The media is now filled with headlines about North Korea’s missile test on Friday, which demonstrated that its ICBMs may be able to reach the continental U.S. What isn’t mentioned in any of these stories is how we got to this point — in particular, what Dan Coats, President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, explained last week at the Aspen Security Forum.
North Korea’s 33-year-old dictator Kim Jong-un is not crazy, said Coats. In fact, he has “some rationale backing his actions” regarding the country’s nuclear weapons. That rationale is the way the U.S. has demonstrated that North Korea must keep them to ensure “survival for his regime, survival for his country.”
Kim, according to Coats, “has watched, I think, what has happened around the world relative to nations that possess nuclear capabilities and the leverage they have and seen that having the nuclear card in your pocket results in a lot of deterrence capability.” In particular, “The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes … is, unfortunately: If you had nukes, never give them up. If you don’t have them, get them.”
This is, of course, blindingly obvious and has been since the U.S. helped oust longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011. But U.S. officials have rarely if ever acknowledged this reality. Here’s the timeline:
In December 2003, Libya announced that it would surrender its biological and chemical weapons stockpiles, as well as its rudimentary nuclear weapons program.
In celebrating Libya’s decision, President George W. Bush declared that the rest of the world should take away the message that “leaders who abandon the pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, will find an open path to better relations with the United States and other free nations.” Paula DeSutter, Bush’s Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance, explained that “we want Libya to be a model for other countries.”
In 2011, the U.S. and NATO conducted a bombing campaign to assist Libyan rebels in overthrowing the Gaddafi government. Gaddafi himself was captured by one rebel faction, who apparently sodomized him with a bayonet and then killed him.
You would definitely expect this to get the attention of North Korea’s ruling clique — especially given that Iraq had also disarmed and then been invaded, with its dictator executed by a howling mob.
And, indeed, North Korea said this explicitly at the time. Its foreign ministry stated, “The Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson,” which was that the deal to rid Libya of weapons of mass destruction had been “an invasion tactic to disarm the country.”
Yet the Obama administration shamelessly denied this. A reporter told State Department spokesperson Mark Toner that “North Koreans are looking at this” and it didn’t “give them a lot of incentive to give up their nuclear weapons.” Toner replied that “where [Libya is] at today has absolutely no connection with them renouncing their nuclear program and nuclear weapons.”
Moreover, North Koreans and other countries can read, and so understand what America’s foreign policy elite has repeatedly explained why we want small countries to disarm. It’s not because we fear that they will use WMD in a first strike on us, since nations like North Korea understand that would immediately lead to their obliteration. Instead, our mandarins explicitly say the problem is that unconventional weapons help small countries deter us from attacking them.
There are many examples. For instance, in a 2001 memo, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated:
Several of these [small enemy nations] are intensely hostile to the United States and are arming to deter us from bringing our conventional or nuclear power to bear in a regional crisis. …
[U]niversally available [WMD] technologies can be used to create “asymmetric” responses that cannot defeat our forces, but can deny access to critical areas in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia…“asymmetric” approaches can limit our ability to apply military power.
The think tank Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative pressure group that had a heavy influence on George W. Bush’s administration, made the same point in an influential paper called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”:
The United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself. Of all the new and current missions for U.S. armed forces, this must have priority. …
In the post-Cold War era, America and its allies, rather than the Soviet Union, have become the primary objects of deterrence and it is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities.
In fact, even Dan Coats himself has said this, in a 2008 op-ed he co-wrote. “An Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons capability would be strategically untenable,” Coats said, because it would possess a “deterrent” against U.S. attack. And to prevent Iran from acquiring the ability to deter us, he explained, we might have to attack them.
Video of Coats speaking and his full remarks are below:
Source: The Aspen Institute
DAN COATS: It has become a potential existential threat to the United States and it is of great concern.
LESTER HOLT: And in terms of the number of options available publicly we know that there aren’t a lot of great options there, and a lot of it is trying to see into Kim Jong-un’s head and that’s I suspect that most difficult kind of intelligence trying to predict someone’s behavior.
COATS: Well, he’s demonstrated behavior publicly that really raises some questions about who he is and how he thinks and how he acts, what his behavior is, but our assessment has come — has pretty much resulted in the fact that while he’s a very unusual type of person, he’s not crazy. And there is some rationale backing his actions which are survival, survival for his regime, survival for his country, and he has watched I think what has happened around the world relative to nations that possess nuclear capabilities and the leverage they have and seen that having the nuclear card in your pocket results in a lot of deterrence capability. The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes and Ukraine giving up its nukes is unfortunately if you had nukes, never give them up. If you don’t have them, get them, and we see a lot of nations now thinking about how do we get them and none more persistent than North Korea …
Top photo: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects troops of Unit 534 of the Korean People’s Army on Jan. 12, 2014.
Libya, Iraq, Iran, clearly there are lessons here for the astute dictator.
The “Axis of Evil” produced three targets, Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The first is a done deal, an obvious object lesson for the other two: Iraq, utterly destroyed for no apparent reason. Got it.
