsizing by the Obama administration.

The North Korean launch was “the big story we have all been waiting for,” Professor Bruce Bechtol of Angelo State University in Texas told Fox News on Tuesday. “All of the paradigms have changed. It is now time to see what action the USA will take.”

The missile was apparently launched from a mobile launcher, which “nearly destroys our warning time and also means that the North Koreans have a real shot at launching this system at us without us being able to destroy it on the ground.”

North Korea also carried out a successful ballistic missile test on May 14, and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency conducted its first successful interception of an ICBM on May 30. A long-range ground-based interceptor missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California hit and destroyed the ICBM launched from the U.S. Army’s Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

This idea of missile defense, oft-compared to trying to shoot a bullet with another bullet, grew out of President Reagan’s Strategic Defensive Initiative (SDI), derided by left-wingers at the time and for years after as “Star Wars.” Unsurprisingly, Barack Obama used to scoff at the idea that a missile could take out another missile.

Meanwhile, Monday evening after news of the successful Hwasong-14 ICBM test broke, President Trump took to Twitter.

North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!

Apparently, “this guy” refers to dictator Kim Jong-un. Communist China has been propping up Kim’s dictatorship for years. The Trump administration wants China to push its North Korean ally harder to scrap its nuclear weapons program.

During Independence Day remarks at a picnic for military families on the South Lawn of the White House Trump did not refer to North Korea’s activities but said, “we do have challenges, but we will handle those challenges. Believe me.”

How did we get to this dangerous juncture in world affairs?

Blame the Left. After all, it’s not rocket science.

While left-wingers in Washington were busy reaching out to Islamofascists and projecting American weakness on the international scene over the eight long years of Barack Obama’s presidency, Kim Jong-il and his heir Kim Jong-un were busy transforming their Stalinist hellhole of a country into a nuclear power. They were aided not just by the permissive Obama administration, which did more or less nothing to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, but also years earlier by the enabling Clinton administration.

In 1994 Bill Clinton unveiled an agreement between the U.S. and North Korea that he claimed would achieve “an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula.” Under the deal, North Korea “agreed to freeze its existing nuclear program and to accept international inspection of all existing facilities,” Clinton said at the time. The pact “is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world.”

But Americans are finally being disabused of left-wing arms control fantasies, and fortunately, after eight years of dithering and appeasement, we now have a president who actually wants to defend the country from external threats.

And alongside President Trump there are serious adults in the White House and Foggy Bottom willing to respond with an appropriate show of force to the latest provocation from Pyongyang and take other necessary action.

While American and South Korean forces conducted joint ballistic missile drills following the North’s ICBM test, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said yesterday that the U.S. government would “never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.” He urged countries around the world to fully enforce UN sanctions against the rogue nation, saying “global action is required to stop a global threat.”

Pentagon spokesman Dana White said “we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies and to use the full range of capabilities at our disposal against the growing threat from North Korea.”

The UN Security Council may convene an emergency meeting as soon as today. On Twitter, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley demonstrated her exasperation at having to devote her Independence Day holiday to emergency consultations by using the hashtag “#ThanksNorthKorea.”

Haley doesn’t have it quite right. If she wants to sarcastically “thank” anybody for the North Korean ICBM test, she should be “thanking” Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, whose suspect policies helped a pariah nation join the nuclear club.

Categories: China and North Korea, North Korea - negotiations, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Trump and China, Trump and North Korea
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Hmm: China’s National Oil Firm Cuts Off North Korea

June 28, 2017

Hmm: China’s National Oil Firm Cuts Off North Korea, Hot Air, Ed Morrissey, June 28, 2017

Beijing had already cut off coal imports from North Korea, depriving Kim of income that could have been used to pay for the fuel. It looks like a squeeze, one that may be picking up in intensity, and one that sends a direct message to North Korea’s military leaders, who will understand only too well what a fuel embargo will do to their readiness posture. It won’t take much more for the situation to reach critical mass on the Korean peninsula.

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Has North Korea run out of credit with China, or has Beijing finally run out of patience with Pyongyang? China’s state-run petroleum operation has cut off fuel sales to rogue nation, Reuters reports, ostensibly due to a lack of payment. However, it’s no secret that the Trump administration has put a lot of pressure on Beijing to get tougher with the Kim regime, and a fuel cutoff will hit Kim Jong-un where he’s most vulnerable:

China National Petroleum Corp has suspended sales of fuel to North Korea over concerns the state-owned oil company won’t get paid, as pressure mounts on Pyongyang to rein in its nuclear and missile programmes, three sources told Reuters.

It’s unclear how long the suspension will last. A prolonged cut would threaten critical supplies of fuel and force North Korea to find alternatives to its main supplier of diesel and gasoline, as scrutiny of China’s close commercial ties with its increasingly isolated neighbour intensifies.

North Korea needs the fuel not just for its farmers and shipping, but also for its military. That presents a particularly difficult problem for Pyongyang’s leaders, who already operate in a crisis-shortage environment. Kim can’t afford to cut back on military supplies, not with all of the saber rattling taking place at the moment, which means he’ll have to starve the rest of the country of fuel resources, which will hamper food production and distribution even further. It will ratchet up internal tension, and it might get worse if military needs can’t be satisfied.

CNPC won’t sell the fuel on credit, Reuters’ Chen Aizhu notes, which means that Pyongyang is having trouble coming up with hard currency. Aizhu’s source says the issue came up over “the last month or two,” and that timing is intriguing. Four months ago, Kim ordered a bizarre assassination of his older brother Kim Jong-nam, using VX nerve agent in the airport of Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur.  The target and especially the weapon made it clear who ordered the hit, and Malaysia — one of the few nations willing to do business with North Korea — cut off diplomatic and economic ties to Pyongyang, which set off a round of hostage-taking by the Kim regime. Malaysia had been a key partner in avoiding international sanctions and a vital link to hard currency for Pyongyang until the assassination. If North Korea has had trouble paying for diesel and gasoline over the last couple of months, it might signal that Pyongyang has no more options for avoiding sanctions and that its economic back is against the wall, so to speak.

Aizhu’s sources say that this was a “commercial decision,” but nothing’s that simple in China. Beijing had already cut off coal imports from North Korea, depriving Kim of income that could have been used to pay for the fuel. It looks like a squeeze, one that may be picking up in intensity, and one that sends a direct message to North Korea’s military leaders, who will understand only too well what a fuel embargo will do to their readiness posture. It won’t take much more for the situation to reach critical mass on the Korean peninsula.

