Lurching Towards War A Post-Mortem on Strategic Patience With all eyes on North Korea since its third nuclear test, remarkably little has been said about how we arrived at this crisis point. Inadequately…
Tag: North Korea
Is North Korea’s recent nuclear test, its third, to be welcomed, lamented or condemned? It depends on your perspective. If you believe that a people should be able to organize their affairs free from foreign domination and interference; that the United States and its client government in Seoul have denied Koreans in the south that right and seek to deny Koreans in the north the same right; and that the best chance that Koreans in the north have for preserving their sovereignty is to build nuclear weapons to deter a US military conquest, then the test is to be welcomed. If you’re a liberal, you might believe that the United States should offer the DPRK (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name) security guarantees in return for Pyongyang completely, permanently and verifiably eliminating its nuclear weapons program. If so, your position invites three questions.
This “news analysis” on North Korea’s latest nuke test in the New York Times is rather a lightly disguised threat to China. Starve North Korea or we will disable your strategic nuclear deterrence. Nuclear Test Poses Big Challenge to China’s New Leader It starts: BEIJING — The nuclear test by North Korea on Tuesday, in defiance of warnings by China, leaves the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, with a choice: Does he upset North Korea just a bit by agreeing to stepped up United Nations sanctions, or does he rattle the regime by pulling the plug on infusions of Chinese oil and investments that keep North Korea afloat?
North Korea , also known as DPRK, is a mostly unknown and mysterious country. There are several preconceptions and myths about it which can be hardly debunked since it is under immense international pressure over…
Tensions are escalating since North Korea’s launch of a satellite into orbit on December 12, 2012. Overwrought news reports termed the launch a “threat” and a “provocation,” while U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor called it “irresponsible behavior.” Punishment for North Korea was swift in coming. North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 was just one of 75 satellites that a variety of nations sent into space last year, but Pyongyang’s launch, and a failed launch earlier in the year on April 12, were the only ones singled out for condemnation. [1] In Western eyes, there was something uniquely threatening about the Kwangmyongsong-3 earth observation satellite, unlike the apparently more benign five military and three spy satellites the United States launched last year.
This picture, released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on April 9, 2009 shows a Unha-2 rocket, supposedly carrying an experimental communication satellite Kwangmyongsong-2, as it is launched from Hwadae-gun in…
[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in May 2010. It was written by the author to counter, point by point, the US-SK joint governments’ arbitrary position on the notoriously infamous another US-led, -involved, and -coordinated Gulf of Tonkin…
U.S. soldiers of Stryker Brigade Combat Team stage a live fire drill at Seungjin fire range during a photo call in Pocheon, about 46 km (28 miles) northeast of Seoul and about 15 km (9…
President Truman said at the Peace Conference with Japan in San Francisco in Sept. 1951 that “It is a treaty that will work. It does not contain the seeds of another war. It is a…
Preface The Korean peninsula is without doubt the most militarily fortified spot in the world, with over 2 million well trained uniformed forces on either side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), coupled with some 75,000…