The second, Iran, decided on cooperation, making the deal with the US to limit its nuclear research in return for concessions, it’s people then supporting that decision by clobbering the hardliners in recent elections. But the US is now threatening them anyway, apparently on Fox and Friends’ say-so, or maybe Israel or Saudi Arabia. Turns out a lot of people don’t like Iran. They’re Muslim, but not Arab. Speaking strictly for myself, anybody hated by Fox and Friends, Likud-ruled Israel and Saudi Arabia can’t be all bad.
North Korea has gone the most logical way given the evidence before them: with deliverable nuke capability the US will think twice about messing with them. They are reacting anything but illogically. Hopefully Trump will be as logical.
Nukes don’t exist – it’s all propaganda in order to create boogeymen all over the world so that the MIC can justify blowing billions more on “defense” and justify wars of aggression. NK has a much stronger military than countries such as Iraq, Libya or Syria and could potentially wreck havoc against SK and to a lesser extent Japan.
There’s a simple solution to this problem: stop antagonizing them with war exercises off their coast and sanctions. Is nobody capable of sitting down and having productive dialogue anymore? Seriously, now they’re talking about having a “preventive war,” which is akin to shooting somebody on the basis that they think he’s going to commit a crime. Are these people insane or what?
One problem I have with the analysis in this column is that North Korea already possessed substantial deterrence – a massive army, artillery, and those pesky biological novelties so few people in the media seem to want to talk about, like “Ebolapox”. Having multiple modalities lets them play with crossing multiple lines. For example, if they assault the South Korean army with a debilitating (though perhaps temporary) plague, and use the disruption as a chance to seize some land and valuables, the U.S. still might think twice about nuking them in response since there could be return mail by ICBM. Yet bogging down in a merely conventional war risks rewarding them for bioweapons attacks. Now I suspect the U.S. is more than capable of thinking up something involving “lesser” bioweapons in retaliation to destroy North Korean agriculture (thrips are a prior accusation from Cuba as I recall). But biological and to a lesser extent chemical weapons are wonderful exercises in creativity, and creativity has a habit of getting out of control … like the batch of somewhat-less-than-lethal French gas grenades that started both the chemical warfare of World War I and the Vietnam War. So if the U.S. intentionally starves the North Koreans with thrips and they respond with nastier bioweapons, or a nuke at South Korea, and then the U.S. drops four dozen nukes on them, and the Chinese demand huge reparations or threaten to set off a few nukes 12.5 miles off the shore of major U.S. cities… well, you see how it goes. Before long it could be a full on exchange between US, China, even Russia.
Except, nuclear deterrent is much cheaper than maintaining a 1M man army.
Obviously it would be stupid of NK to give up nukes or trust any “deal” with the US. Indeed, I’d say Iran made a mistake in that regard.
The problem is that US foreign policy is sociopathic in nature. If NK didn’t have nukes, they’d destroy it. But they wouldn’t wanna send a message that having nukes is a plausible defense, so they’ll find a way to destroy it anyway.
This is pure gold: “leaders who abandon the pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, will find an open path to better relations with the United States and other free nations.”
I’m worried: if only ONE rogue nation state with nukes is left-Israel-a state that refuses to sign treaties or even acknowledge their program- if only one patriarchal/tribal state is left then what?
Greater Israel! Buh-Bye, ‘Murica! (flashback to Spain/Britainia/Holland in the 16th century)
Anyways- when will we see some journalism about how the Anti-Defamation League model of hateful, petty, criminal, religious and race based spying on, and blackmail of activists and others became the national DHS model of spying on and blackmailing activists and others?
https://psmag.com/news/kings-garbage-76228
“This is, of course, blindingly obvious and has been since the U.S. helped oust longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011.”
Actually, I would argue it was obvious even before them. Remember the Axis of Evil declared by George W. Bush back in the early 2000s? Remember who was on it? Remember what happened to one of the members of that Axis when it was invaded in 2003, at least ostensibly out of it fear it had, or was developing nuclear and/or chemical weapons.
What message do you imagine that sent to the two other nation-states on the Axis-of-Evil list: Iran and North Korea?
Guess which nations then began to try acquiring nuclear weapons in a more serious fashion?
If Coats thinks Jong UN and NKorea aren’t crazy, perhaps he should read some of Un’s father and grandfather’s quotes on possible conflict with America….also, I think this is a case where NOT having Nukes and threatening to use them every time Un gets pissy would probably cause the United States to lose interest in a possible confrontation with NKorea…a defector’s quote: “There is a saying in North Korea that goes, America dies, we die, we all die together.”
It’s been pretty well established by now that the point of the seemingly-crazy posturing by NK’s leaders is for the purpose of internal propaganda, not because they expect the rest of the world to be intimidated. The people of NK have been brainwashed into thinking that their country is the greatest and that their leaders are almost god-like figures, and the fake tough-guy posturing is designed to reinforce that.
sounds like the American people
True. One of the good things about Trump (and why the elites hate him so much) is that he is destroying the unspoken but widely-held belief that the president is some kind of higher, more noble being and that the political process is somehow an elegant or enlightened one. The stink of Trump and the damage he is doing to the power and prestige of the Presidency will last for a long time after he’s gone, and the power/money elites are furious about that because up until now the presidential aura has been one of their best tools for controlling people.
yeah… the brighter or less dishonest lot of the elected whores just realized publicly that there was a cost, a consequence, to invading sovereign countries but… without mentioning the US support of genocide and land theft with their other criminal operatives in the med. Adolf couldn’t imagine that his rampage would cost him everything. But thieves always learn the hard way. And regular working Americans keep paying the cost. So why do Americans keep electing these stupid lying thieves?