Categories: China and North Korea, China fuel cut-off to North Korea, North Korea sanctions, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Trump and China, Trump and North Korea
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Spotlight: China, U.S. reach consensus at high-level security dialogue

June 24, 2017

Spotlight: China, U.S. reach consensus at high-level security dialogue, XinhuaNet, June 24, 2017

(The words sound friendly, but what do we get at what cost? — DM)

Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi (1st R) co-chairs a diplomatic and security dialogue with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (1st L) and Secretary of Defense James Mattis (2nd L) as Fang Fenghui (2nd R), a member of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and chief of the CMC Joint Staff Department, also participates in the dialogue in Washington D.C., the United States, on June 21, 2017. China and the United States began their first diplomatic and security dialogue on Wednesday at the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C. (Xinhua/Yin bogu)

At the dialogue, China the United States agreed to work closely on the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear issue.

Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to achieving the goal of “complete, verifiable and irreversible” denuclearization on the Peninsula.

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WASHINGTON, June 23 (Xinhua) — China and the United States reached an important consensus on the development of bilateral relations and security issues at a high-level dialogue held Wednesday in the U.S. capital of Washington D.C.

The First Round of China-U.S. Diplomatic and Security Dialogue, which was described by both sides as “constructive” and “fruitful,” represents a major step in implementing the consensus reached by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump during their meeting in Florida in April.

Looking ahead, the two sides pledged to expand mutually-beneficial cooperation and manage differences on the basis of mutual respect, all in a bid to promote the steady development of China-U.S. relations in the long term.

FREQUENT DIALOGUES

Following Wednesday’s dialogue, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said such talks “provide an opportunity to consider how we’re going to engage and how we’re going to live with one another over the next 40 years.

“The action items we have agreed upon today have set a foundation for additional areas of cooperation and we look forward to our next interaction at this level and between our two presidents,” said the top U.S. diplomat.

Emphasizing the importance of high-level exchanges, China and the United States expressed their willingness to achieve a positive outcome for the Hamburg meeting between the two Presidents in July and Trump’s state visit to China later this year.

Meeting with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi at the White House on Thursday, Trump said he looked forward to meeting with Xi in Hamburg and visiting China. He also hoped that these high-level interactions will further promote the development of U.S.-China relations.

PRODUCTIVE MILITARY RELATIONSHIP

Fang Fenghui, a member of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and chief of the CMC Joint Staff Department, participated in the dialogue co-chaired by Yang, Tillerson and U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

At the dialogue, China and the United States recognized that their military-to-military relationship is an important component in the bilateral ties. The two sides agreed that the relationship between the militaries of the two powers should be “constructive, pragmatic, and effective,” according to a statement released Friday.

China and the United States are committed to implementing the annual military exchange program and enhancing high-level engagements, starting with the visits between the two defense ministers and the visit of the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to China as soon as possible.

The two sides also “reaffirm the importance of building mutual understanding, and of reducing the risk of miscalculation between our two militaries,” said the statement.

MAINTAINING COORDINATION ON KOREAN PENINSULAR ISSUE

At the dialogue, China the United States agreed to work closely on the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear issue.

Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to achieving the goal of “complete, verifiable and irreversible” denuclearization on the Peninsula.

“The two sides are ready to continue their efforts to this end, including by fully and strictly implementing relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions, and by promoting relevant dialogue and negotiation,” said the statement.

The two countries also reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining peace and stability on the Peninsula, according to the statement.

Categories: China, China and North Korea, China and Trump's America, North Korea sanctions, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Trump agenda, Trump and China, Trump and North Korea
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John Bolton: Trump ‘in the Right Place’ on North Korea, but State Dept. Continues 25 Years of Failed Policy

June 23, 2017

John Bolton: Trump ‘in the Right Place’ on North Korea, but State Dept. Continues 25 Years of Failed Policy, Breitbart, John Hayward, June 23, 2017

(Reunification of North and South Korea would be very expensive for South Korea and may not be as appealing to South Korea as it once was. China is very much opposed because it perceives — wrongly in my view — a unified Korea on its border as a threat. How about unification of North Korea and China instead? — DM)

“We’ve tried that for 25 years with respect to the nuclear program. It has had no effect. I don’t think you can change the behavior of the North Korean regime because I don’t think you can change its character,” he said.

“That, to me, is why the only real solution to eliminate the nuclear threat, to stop this treatment of both foreigners and their own citizens, to give the people of North Korea a chance for a decent life, you have to end the regime. My own view is you reunite North and South Korea. The U.S. has to persuade China it’s in their interests to do it. It’s a heavy lift. I acknowledge that. But otherwise, we just keep doing what we’ve done ever since this regime was formed shortly after World War II. It only respects force, and nobody wants to see use of force on the Korean peninsula today, with its potentially tragic consequences,” said Bolton.

“The State Department can keep doing what it’s done unsuccessfully for 25 years. Year 26 is going to be exactly the same. I think we’ve got to try something very, very different. If we don’t, we’re going to get the same result,” he cautioned.

Bolton said he thinks President Trump himself is “in the right place on this.”

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On Friday’s Breitbart News Daily, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton talked about the death of American student Otto Warmbier, recently released from more than a year of captivity in North Korea, most of which he spent in a coma. He also discussed what Warmbier’s death means for America’s North Korea policy moving forward. Bolton then looked at the one-year anniversary of the Brexit vote and U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“It’s obviously a personal tragedy,” Bolton told SiriusXM host Alex Marlow. “Here’s a perfectly healthy young man, goes to North Korea, and comes back and dies a few days later. Obviously, we are all feeling for his family and his friends.”

“But I think for the United States as a whole, the lesson here is about the character of the North Korean regime: that they’re so barbaric, that even if you take everything they say as true, that Otto Warmbier stole a political poster – you know, that’s what college kids do. Slap him on the wrist, put him in jail for a day, kick him out of the country. That’s what civilized countries do, but not North Korea,” he said.

“Not only did they brutalize him; they lied about it consistently for a year-and-a-half,” he noted. “They’re still holding three other Americans. They have a long history of kidnapping South Korean and Japanese citizens over the past several decades. This is the way they treat foreigners. They run a 25-million-person prison camp in their own country, under just horribly primitive conditions for most citizens. And they’re pursuing deliverable nuclear weapons and appear to be pretty close to achieving that.”