Well we had to elect someone, and it’s pretty clear that it would have been business as usual with Neocon Hillary. But up until the most recent election, yeah I fully agree. The point you need to accept is that regardless of what they think they want, Americans are pretty much led by the nose by the television and will do it’s bidding, against their own best interests 99 times out of 100. If you have any questions about that ask yourself how the freaking f#[email protected] Mitt Romney gets nominated to be president? Especially when it was clear that his nomination was stolen from Ron Paul. Or how do millions of Bernie Sanders supporters (far more than Hillary had) watch his nomination stolen from him, then loyally vote for the woman who stole it?
Kim Jong Un is not crazy. Not one single bit. Quite to the contrary he has a precise clairty on the whole of the facts. It is Americans, as evidenced by how they react to these same facts, who are clearly the crazy, unpredictable ones. Do you think America set out to dominate the world before it was sure it had it’s own people completely dominated? Do you think you’re not completely dominated when you buy products from companies that shipped American jobs overseas then used the extra proceeds to buy politicians, to do their bidding against your best interests, that you then voted for. Maybe you don’t do this personally but 90+% of Americans do. That is crazier and more suicidal than Kim Jong Un on PCP. So many ‘everyday American’s’ actions and attitudes are this crazy at a minimum. KJUs only ‘craziness’ is acknowledging this reality and preparing for when it tries to creep into his dominion. Which we all know it will. GWB flat out said it way back in 2001 with his ‘axis of evil’ speech. And his so-called ‘opposition’ in the 16 years since have maintained the exact same policy, even while tens of millions of Democrats voted for Obama and Hillary thinking they’d actually get something different.
So the short answer to your question is that these lying thieves keep getting elected because they are elected by criminal enablers capable of lying and deluding themselves more than the worst sociopath ever could. People you know as ‘everyday Americans’. Now go sit in front of the TV and await your next instruction. Some poor country with no IMF loans might need ‘liberating’.
@Dutch, I just came to comment that you are brilliant. Carry on!
LIBYA never had such weapons It never had the Nuclear bomb.. just as Iraq had no WOMD North korea is under China’s wing So is there more to Come?
What if it’s a psyop? Meant to keep Americans scared. Suddenly he has ICBM and can reach US. I’m not so sure.
Kim Jong-Un will also have noticed that no Arab state will dare to wipe Israel from the face of the Earth.
Neocons have had full run in both parties for decades now, it’s quite amazing how much we’re willing to let them dictate foreign policy. Neither party has been willing to stand up to the MIC. Even Eisenhower waited until he was leaving office to offer his ‘warning’.
So, we’ve advanced so much that now we need new-qa-lar to deter or thwart mod violence. I love it.
The last guy who crossed the US and didn’t have nukes ended up sodomized with a steel rod and then beaten to death with it by a mob. The Secretary of State bragged about it on TV.
Quite an argument for getting nukes at all costs when you know the US wants to see you murdered in the street.
How can the west be hung up on such a basic things as this?
Of course the only way to protect your self from regime change or invasion is to become a nuclear power. Every schoolboy knows that.
There are no secrets in the world anymore. We have to reconcile our selves and our policies with reality.
When one country calls itself a superpower and goes around hating anything it sees it is simply generating hostility and likely vengeance.
The better way, indeed the only way, is to put our fists down, take some irreversible action to show we abandon the rule of force, and take a chance that the rest of the world is more civilised than we are and will not take the opportunity to destroy us.
Is there any chance that that main-stream hack, Lester Dolt, actually understood anything Coats said?
“K”, your are of course correct in your assessment of the history lesson the USA taught North Korea. That however does not mean NK can not learn new lessons. And the author IMO is spot on. When you have leaders such as Saddam and Gaddafi who to an extent cave to US pressures and Kim or any new leader of NK will take that into account. NK would be out of their minds to disarm their deterrent. That has been the lesson the USA has taught for all nations and to assume that is lost on NK makes no sense. They are behaving rationally. The scary party is the Neocons and Neolibs no doubt expect this response and will have some means of taking advantage of it.
Interesting comments. The US is so bad isn’t it. What was Woodrow Wilson supposed post WWI when the UK and France elected to parcel up the Middle East before he ever arrived at the Paris Peace Conference? I guess the US should have done nothing when NKPA forces took Seoul on June 25, 1950? What if Germany has taken the UK? Would that have caused the world to descend into the “new Dark Age” of which Winston Churchill spoke in his House of Commons speech? Yeah the US has been such a horrible place that people have been risking life an limb to come here for a lot of years. They all must have been crazy.
It cuts both ways. Given the invasion of Crimea and continued Russian interference in Eastern Ukraine, maybe Kiev should have held on to its nuclear arsenal.
…that would have made sense if the Ukrainians even had the launch codes to begin with…
Thing is, everybody should be getting chemical weapons. Chemical weapons are pretty easy to manufacture. So next time the anglo-american psychos and their european pets decide to invade a ‘third world country’ they can be send back home, not in body bags, but in liquid form in barrels.
It is a groundless conjecture still, the same as peeking into Kim’s head and trying to diagnose something unusual, to say that Libya serves a guidance for Kim’s nuclear behaviors. To prove this conjecture as anything other than a propagandist’s schizophrenic talking point, you will need classified policy papers in Korean, which you are likely to never be able to put any hands on.
The fact of the matter is not Libya or any other country having left an indelible mark on Kim’s mind, but the simple facts that the US still has not made peace with NK more than 60 years after the Korean War, that the US has always threatened to destroy NK as a political entity with a massive war, as evidenced by the annual massive scale military drills America holds with SK, entailing destruction and deaths that would make America’s Middle Eastern wars pale in comparison.
The best option to deter such American intentions and to maintain peace is to cause unacceptable consequences for any “military option” the Americans are “keeping on the table” and “open to take”, which, for any rational being, whether you count Kim as one or not, with the knowledge of the modern military arsenal, simply means the possession of and the ability to deliver a nuclear missile to the annihilation and destruction of the populational, commercial, and industrial centers of the U.S. as wells those of its vital allies, and it is the option Kim is currently working on, very rationally.
History has generally not been kind to countries that unilaterally disarmed. However, the real lesson of Iraq and Libya is more nuanced. The mistake their leaders made after disarming, was continuing to pursue independent policies and challenging the dominance of the United States. Saddam Hussein concocted an ill conceived plan to sell oil for Euros and Muammar Gaddafi promoted his concept of an African gold dinar. Both of these plans were a direct challenge to the supremacy of the US dollar as the world’s international reserve currency.
So the lesson is: if you give up nuclear weapons, don’t continue to act as if you still had them.
Or, more broadly, “Sure, you can continue to exist, but only with our permission…” nuclear or not.
does not quite cut it.
The lesson is not as crude as their harboring some currency plans that could never materialize, much less posing a challenge to the position of the dollar as the global reserve currency. You have go case by case.
Libya had to go so that the east bank of the Mediterranean could be destabilized. Then the political map of the whole region could be re-drawn — Syria and Iraq would be split; Egypt would be regime-changed; Iran could be bombed.
Iraq had to be dealt with because it dared to touch the monopoly of the US on the global oil supply as well as to test the “resolve” of the self-designated police of the world to carry out its duty, especially at a time when it was considered by the US to be its “unipolar moment” to shine, meaning the opportunity to bully its way round the world, and for which to happen, it first needed to set an example.
The lesson is: to be an independent sovereign country, you have to prepare for the eventuality of a conflict with the US, with nuclear weapons or not.
Since the Taliban has proven that the nuclear arsenal of the US is much less effective than the hoplites of the Hellenes, you can act any way you want, with or without nuclear weapons, as long as your cause has enough rallying power, and you have the spirit in you to stand with a spine and endure some hardship. As history has shown, not just by one case, that is all it requires to scare off or defeat the paper tiger.
I’ll concede the reasons may be more varied and complex than I outlined, but the bottom line is that the continued existence of the governments in Libya and Iraq was inconvenient to the US, whatever the reason or combination of reasons.
The ability to destroy a government through conventional warfare is not insignificant, so it does not make sense to characterize the US as a paper tiger. Defeating an insurgency is a more difficult task than overthrowing a government. The Taliban wins by merely existing, since at some point the cost of holding Afghanistan will no longer be worth it, the US will leave and the US supported regime will fall. War produces destruction, but cannot build something new; that requires cooperation.
The fact remains that possession of nuclear weapons is a deterrent to invasion, since it enormously increases the potential cost of an invasion. This doesn’t mean that acquiring nuclear weapons is a wise plan, since the US will do everything in its power to prevent it – as it should, since nuclear weapons in addition to being a deterrent are also a potential threat. Imagine if North Korea, armed with nuclear weapons, subsequently had a new leader with no experience in politics, possibly from a real estate background, and a history of intemperate behavior. It’s too frightening to contemplate.
These #@*%^&! leaks coming from the White House are going to stop. It’s unAmerican.
“It’s absolutely, completely and totally reprehensible … And as you know from the Italian expression: The fish stinks from the head down. But I can tell you two fish that don’t stink, and that’s me and the President.”
*h/t Tony ‘the mooch’ Scaramucci, White House Communications Director
were not leaving Afghanistan until we have all the opium, to quench our opioid thirst
America’s slide into a “Me first, me only” perspective which is perhaps typical of empire wannabees, distorts everything it does and has turned its policies into a poisonous stew that only hastens its own decline.
Whatever happened to the “Peace Corps” by the way? How much of the good will and good influence that American enjoyed for so long has been in fact a result of exactly these kinds of ongoing, persistent, humanistic efforts worldwide? Or, how about upholding the values of democracy and rule-of-law at home? In any case, we are witnessing firsthand the effect of investing in a policy based on the American version of “storm-troopers are us.”
Anyone feel safer as a result? Apparently not so much. Why might that be do you think? Perhaps the problem is that human nature is not just an American prerogative? Perhaps people everywhere react to increasing oppression and abuse with increasing and increasingly creative resistance or that once people have nothing to lose they are apt to do anything?
In retrospect, how much of America’s positive influence in the world resulted from simple goodwill which was created from good policies that empowered societies everywhere to grow and thrive, that like Mr. Macron’s theme of “Make our planet great again,” attempt to look beyond narrow self-interest..?