“This is not a regime that you can reason with in the same sense Americans think of that term,” Bolton contended. “They may be rational in terms of the regime in North Korea, but it’s not rational in our terms. That’s why I’m somewhat distressed with the Trump administration reaction, or at least the State Department reaction of saying, ‘Well, we’re just going to apply more pressure on North Korea to get them to change their behavior.’”

“We’ve tried that for 25 years with respect to the nuclear program. It has had no effect. I don’t think you can change the behavior of the North Korean regime because I don’t think you can change its character,” he said.

“That, to me, is why the only real solution to eliminate the nuclear threat, to stop this treatment of both foreigners and their own citizens, to give the people of North Korea a chance for a decent life, you have to end the regime. My own view is you reunite North and South Korea. The U.S. has to persuade China it’s in their interests to do it. It’s a heavy lift. I acknowledge that. But otherwise, we just keep doing what we’ve done ever since this regime was formed shortly after World War II. It only respects force, and nobody wants to see use of force on the Korean peninsula today, with its potentially tragic consequences,” said Bolton.

“The State Department can keep doing what it’s done unsuccessfully for 25 years. Year 26 is going to be exactly the same. I think we’ve got to try something very, very different. If we don’t, we’re going to get the same result,” he cautioned.

Bolton said he thinks President Trump himself is “in the right place on this.”

“I think he, as much as anybody – maybe more than anybody in his administration – understands the danger of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program,” Bolton added. I think he understands and said publicly what a terrible treatment Otto Warmbier received. It should never happen to anybody and shouldn’t happen again.”

“He’s just tweeted a few days ago he doesn’t think China has delivered on the commitments Xi Jinping made when he was here in the United States at the Mar-a-Lago summit. What Trump said then, what he’s implied in the tweet, is that China’s jiving us again – as they have been on North Korea for 25 years, and the United States will have to solve this on its own,” he said.

“The question is whether the bureaucracy responds to the president. At this point, I don’t see it, unfortunately. I don’t rule it out. Obviously, things could be happening that are not public yet. But I think the president’s in one place, and the bureaucracy is in another. The bureaucracy’s in the same place on North Korea it has been for 25 years. It just doesn’t change,” he lamented.

Bolton’s policy recommendations for North Korea included restoring “all of the sanctions previously imposed on North Korea.”

“I would correct the Bush administration’s…one of Condi Rice’s worst mistakes is taking North Korea off our list of state sponsors of terrorism. I would put them right back on that list. They’re not only state sponsors, they are terrorists themselves, given this treatment of Otto Warmbier and many others, American and non-American alike,” he declared.

“I’d put the pressure on, no doubt about it, but I think we’ve got to be realistic: it’s not going to work. It’s not going to change their behavior. They’ll find ways to evade it. Sanctions have been evaded by the North Koreans successfully with the help of China and Russia for decades. We’ve got to have a very straight talk with China about reunification, and if that doesn’t work, then our options are limited and unattractive,” Bolton warned.

Marlow turned to Britain’s exit from the European Union, which reached its one-year anniversary on Friday. He noted that very little progress has been made during the past year.

“It’s disappointing, I must say,” Bolton agreed. “It’s due to several factors. It’s due to the fact that, obviously, David Cameron had to be replaced as prime minister. I think the supporters of leaving the European Union in the Conservative Party hoped to get a champion of the Leave position in as prime minister. That didn’t happen, although Theresa May seemed to be prepared to negotiate for a hard Brexit if necessary. But then she called this snap election, and it seemed like a brilliant move at the time, but it’s resulted in the Conservative Party actually losing seats in the House of Commons, so they’re in disarray.”

“I think it’s going to be hard for Theresa May to survive politically, so you’ve had this turmoil in domestic politics that’s gotten in the way of negotiations,” he said. “I think that those who advocated Leave just need to grit their teeth and continue on because the decision to leave was then, and is today, the right decision for Britain.”

“The elites, the high-minded in Europe and in Britain and in America, all think that they should reverse their decision. That’s not going to happen. People need to get used to that,” he said.

“I think President Trump said some time ago he wanted to step up and establish a bilateral trade relationship between the U.S. and a U.K. no longer in the E.U. I think we should be moving ahead on that,” Bolton advised. “There are certain constraints the Brits face, but we can lay out the big principles so that businesses and financial services institutions on both sides of the Atlantic know what’s coming. I think it’s a win-win for the U.S. and the U.K., and I hope we pay more attention to that.”

“As hard and as unproductive as the past year has been, the fundamental decision remains correct. They just need to fight through it,” he said.

Marlow observed that the hard British left has been working out an alliance with Islamists. “It seems like the encroaching Islamist philosophies of Islamism are becoming much more prevalent and more accepted, and it seems like the priorities of the folks in the Jeremy Corbyn wing of British politics seem to be getting a much more powerful voice than I was anticipating,” he said.

“I must say, within the Labor party in Britain, the only religion that seems to be favored is Islam,” Bolton replied. “Christianity, Judaism are old-fashioned. The levels of anti-Semitism in the Labor party are at historically high levels. I think it has to do with their ideology. I think that this self-segregation, this unwillingness to join the broader U.K. culture, is a huge potential problem.”

“You know, none of the European countries have the concept of the melting pot the way we do in the United States, where people come from all over the world and get into the melting pot and emerge as Americans,” he pointed out. “It’s a huge strength of the United States. It’s why we’ve been a draw for people from all over the world forever. They understand that when they come here, they’re going to do something very different in their lives. They’re going to join a nation that is unique in the world, founded on an idea, and they change.”

“When we’ve seen in recent years people coming to this country who don’t want to get into the melting pot, who don’t want to be Americanized – they don’t even like that word; I think it’s a word we should use more often – it’s a problem for us,” he added.

“The Brits are the closest of the European countries to having that ability, but it’s been failing them for a number of years. It doesn’t work at all on the continent of Europe itself. I think this split within society, this view that some can live under sharia law, everybody else will live under the regular English legal system, is the beginning of the end of the democratic society. I don’t want to be apocalyptic about it, but I think that’s the direction it’s moving in,” Bolton said.

“The Europeans are in the midst of a decision whether they understand it or not, given the hundreds of thousands – indeed, millions – of refugees and migrants that are coming from North Africa and the Middle East,” he contended. “This is a process that’s been in play for a long time. Maybe they don’t care so much about their cultural identity. That’s their choice to make, if they want to lose it. But there are demographic trends at play here that could foreshadow a very different Europe by the end of this century. If they don’t insist on integration into the broader society, then it won’t happen.”