From just a practical viewpoint, the policies that have emerged from the fevered brains of America’s neocons have by any measure been an utter failure. And yet, we keep doing more of the same. Is that simply all we know? Even under Mr. Obama; more of the same “insanity with a rational face,” not even to mention Mrs. Clinton’s intentions, and a further slide into chaos both at home and abroad.
Just what is wrong with America? Can it conceive of nothing else? Sometimes people go insane. Perhaps nations go insane as well.
Well, if you have lived all your life in one of the “western democracies” then it can be forgiven that you view past American behavior as a boon to ALL the world, while seeing its current form, after changes brought about by the influence of neo-cons, America Firsters, etc, as both detrimental to our reputation and possibly our security.
It’s not who we were, you may think.
But the true facts of our post-war history paint a very different picture from that which the people of the developed West have in their minds, thanks to very dilligent and constant filtering of contrary facts by news organizations, history laundering by government propagandists and, in some sense, the interests of the news-consuming public itsel, which wants to believe that we are indeed bestowed with “American exceptionalism”.
Since the 1940’s and to this day, the US has supported or in many cases actively installed the bloodiest dictatorships that have ruled in Africa, Asia and South/Central America because we considered them to be friendly to our interests. We’re talking about folks like Augusto Pinochet, Suharto, Ferdinand Marcos, Mobuto Sese Seko, the Shah of Iran, and dozens more. This is not particularly altruistic behavior, considering the damage done to the populations that lived under the boots of these tyrants. But it was great for our interests.
What has happened of late is not that we have suddenly gone insane and altered our policies for the worse, but the contrary: it’s that we insist on practicing the same vile policies d’antan, policies of regime change if we can manage it and, if not, on attempts to compel by military or financial force those nations that refuse to abandon the defense of their own interests in favor of ours.
The world has now evolved to the point that those policies are no longer effective. The insanity, and danger, lies in continuing to believe that continue to pursue them without significant adverse consequences for ourselves and the rest of world.
Libya isn’t the ONLY lesson, there’s Ukraine too. (Though the guys who had the actual keys to launch the soviet missiles stationed in Ukraine were generally Moscow’s men it seems unlikely that they were ALL impossibly to bribe/murder for just a few of their keys.)
I think the only country that hasn’t regretted giving up their nukes so far has been South Africa. Mostly because they were useless to the Apartheid government staying in power and even more useless to the government that replaced them.
From a European perspective, would you call a country where the USA stations its Nukes, more or less secretly, an ally or an enemy ? Probably more something like a colonial territory.
When they try to talk you into giving up your guns, it’s time to go out and get more guns.
It is a groundless conjecture still, the same as peeking into Kim’s head and trying to diagnose something unusual, to say that Libya serves a guidance for Kim’s nuclear behaviors. To prove this conjecture as anything other than a propagandist’s schizophrenic talking point, you will need classified policy papers in Korean, which you are likely to never be able to put any hands on.
The fact of the matter is not Libya or any other country having left an indelible mark on Kim’s mind, but the simple facts that US still has not made peace with NK more than 60 years after the Korean War, that US has always threatened to destroy NK as a political entity with a massive war, as evidenced by the annual massive scale military drills America holds with SK, which entails destruction and deaths that would make America’s Middle Eastern wars pale in comparison, and that the best option to deter such American intentions and to maintain peace is to cause unacceptable consequences for any “military option” the Americans are “keeping on the table” and “open to take”, which, for any rational being, whether you count Kim as one or not, with the knowledge of the modern military arsenal, simply means the possession of and the ability to deliver a nuclear missile to the annihilation and destruction of the populational, commercial, and industrial centers of the U.S. as wells those of its vital allies, and it is the option Kim is currently working on.
Not true. You are assuming that had not the US always maintained a hostility toward DPRK that the DPRK would not now suddenly embark on going nuclear. And yo are also assuming that had the US not conned the Libs out of their nukes that DPRK would have gone nuclear anyway.
The most likely scenario is as stated in this article. DPRK, upon seeing the rabid insanity of US military agression, and having realized it is on the list of the US axis of evil, and given the conjob the US perpped on Libya, it only makes common sense that had Libya kept their nukes, the US would not have invaded….
IN FACT, in translation, when the US asks a country to give up its nukes, it means, After you give up your nukes, we are going to attack you and completely destroy your country.
Getting and keeping nukes may be a smart survival strategy … provided they don’t go off.
That said, Kim Jung Il now has to worry that someone in charge of the nukes decides to use them for a coup, or that the U.S. might somehow hack into them and make it look like one went off “accidentally” or as part of a coup. Or he and his people might actually use one and the U.S. responds with dozens if not hundreds of nukes in exchange. I mean, civilization probably won’t survive a nuclear war, but the U.S. will … and the wrath against the entire North Korean population can scarcely be overstated. There would be a sense that if even a single North Korean survives anywhere in the world, that he has “gotten away” with something and a “dangerous example” has been set for future acts of “nuclear terrorism”. Such attacks might well involve hanging up the red phone and ignoring Chinese threats about what they will do in response to the fallout… there would indeed be risks of an ever-widening war the moment the first missile is launched.
There is though a gentler alternative, sort of, not really … sometimes I daydream of the ruins of San Francisco after the bomb, where almost before it was safe for humans to enter they have grown a Black Tower a mile high from graphene, nanotube, Q-carbon, diamond, a memorial to all who died… a final destination for all the ruling family and top technicians of North Korea obtained after a relatively gentle war of annihilation. They clone them in there, splicing one brain into the next, one body-network into another through filters too fine for cancer to cross; rigging their hippocampi to mechanical backups for long term continuity … for the first time a human is immortal, and these are the humans. There is a great chamber on one of the higher levels full of nothing but cloned eyeballs on branching stalks, and a vast rusty steel drum that slowly circumnavigates it to crush them. The people of that world have no holier place; Mecca and Via Dolorosa are forgotten; for they know there is a hell and where it is, and the Black Tower is the religio-nationalist emblem they wear at their necks.
But enough of this. The U.S. has a way to fight North Korea if it wants: simple bullying, which is at the core of all governance. There are a thousand peaceful ways to kill North Koreans and wash one’s hands as clean as Pontius Pilate, and some are hard to feel guilty about at all. Treat it as a prison and fly drones into it loaded with contraband! Make drops to compliant rebels who are willing to whisper secrets into surveillance devices. If the rebels go unnoticed, they bring the government to collapse … and if they are caught, each one is one less North Korean to kill! Then you can send drones to plant evidence against other Party members and their tender relatives. It isn’t America to be blamed if the North Koreans want to go and kill their own for believing the wrong thing! Especially not if they kill the wrong people. If the North Koreans counterfeit U.S. currency, well, counterfeit whatever currency, ration cards, or authorizations they are using themselves, and drop them everywhere. Watch them scramble to find the things and to blame each other for them. What are they going to do, launch their nukes and bring certain terrible retaliation because some contraband is being dropped and some people are being wrongly sent to concentration camps by their infallible judicial system? And it can get even cruder than that. What happens if your drone spying in a window spots a Party official wanking, picking his nose, whatever, or you can have your simulation software produce a convincing fake video of same, and you have little drones push the pictures under the doors of everyone he knows? The U.S. would be hard pressed to do the right thing in such situations .. I bet in NK the backbiting would be lethal. Just harass, smuggle, confuse, disrupt, sabotage, ruin the country. It seems like it shouldn’t be that freaking hard.
The U.S. will survive a nuclear war? Are you totally insane? Maybe you should seriously change your moniker to Dr. Strangelove.
One nuke over Los Angeles can be called a nuclear war, especially after the U.S. retaliation lands.
But even a full scale exchange with Russia seems unlikely to put an end to the U.S. Oh, sure, it would be terrible, there’s fallout and nuclear winter and mass death. But we’re talking about maybe 10 times the fallout of the atmospheric tests, and extraordinary volcanic events have caused global cold weather before. I’m no expert, but http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/82cab/ seems to bear out the idea that the war leaves survivors. Probably their main challenge is not the lingering physical effects, but the perceived need to keep making and launching nuclear weapons at the remnants of their enemies until all are exterminated. As I said, the U.S. will survive a nuclear war, but civilization probably will not. Ecologically, we’re already in the middle of the sixth great mass extinction event … we’re just dickering over the intensity of it.
Trump really needs a war right now to solve his most pressing problems. China would benefit from a US – DPRK confrontation and is in a position to facilitate the conflict. Etc. The stage is set.
Dan Coats is Director of National Intelligence, not Security.
The only question worth asking and repeating: us, do you ever listen to what you say?
I have just read some books on Communism and what our county is suppose to be doing to guarantee that our freedoms and that the free world as a hole doesn’t get taken over and i see the opposite going on here n the USA
Given Trump’s actions, and given what Clinton said about itching to bomb Iran during the campaign, the Iranian leadership is probably second guessing giving up nukes. If Assad remains in power, and looks to retain it for some time to come, no doubts Netenyahoo will push Trump to bomb non-nuke Iran.
Given that Israel has nukes, and given that the Saudis are believed to have a “cash and carry” policy for Pakistani nukes, one would think that Iran would be seeking a nuclear arsenal. Alas, there is one big problem one may not expect- Ayatollah Khameni issued a fatwa against nukes. (Perhaps that is why Ahmedinejad got ousted from power.)
It’a a fact that the more matches a child has, the fewer fires get started.
Also, the more guns on the street, the fewer shootings. Where would you rather live — in that shooting gallery hell of Canada or the peaceful paradise of the US?
It’s like teen sex. How can a young people learn about the joys of parenting if they never have sex? The more the better, I say.
What else is good for other countries? Autocratic leaders, plenty of strategic resources, militarism and fundamentalist religions because you never see those countries getting invaded.
The world is so simple if we would only learn our lessons.
Militarism bring peace, poverty brings prosperity, bullies teach us respect for one another and nukes ensure our freedom.
It’s as obvious as the nose on a horse’s face.
We’re lucky to have a CIA leader like Dan Coats who proves that the best people always find the best solutions.
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
? George Orwell, 1984
America is a mafioso regime (both parties) It is so blindingly obvious that we are governed by criminals they laugh about it openly.
And the job of the DoJ is to protect the DC crime family from accountability/prosecution.