“In the United States, people have come here historically because they want to become Americans. They want to shed some of the baggage of the countries they’re leaving from. To the extent we suffer from that same European problem, we will have the same issues here – maybe a little bit later than the Europeans, but inevitably, we will face the same problems,” he predicted.

“I think it’s emblematic of this unwillingness to deal with this issue that you’re seeing almost daily acts of terrorism across Europe. It hasn’t happened here yet, but we’re beginning to see that pattern, and I think it’s only going to get worse,” said Bolton.

Marlow asked for Bolton’s view of the visit by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to the Middle East and the persistent issue of Palestinian payments to the families of suicide bombers, blatantly encouraging violence in a way that makes talk of a “peace process” farcical.

Bolton agreed these payments to the families of terrorists are “a very significant issue.”

“Secretary of State Tillerson testified – I think it’s about two weeks ago now – that the Palestinian Authority said it wasn’t going to make such payments anymore,” he recalled. “The next day, the government of Israel said that’s not true; it’s still going on.”

“You’ve got a fundamentally different perspective on many, many things in that region,” he said. “I think Jared Kushner, I think the president himself, are approaching this in good faith with a good heart. They want to see what they can do. I’ve believed for some time, however, that the two-state solution has run into a dead end. It’s not going to work. It’s not doable. The Palestinian Authority doesn’t have the legitimacy or the capability of making commitments and then carrying them out. I think you’ve got to look at something radically different.”

“I just have to say, as my honest diplomatic and political assessment, repeating the Middle East peace process as we’ve known it this past forty or fifty years, the idea of a two-state solution, isn’t going to go anywhere,” Bolton concluded.

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Analysts Sound New Alarms on North Korea Missile Threat

May 31, 2017

Analysts Sound New Alarms on North Korea Missile Threat, Gatestone Institute, Peter Huessy, May 31, 2017

(What about the Iran – North Korea nexus? — DM)

The news media and independent experts have pointed out that North Korea’s ICBMs could reach Alaska, Hawaii or even the Pacific Northwest. But these missiles are said to have a range of 10,000 kilometers, which means they would hit Missouri, or 40 percent of the continental United States, said Klingner. “After they did the successful launch last year, now the estimate is probably 13,000 kilometers, which is all the way down to Miami, the entire continental U.S.”

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The North Koreans now have the range capability to strike the United States with a ballistic missile. “It is a matter of physics and math.” — USAF General John Hyten, Commander of United States Strategic Command, May 9, 2017.

“A major headache for the United States is that much of the financial and technological support for North Korea’s weapons programs comes from China.” — Joseph Bosco, Senior Fellow at the ICAS Institute for Korea-American studies.

North Korea just conducted its seventh missile test launch so far this year. No one should expect this activity to cease, and no one should be surprised by North Korea’s progressively more advanced weapons capabilities, analysts said at a recent Mitchell Institute forum on Capitol Hill, hosted by the author.

“During Kim Jung Un’s five years in power he has done twice, perhaps three times, as many launches of missiles as his father did in 18 years,” said Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

The North Korean dictator is not showing any signs of slowing down, and he is determined to push forward the country’s program to enhance the medium and long-range missiles and nuclear warheads that now threaten the United States and its allies.

Klingner estimates that North Korea has 16 to 20 nuclear weapons. “And then, of course, the question or the debate is how far along they are,” he said. “I think it is pretty clear they’ve weaponized and miniaturized the warhead, that right now the Nodong medium-range ballistic missile is already nuclear capable.” This means U.S. allies Japan and South Korea are under a nuclear threat today, he stressed. “It is not theoretical, it is not several years in the future as some analysts or experts will tell you.”

The threats posed by North Korea are wide ranging, Klingner noted. “They’ve got, we estimate, 5,000 tons of chemical warfare agents.” And it has a sophisticated army of cyber warriors. “They are, perhaps, in the top five or top three countries in the world for cyber attack capabilities.”

Missile attacks are, it seems, what worries U.S. policy makers the most. A rising concern are submarine-launched ballistic missiles because of the immediate risk they create for South Korea. “The North Korean subs can come out on the east or west coast and threaten South Korea,” Klingner said.

North Korea successfully tested a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile last year, and they “flew it to an unusually high trajectory,” he said. “Had they lowered the trajectory and fired it for effect, the estimates are it could have ranged Guam. So that’s a new threat to a key node for the U.S. defense of the Pacific.”

Keeping U.S. officials up at night is the possibility of an ICBM launch. North Korea has developed several systems. One of its most advanced systems is a space launch vehicle, Klingner said. “But it’s the same technologies you would need to fire off an ICBM warhead.”

As USAF General John Hyten, Commander of United States Strategic Command, said on May 9th at a Strategic Deterrent Coalition nuclear symposium, that the North Koreans now have the range capability to strike the United States with a ballistic missile. “It is a matter of physics and math” he explained.

The news media and independent experts have pointed out that North Korea’s ICBMs could reach Alaska, Hawaii or even the Pacific Northwest. But these missiles are said to have a range of 10,000 kilometers, which means they would hit Missouri, or 40 percent of the continental United States, said Klingner. “After they did the successful launch last year, now the estimate is probably 13,000 kilometers, which is all the way down to Miami, the entire continental U.S.”

Another cause for alarm is the number of rocket engine tests, he said. “They took the first stage of a solid fuel ICBM, to see if it works.” Rocket scientists, just by looking at the photos, were able to say that they’re using two engines, which are better than the ones U.S. experts thought they were using. By the size and shape and color of the exhaust plume, analysts concluded, the North Koreans are “using a much-improved propellant than we thought.”

At the same forum, Joseph Bosco, a Senior Fellow at the ICAS Institute for Korea-American studies, noted “A major headache for the United States is that much of the financial and technological support for North Korea’s weapons programs comes from China”.

“Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” Bosco further explained, “North Korea began its program to develop nuclear weapons. China provided the necessary startup technology through the A.Q. Khan network in Pakistan….Today China accounts for 90% of North Korean trade with the outside world. Let’s face it, China keeps the Kim regime afloat, alive and well, and capable of continuing to invest in advancing it’s nuclear and missile programs.” Bosco said. “There is significant evidence that it directly facilitates the ongoing nuclear and missile programs through China’s banking system and the use of Chinese ports and airports for the trans-shipment of prohibited North Korean parts and technologies.”