It’s the same reason Iran will not give up their program. The US and it’s allies have demonstrated that we are not to be trusted. Any country giving up their nukes is stupid. We created this paradigm due to our actions.
Now that we know NK will not shut down their program, enough with the phony tough talk, figure out a way to bring some relief to the people suffering there. Military solutions don’t work, we’re still, technically, at war.
Holt is a multi millionaire “news star” (journalists died out a long time ago) who gets paid A LOT OF MONEY by Comcast. He likes his money, power and job perks. So he does and says what Comcast tells him to.
Defense industry corporations are some of the cable networks’ biggest ad clients. They really want to have as many wars as possible. Trump believes that we alone have the right to have and use nuclear weapons. We are superior and others will do what we say. Or, we will destroy you. Corporate media and the DC think tanks like to use euphemisms instead like “regime change”. But it doesn’t matter what another sovereign states’ population wants. You do what we say.
Oh please… America uber alles has been the religion of both parties.
Who was President when Gaddafi was overthrown and butchered?
Who was behind the “spontaneous” coup in Ukraine that overthrew a democratically elected pro-Russian leader?
Ukraine btw violently supresses all forms of political decent under America’s puppet regime. This never makes headlines in the western press.
America’s path from a riteous republic that began in benevolence has decended into a pit of evil.
The LORD giveth… and the LORD shall take away
2nd, thanks.
Congratulations to north korea. The sooner they have nukes the better.
Many Americans and their elected officials tend to forget history. Horrors committed by the USA govt is not easily forgotten by the victims…… history worth visiting for all……
Consequences of the ’ forgotten’ war
Korea: forgotten nuclear threats
https://mondediplo.com/2004/12/08korea
ps Thanks Jon for the linked article in Huff Post.
Recent update by Prof Cumings….
This Is What’s Really Behind North Korea’s Nuclear Provocations
https://www.thenation.com/article/this-is-whats-really-behind-north-koreas-nuclear-provocations/
ps it should read USA govt are not easily forgotten above..
Probably the most important example of this (nations seeking nuclear weapons for deterrence) is the Israeli nuclear weapons program, which the U.S. & Israeli governments still ludicrously refuse to publicly acknowledge.
Like Israeli government policies or not, it’s painfully obvious that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is the #1 reason there’s been no coordinated Arab country attack on Israel since their existence was known (c. early 1970s). The problem with Israel, however, is that it might feel it can use its nuclear arsenal (100 nuclear weapons by most estimates) to back up military assaults on its neighbors without fear of retaliation (bombing Iran, for example).
And this is why it’s such a taboo subject, since if it was publicly acknowledged and the IAEA came into inspect the program, then Iran could say, well, we need our own nuclear arsenal to deter Israel and the US from bombing our country, as happened to Iraq under false pretenses of WMD development.
All this encourages proliferation, but the main driver behind this in the world today is the U.S. neocon/neoliberal regime change games, in Iraq & Libya respectively, lead by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld gang and the Clinton-Nuland-Flournoy gangs, respectively, with plenty of other followers.
I suppose there is an argument for nuclear deterrence, such as the fact that Pakistan and India have not engaged in large-scale cross-border warfare since they both developed nuclear arsenals, but at the same time there is this potential for an accident triggering a mind-bogglingly destructive nuclear exchange.
The vast majority of news articles I read don’t even come close to discussing how bad that would be, particularly if commercial nuclear power reactors are targeted with nukes. Fukushima and Chernobyl were bad enough but imagine if they’d been nuked? No remediation possible, burn to the ground, a gigantic planetary-scale nuclear fallout event with all the stored and active fuel rods going into the atmosphere as hot gases and particles, that’s a nightmare scenario.
At least the Israeli nuclear weapons arsenal is less of a taboo topic these days, but most American media still refuses to discuss it. However, a Google News search of the following gets many returns:
[ “israel’s nuclear” OR “Israeli nuclear” “north korea” ]
There were several wars between Israel and Arab states before Israel acquired nukes (or at least before anyone knew about them). How did that go?
Arab countries don’t attack Israel because they’d get their asses kicked again, not because Israel has nukes. The U.S. gives Israel the best and most modern weapons that it gives or sells anyone else, and the Israeli army is very well-trained. They don’t need nukes to stave off invasion.
BTW, none of this is an endorsement of Israel or it’s Apartheid policies, just the facts about Israeli military might.
The insanity and paranoia of policy makers in the US has driven them mad enough to make stuff up to invade countries and kill the population and place American youth into offensive hell. It is wrong, sick, and monstrous. It is also the same sort of illness exhibited by certain people in israel.
A leader of a small country with resources, who prefers to be left alone and not targeted for attack for takeover for theft of resources by wallstreet thieves and pigs, you would have to be brainless and nuts not to have a seriously good defensive position of equal power to fend off a large insane country that likes to invade and kill as did Nazi Germany.
The subsequent BULLY-TALK by elected persons who abuse Americans by denial of health care and education, who abuse Americans by denial of freedom of speech and criticism, who abuse Americans by getting them killed in fraudulent military nonsense, who abuse Americans by refusing to guarantee and implement Life Liberty and pursuit of happiness – a state of well being and equal power, and who abuse Americans by sicking the rabid dog of wallstreet upon the population, only demonstrates that the ill will they hold toward the INDEPENDENT country of North Korea is just a reflection of the contempt they have Americans.