Bosco further said that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2012 that China was irrefutably providing advanced technology for North Korea’s ballistic missile program.

“It has been clear for 60 years that the sole cause of tension and instability between the Koreas has been Pyongyang’s own bizarre and dangerous behavior. Despite substantial aid and concessions from an accommodating South Korean government, China alone has the power to change that.”

Klingner said it remains to be seen how the Trump administration deals with these foreign policy predicaments. “When I’ve talked to folks in the administration they have described the policy as a heavy emphasis on sanctions and pressure and targeted financial measures.” The administration also apparently wants to augment ballistic missile defense and has indicated a “willingness to have our diplomats talk with their diplomats,” Klingner said. “The door has always been open, but it is North Korea that repeatedly closes the door.”

As Bosco emphasized, it is China that has to come clean.

It is also evidently China that has created a neighboring Frankenstein monster that keeps escaping from its nuclear laboratory. Reining-in North Korea is possible, but without strong Chinese economic and military pressure, which the Chinese seem loath to give, the North Korean nuclear challenge may be insurmountable.

A model of the North Korean Unha-9 long-range rocket on display at a floral exhibition in Pyongyang. (Image source: Steve Herman/VOA News/Wikimedia Commons)

Dr. Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, and was the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation for more than 20 years.

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Waiting for North Korea’s Next Nuclear Test

May 28, 2017

Waiting for North Korea’s Next Nuclear Test, PJMedia, Claudia Rosett, May 27, 2017

(To the extent that history is a good predictor of the future, more sanctions — even if enforced briefly — won’t work. Regime change, maybe. But how can we find a suitable replacement for Kim Chi-un Kim Jong-un? Has the recent high-level defector been asked? It would be stupid to let the Norks know whether he has been and, even worse, what, if anything, he said because anyone he suggested would be killed. No matter how much the leakers and media would like to know, secrecy is absolutely necessary. –DM)

In this undated photo distributed by the North Korean government Monday, May 22, 2017, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the test launch of a solid-fuel “Pukguksong-2” at an undisclosed location in North Korea. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

The threats from North Korea keep rising — not only its nuclear program, but such matters as its cyber warfare projects, plus the example Pyongyang continues to set of how a malign and predatory tyranny can survive by arming itself with the world’s most destructive weapons and threatening liberally to use them. We should have no doubt that Iran and others are taking notes.

What’s certain is this: None of this will be resolved by America writing off regime change as the real goal in Pyongyang while waiting to respond with another stack of UN sanctions, however neatly pre-negotiated, to North Korea’s next nuclear test.

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Just last month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the United Nations Security Council that the era of letting North Korea call the shots was over. Commenting on a record in which North Korea has carried out five nuclear tests since 2006, two of them just last year, Tillerson said: “For too long the international community has been reactive in addressing North Korea.” He added, “Those days must come to an end. Failing to act now on the most pressing security issue in the world may bring catastrophic consequences.”

Yet here we are, with Reuters reporting, based on a news conference held Friday in Beijing by senior State Department official Susan Thornton, that the U.S. is “looking at discussing with China a new Security Council resolution on pre-negotiated measures to reduce delays in any response to further nuclear tests or other provocations from the North.”

In other words, the U.S. is waiting to react to North Korea’s next nuclear test, which North Korean officials have already threatened to carry out, and for which preparations have been visibly underway.

With the variation that the diplomatic response (providing China agrees) would be “pre-negotiated,” this sounds disturbingly similar to the ritual that President Obama’s administration dolled up under the fatuous label of “strategic patience.” The result, on Obama’s watch, was that North Korea carried out four of its five nuclear tests to date, and accelerated its missile program to include over the past three years — as The Wall Street Journal reported recently — the launches of “more major missiles than in the three previous decades combined.”

The Obama ritual went like this: North Korea would carry out a forbidden nuclear test (in 2009, 2013, and two in 2016). The U.S. would turn to the UN Security Council, which after a period of closed-door wrangling would respond by approving yet another sanctions resolution, which would then be advertised by the U.S. as tough… tougher… toughest. Whatever.

Recall America’s former ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, declaring after the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2270 in March 2016 (in response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test) that “this resolution is so comprehensive, there are many provisions that leave no gap, no window.” That resolution was followed last September by North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, to which the UN responded by adding to the gapless, windowless sanctions resolution #2270 the even more gapless and windowless resolution #2321.

One might reasonably ask: Why reserve all those ever tougher sanctions for North Korea’s next nuclear test, or the one after that? If gapless, windowless sanctions have yet more holes that need plugging, why not do it all now?

If I might hazard a guess, the obstacle is not solely that veto-wielding permanent Security Council members China and Russia have no serious interest in trying to throttle North Korea’s Kim regime. Even when they vote for those ever tougher UN sanctions, they have been, to put it generously, highly casual about enforcing them. On the evidence, China — despite its public expressions of disapproval and disappointment over each North Korean nuclear test — has nonetheless, for decades now, allowed North Korea to proceed. It is past time to ask quite seriously whether Beijing (never mind its public posturing) reached a quiet decision quite some years ago that China can live comfortably enough with a nuclear-armed North Korea that dedicates itself to bedeviling such leading democracies as South Korea, America and Japan.

Nor is the problem solely that sanctions, to whatever degree they are attempted, have virtually no chance of forcing North Korea into a good-faith deal to give up its long-established, deeply entrenched nuclear program. In previous talks and deals (1994, 2005, 2007, as well as President Obama’s attempted 2012 so-called Leap Day missile-freeze deal), Pyongyang racked up an unbroken record of lying, cheating, pocketing the gains and carrying on with its threats and WMD projects.

In the prime case in which sanctions did seem to get serious traction — when U.S. sanctions persuaded Macau in 2005 to freeze North Korea-linked accounts in Banco Delta Asia — North Korea went ahead in 2006 with its first nuclear test, then came to the bargaining table for a deal in 2007, and took to the cleaners the eager diplomats of President Bush’s “soft power” second term.  The antics of that era included State Department special envoy Chris Hill demanding the help of the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve to transfer back to North Korea, via the banking system (at North Korea’s behest), some $25 million in tainted funds that had been frozen at Banco Delta Asia in Macau; a U.S. handout of millions to pay Pyongyang for the Potemkin spectacle in 2008 of blowing up a dispensable cooling tower at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex; and the removal of North Korea from the U.S. government’s blacklist of terror-sponsoring states (a concession which to this day the State Department has yet to remedy). The 2007 deal fell apart as Bush was leaving office, and in May of 2009 North Korea welcomed Obama’s presidency by conducting its second nuclear test.

Today, with North Korea working at speed toward an ability to target the United States, the U.S. fallback is to try to pressure China, under threat of sanctions that would hurt China itself, to defang North Korea. That approach allows for plenty of employment in Washington, in the debates, design and attempts to apply such sanctions. But somewhere out there lies the question of how to sustain any such approach, on the ground (and the seas) in Asia, and where it might actually lead. Sanctions tend to erode over time, as their targets adapt. If North Korea is richly capable of the duplicities that have repeatedly foiled nuclear negotiators, China has vastly more reach and resources available for its own gambits. Even if the ever-tougher-sanctions approach leads to a deal, who or what then guarantees (the deep flaws of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal  come to mind) that once the strictures are loosened, North Korea, or China, would abide by that deal? (Forget the UN, which has to date failed abysmally to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, and which relies on individual member states to police their own enforcement of sanctions.)

The further fallback is the threat of U.S.-led military force, which is what the Trump administration is now turning to in a number of ways, including the deployment of a third aircraft carrier group as part of the “armada” Trump is sending to the Western Pacific. Part of the idea here is also to put China on notice that the U.S. is serious.

The problem here is that to be effective, military threats need to be credible. After eight years of Obama’s “patience,” following North Korea’s successes with its nuclear extortion racket going back to the early 1990s, the consistent signal from three U.S. presidents — Obama, Bush and Clinton — has been that the U.S. for all its vast firepower would rather be snookered at the bargaining table, or simply do nothing, than actually risk a military strike that could turn into a hot war with North Korea.

It doesn’t help that on May 19 Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Pentagon reporters that any military solution to North Korea would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale,” so “our effort is to work with the U.N., work with China, work with Japan, work with South Korea to try to find a way out of this situation.” Nor does it help that on May 23, 64 Democratic lawmakers sent a public letter to Trump, asking for details of his plans for a negotiated solution of “the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula,” and warning Trump against including in any such plans an “ill-advised military component.” If — after the agonies of the 1950-1953 Korean War, and in view of North Korea’s current military threat to Seoul and increasingly dangerous arsenal — the U.S. is not prepared to go to war again to stop North Korea, then the prudent course would be at least to keep quiet about it. Otherwise, the result is to neuter any U.S. threat of force, further emboldening North Korea.

Which brings us to the core problem, the grand dilemma looming behind all the machinations described above. There is really only one way out of this situation, only one real solution, and that is an end to the Kim regime in North Korea. On humanitarian grounds alone, the fall or overthrow of the Kim regime would be fully justified, and is long, long overdue. In view of North Korea’s rising threats to others, its growing arsenal, its record of peddling munitions to the likes of Syria and Iran, and its unbroken record of abusing any and all deals, there is no other answer. The Kim regime has to go.

But getting rid of the Kim regime is in itself risky. However it might happen, whether Kim’s regime might be destroyed by military force, throttled by sanctions, overthrown from within, or somehow shoved from power through some combination of these factors, no one knows exactly what might follow, or how things might then play out.

And so, with variations that have repeatedly failed to end the threat, one U.S. administration after another has defaulted to a “status quo” in which the effort is not to get rid of the Kim regime, but to manage it — as if it were some sort of highly unpleasant chronic medical condition.

Thus did  Tillerson tell the UN Security Council meeting last month, at its special meeting on North Korea, that “our goal is not regime change, nor do we desire to threaten the North Korean people or destabilize the Asia Pacific region.”

Newsflash: The Asia Pacific region is already being destabilized, by nuclear-arming North Korea itself, as well as China — with its own military buildup, its island-building territorial grabs offshore, and its threats to freedom of navigation. What we are witnessing is not a durable status quo, but a trajectory, in which a U.S. impulse for peace in our time keeps steering us toward cataclysm ahead. What Obama achieved with his “strategic patience” was to postpone the day of reckoning long enough to hand off a threat grown vastly worse to his successor.

How this gets resolved in any way favorable, or even remotely safe, for America and its democratic allies is a hideous conundrum. But the situation right now is very far from safe. The threats from North Korea keep rising — not only its nuclear program, but such matters as its cyber warfare projects, plus the example Pyongyang continues to set of how a malign and predatory tyranny can survive by arming itself with the world’s most destructive weapons and threatening liberally to use them. We should have no doubt that Iran and others are taking notes.

What’s certain is this: None of this will be resolved by America writing off regime change as the real goal in Pyongyang while waiting to respond with another stack of UN sanctions, however neatly pre-negotiated, to North Korea’s next nuclear test.

Categories: China and North Korea, Japan, North Korea - regime change, North Korea sanctions, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, UN and North Korea
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North Korea: China ‘Dancing to the Tune of the U.S.’ with ‘Absurd’ Opposition to Nuclear Program

May 5, 2017

North Korea: China ‘Dancing to the Tune of the U.S.’ with ‘Absurd’ Opposition to Nuclear Program, Breitbart, John Hayward, May 4, 2017

AFP PHOTO / KCNA via KNS REPUBLIC OF KOREA

North Korea is a bottomless fountain of apocalyptic threats against the U.S. and its allies, but on Wednesday, its state-run media lashed out against China with unprecedented fury, accusing the Chinese of “dancing to the tune of the U.S.” with “absurd and reckless remarks” about Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

The North Korean outburst was prompted by a string of editorials in China’s similarly state-controlled media which “criticized the North’s nuclear weapons program and called for Beijing to cut off oil supplies if the North conducted another nuclear test,” as the New York Times summarizes them.

“One must clearly understand that the DPRK’s line of access to nukes for the existence and development of the country can neither be changed nor shaken, and that the DPRK will never beg for the maintenance of friendship with China, risking its nuclear program which is as precious as its own life, no matter how valuable the friendship is,” snarled the unusually harsh response from North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper. (“DPRK” is North Korea’s name for itself, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.)

“China should no longer try to test the limits of the DPRK’s patience. China had better ponder over the grave consequences to be entailed by its reckless act of chopping down the pillar of the DPRK-China relations,” the op-ed continued.