Amazing how all you {in writing this article} did was change perspective, and
our fear becomes their terror.
Good Job
Wow two “progressive “propaganda pieces in the same day..one about the Philippines, and one about North Korea
I’ve long recognized this fact, that having nuclear weapons is the only thing that gives ANY country a semblance of sovereignty. Without them, you stand no chance against invasion.
Long ago, during my school days, a history teacher lectured on the concept of “sovereignty”, basically stating that each country is free to make its own laws, and follow its own method of governance, without interference from other countries – that is was every country’s “right”, and that America “respected” the concept of “sovereignty” in all countries, and would leave all countries to follow their own path, unless said country launched a military attack against it.
I remember commenting to the class that only a handful of the world’s nations had true sovereignty, such as America, Russia, the UK, etc, since they have nuclear weapons. But most countries, I went on, do not, and therefore their “sovereignty” is an illusion, since there is nothing stopping the nuclear-armed countries from imposing their will upon them – which was often the case.
On the other hand, Russia (back then the USSR) had true sovereignty, since NO country on earth could impose its will upon it, unless they wanted to face nuclear Armageddon. Thus, the real definition of a “sovereign country”, I told the class, was any country that possessed nuclear weapons. To say the least, my history teacher did not like hearing that.
Now, Kim Jong is the ruler of a truly sovereign country.
And he likes the feeling…
You might be right about what it takes nowadays to be sovereign. But if it indeed takes nukes, the Earth is probably doomed at some point. This situation is psychopathic, pure & simple.
coates could not have put it better. the era of threats and unwarranted sanctioning are coming to a swift and well deserved end.
>The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes and Ukraine giving up its nukes is unfortunately if you had nukes, never give them up.
This. Memorandums and guaranties worth nothing. Kim is smart to not give up on nukes. Nuclear disarmament process is a farce.
can we blame it on obama? obama did it. thanks obama.
and that russia thing is a non-issue (my ass).
Actually it traces back to George W. Bush, who if you remember was obsessed by the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, part of their ensemble of WMDs that have never been found. (But take heart, neocons, it might happen any day now ;-} ) As it turns out Iraq did have a nuclear weapons program but abandoned it many years before Bush and his crowd used it as a pretext for war. The French and German intelligence services knew that the program had been dismantled, and so did the IAEA, and they all told the US, but they were ignored. The interesting thing about that is that if Saddam hadn’t dismantled his program, Iraq might have had nukes by 2003, and I suspect that in that case Bush & Co would have had to find someone else to pick on.
All that having been said, we should be working to totally eliminate nuclear weapons from all the world’s arsenals. Even though the risk of an accidental nuclear war may be very small on a daily basis, it is non-zero which means that eventually it will happen. But it is hard to argue using math and long term thinking with people who know little math, and whose time horizon is measured in the number of days until their next payday.
I don’t fault pres trump for trying to reach out to this guy. The Philippines have been a strategic asset to us, but now this idiot is courting North Korea and china. I’m not sure the what the next move will be, but it’s likely not a good one.
South America, the Middle East and much of the problems in south Asia can be traced directly to our short sited nationalistic foreign policy since WW2.
Never has “You reap what you sow” been more apparent than it is today. In our politics, our economy AND in our environment.
From bleeding heart bed wetters to baby killing neo-whatevers we are ALL at fault.
Speak for yourself, Deadheded. Throwing that “we” around is based on an erroneous assumption. I do not accept any actions by the U.S. government to be “mine” (or as you say “our”). They are NOT mine. The raging imperialism of the U.S. is NOT my fault and has never had my support. The goal of the U.S. is (and always has been) world domination by any means. They resent ANY thing that stands in the way of this goal. They demand the right to have total control. And then, of course, they point their fingers at countries who refuse to go along with this and blame THEM.
I think Deadhead is right, Carolyn, in the sense that whether one calls oneself a liberal or a conservative, a democrat or a republican, as long as one identifies with one of those broad categories, one is at fault. At the moment, I estimate that less than 10% of all US adults do not consider themselves to be among those groups. Also complicit are the 40+% of US adults who do not bother to vote. That a tiny minority of us have consistently opposed US imperialism throughout our adult lives has had no measurable effect. We might as well not exist.
That’s not even close to being correct. The majority of Americans consider themselves independent, not Democrats or Republicans. And the meanings of “liberal” and “conservative” are very unclear at this point, so those categories are meaningless here.
But what DOES make most Americans — and by “most,” I mean the vast majority — is their actions, and I’m not talking about voting. If you own and drive a car, you are more responsible for U.S. wars by that behavior than by anything else that people not in power do. There would be no oil wars if not for gluttonous American consumption of oil. This is also true to a lesser extent for the vast majority of Americans who overconsume anything else.
What people believe, alone, does not make them responsible. What they do, on the other hand, does.
Will agree w/ Jeff and hed,
Folks, unless you did something to actively withdraw your support from U.S. government it absolutely is yours to claim.
Did you do anything to instruct your representatives, even if they weren’t the guy / gals you elected?
You do realize that they are your subordinates right? You do not send “prayers”; you do not ask or hope… you instruct them!
If they ignore you, which they prob will, but you must try anyway right, then so be it.