North Korea accused China of providing “lame excuses for the base acts of dancing to the tune of the U.S.” and betraying Pyongyang’s friendship “in order to avert a war which would bring danger to China.” It railed against “absurd and reckless remarks” from “ignorant politicians and media persons” in China.

“We didn’t cross the ‘red line’ of the (North Korea)-China relationship. China is violently stomping on and crossing it without hesitation,” declared another passage spotlighted by CNN.

The editorial specifically complained about “rubbish” in Chinese publications accusing North Korea of creating tensions in northeast Asia and giving the United States “excuses for deploying more strategic assets.”

On the contrary, China should “acknowledge in an honest manner that the DPRK has just contributed to protecting peace and security of China, foiling the U.S. scheme for aggression by waging a hard fight in the front line of the showdown with the U.S. for more than seven decades, and thank the DPRK for it,” according to the North Korean paper.

The New York Times notes that this broadside was not an unsigned editorial from the editors at large but was attributed to a specific author named Kim Chol.

Of course, no one would imagine such a provocative article could be published by any North Korean outfit without the blessing of dictator Kim Jong-un, but putting a single name on the piece gives North Korea a little wiggle room to disavow its harsh words if China objects too strongly or does whatever is needed to calm the Kim regime down. In either of those eventualities, it is a safe bet that someone in Pyongyang named “Kim Chol” will have a very bad day.

Another cushion for the blow noted by the NYT is that Kim Chol’s op-ed did not castigate the government of China or the Communist Party per se; the fiery criticism was directed at Chinese media – which, of course, is only slightly more independent of the government and ruling party than North Korean media.

North Korean editorialists have grumbled about Chinese policy before, but it usually takes the important precaution of leaving China’s name out of the editorials, referring vaguely to a “neighboring country.”

Indications that China might decide to handle North Korea’s outburst with kid gloves quickly appeared. The Chinese Foreign Ministry stressed both Beijing’s “consistent and clear” position on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula and “good-neighborly and friendly relations with the DPRK.”

China’s Communist Party organ, the Global Times, at first responded with some soothing noises about the marvelous friendship between Beijing and Pyongyang, slipping in a few barbs about the importance of denuclearization, China’s unwillingness to “allow its northeastern region to be contaminated by North Korea’s nuclear activities,” and a little reminder that North Korea would have been defeated by South Korea and the United States in the 1950s without Chinese intervention.

On Thursday, the Global Times directly addressed the Kim Chol editorial, very pointedly observing it was the first time China was specifically named in such a tirade.

“Overall, the editorial is nothing more than a hyper-aggressive piece completely filled with nationalistic passion,” sniffed the Global Times. “Pyongyang obviously is grappling with some form of irrational logic over its nuclear program.”

The editorial goes on to tell North Korean media to pipe down while officials in Beijing and Pyongyang hammer out their policy differences through “higher levels of dialogue with one another.” A half-dozen passages in the Global Times response boil down to condescending advice that North Korean is making its situation worse by publicly criticizing China.

“The direction of China-North Korea relations remains in the hands of China. Whether KCNA editorials mention China or Chinese media by name or not, those missions will not change the inherent logic and trend of a relationship that has been in place for over six decades. The more editorials KCNA publishes, the better Chinese society will be able to understand how Pyongyang thinks, and how hard it is to solve this nuclear issue,” the concluding paragraph reads.

Another commentary published by Rodong Sinmun on Wednesday warns Japan that it would be “blanketed with radioactive clouds if a nuclear war occurs on the Korean peninsula.”

“Not only those who try to harm us but their supporters will not be safe if any war breaks out,” this op-ed stated, adding that it would be a “piece of cake” for North Korea’s military to devastate Japan.

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How to Defuse the Crisis with North Korea

May 2, 2017

How to Defuse the Crisis with North Korea, American Thinker, Herbert E. Meyer, May 2, 2017

(There is no excellent solution and the concept behind the suggestion needs to be expanded. However, something along its lines may be the best we can do. North Korean peasants would be better off as East German clones and China would prefer the arrangement to a reunification of North and South Korea. Please see also, Krauthammer: U.S. does have cards to play against North Korea and my parenthetical comment there. — DM)

North Koreans would have far more confidence that a guarantee of sovereignty by the U.S. and South Korea would hold if China’s leaders backed it publicly, as well as privately. And if the Chinese would promise to provide the level of economic support that North Korea needs to keep it at least stable, and perhaps more prosperous than it is now, that would help encourage the generals to act. Let’s hope that President Trump at least talked about all this when he met at Mar-a-Lago last month with his new best-buddy, Chinese president Xi.

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The looming crisis with North Korea provides a perfect illustration of what’s gone wrong with the way Washington works. Everyone is so eager to propose a policy, no one can be bothered to articulate an objective. So policymakers start arguing about what to do, before deciding what they want to accomplish. That’s like arguing over what route to take, before deciding where you want to go. (Which, to point out the obvious, is why we keep ending up in the middle of nowhere, or upside down in a ditch.)

Here’s one possible objective that would defuse this crisis and perhaps even bring a few decades of stability: to turn North Korea into a modern version of East Germany.

For those of you too young to remember the Cold War, during those decades after World War II Germany was divided. West Germany was free, prosperous, and an American ally. East Germany was a miserable dictatorship, not very prosperous, and a Soviet satellite. (To get a feel for what life was like in East Germany, watch the great movie The Lives of Others, and the German television seriesWeissensee.) But during all these decades, East Germany was never a threat to West Germany, or to the U.S. Its communist regime wanted only to be left alone. And in return, the West Germans and the Americans made it absolutely clear they had no intention of unifying Germany by attacking or otherwise bringing down the East.

When the Korean war ended with an armistice in 1953, that country was divided. South Korea became free, prosperous, and an American ally. North Korea became a miserable dictatorship, not very prosperous, and a sort-of satellite of China. The difference between Germany and Korea is that while East Germany wanted only to be left alone, North Korea keeps threatening to conquer South Korea and reunify the country under its control, and to fire nuclear-armed missiles at the U.S. itself.

President Trump’s Got Their Attention

But now, for the first time in its history — and thanks entirely to President Trump — North Korea faces the real possibility of a massive military attack, certainly to destroy its nuclear facilities and perhaps even to obliterate the regime itself. And there’s nothing like the looming prospect of an attack by the United States to get a government’s attention.

Simply put, it may be possible to defuse the current crisis without a war by cutting a deal along these lines: If North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons and cease threatening South Korea and the U.S., the U.S. and South Korea will guarantee North Korea’s sovereignty.

Once again, there’s an historic parallel between Korea and Germany: Adolf Hitler was crazy; a foaming-at-the-mouth, chewing-the-carpet raving lunatic. He was also a brilliant, cunning politician who not only held onto power, but who kept within his grip the total loyalty of Germany’s military leaders. These generals weren’t crazy; they were hard, practical, highly intelligent men who had fought and lost World War I and then rebuilt Germany’s war machine. They knew in their bones that another world war would devastate their country. They understood that invading Russia would end in catastrophe.

Yet the generals didn’t get rid of Hitler. While a small number were prepared to overthrow Hitler, most were caught up in appalling, fawning loyalty to him that had more to do with twisted psychology than with military strategy. The minority willing to act received no encouragement from the Western Allies. The others plunged ahead, caught in Hitler’s hypnotic spell. There’s no way to know this for sure, but it’s widely accepted among historians that if the generals had gotten rid of Hitler in 1937 or 1938, there would not have been a Second World War. (Plots to overthrow Hitler by some brave German continued after the war started, but by that time it was too late; all their efforts failed.)

We can argue all day whether Kim Jong-un is crazy, but it’s obvious he isn’t, um, normal. He’s held onto power, and he’s kept within his grip the loyalty of North Korea’s generals. These generals aren’t crazy. Crazy people cannot build weapons, organize complex programs to develop nuclear bombs — or build roads, operate electric power systems, keep the trains and buses running, assure that at least some food gets produced and distributed, operate schools and hospitals. They must be hard, practical, and highly intelligent. And while they may not be charming and fun to hang out with, they aren’t suicidal.

How to Organize a Coup d’Etat

Today, just like the German generals in the Spring of 1939, North Korea’s generals are careening toward war. But the point of studying history is to learn from it. Back in 1939 there was no serious effort in London, Paris, and Washington to try and break Hitler’s grip on his generals and to help them organize a coup d’etat. So the world plunged into war. Might it be possible to do this now? Is there some way to break Kim Jong-un’s grip on his generals — to snap them out of their hypnotic spell and help them to organize a coup before it’s too late?

For an effort like this to have even a chance of success, we’ll need answers to these questions:

Who are these guys? Presumably our intelligence service knows at least something about the two or three dozen officials who actually run North Korea. Well, which ones are most likely to abandon Kim and work with us? Who are the ones we would like to see take power?

How do we reach them? Of course, we can communicate with these generals over the airwaves, so to speak. That would involve official statements by President Trump and his national security team threatening war, and clearly offering a guarantee of regime survival in exchange for disarmament. But there must also be ways of reaching these officials individually — and very privately.

What precisely do we want them to do? We want the generals to replace Kim and his closest advisors with officials who will work with the U.S. to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, then work with South Korea to establish the kind of sullen but stable peace that existed for decades between West and East Germany.

What help do they need? It’s possible that a serious threat to attack by President Trump, combined with the offer of regime survival in return for disarmament, will be sufficient to push at least some of the generals into taking action. But they may need more help, for instance a massive propaganda campaign to generate support for them before they act by telling the North Korean population how their lives will become immeasurably better once Kim is replaced. The generals also may need the kind of help that only a powerful intelligence service like ours can provide, for instance a covert communications system so they can be in touch with us, and with one another, without being overheard by Pyongyang’s security officials. They may even need the kind of help only the Pentagon can provide, for instance SEAL Team Six.

China’s help would vastly increase the chances of success. Beijing’s diplomatic and intelligence services probably have a better grasp of what’s actually going on in Pyongyang than ours. And they can probably provide detailed information about which generals to work with, and which to avoid — or remove. Most of all, the North Koreans would have far more confidence that a guarantee of sovereignty by the U.S. and South Korea would hold if China’s leaders backed it publicly, as well as privately. And if the Chinese would promise to provide the level of economic support that North Korea needs to keep it at least stable, and perhaps more prosperous than it is now, that would help encourage the generals to act. Let’s hope that President Trump at least talked about all this when he met at Mar-a-Lago last month with his new best-buddy, Chinese president Xi.

Don’t bother asking the usual Washington policymakers whether turning North Korea into a modern version of East Germany might actually be possible. They will reply — in unison, within two-billionths of a second — No, this is impossible! Kim Jong-un is crazy, and the North Koreans will never give up their nukes or agree to stop threatening South Korea and the U.S. Well, they may be right. On the other hand, these are mostly the same geniuses who told us, also with 100 percent confidence, that it was impossible to win the Cold War, and impossible for Donald Trump to get elected president. Impossible things sometimes do happen, even in politics — especially in politics. Given the risk we face of nuclear war, this is worth a shot.

Categories: China and North Korea, Coup d’Etat, East Germany, North Korea, North Korean generals, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes
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Why China ‘urgently’ recruiting Korean-Chinese interpreters for town near North Korea

May 1, 2017

Why China ‘urgently’ recruiting Korean-Chinese interpreters for town near North Korea, Korea Times, Park Si-soo, May 1, 2017

(Please see also, Krauthammer: U.S. does have cards to play against North Korea. Might China be preparing for reunification with North Korea instead of an invasion? — DM)

A Chinese government document ordering the town of Dandong to recruit Korean-Chinese interpreters. / Captured from the Oriental Daily

A Chinese town near the border with North Korea is “urgently” recruiting Korean-Chinese interpreters, stirring speculation that China is bracing for an emergency situation involving its nuclear-armed neighbor.

The Oriental Daily, a Hong Kong-based news outlet published the story on Apr. 27, including a photo of a Chinese government document ordering the town of Dandong to recruit an unspecified number of Korean-Chinese interpreters to work at 10 departments in the town, including border security, public security, trade, customs and quarantine.

The document did not specify the reason behind the unusual, large-scale recruiting. But experts and local citizens said the move indicated that China was bracing for a possible military clash between the United States and North Korea.

This might trigger a huge exodus of North Koreans to border towns in China.

Whether this dismal scenario will become a reality is largely up to North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly warned that the world’s superpower will strike North Korea’s nuclear facilities if Kim proceeds with a sixth nuclear test or test fires an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The Dandong administration also has ordered its officials to work rotating night shifts since April 25, according to South Korea’s news agency Yonhap.

Meanwhile, China has dismissed reports that it has sent 150,000 additional troops to its border with the North.

Categories: China and North Korea
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