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North Korea might nuke out of despair
Published: 26 July, 2010, 08:50
Edited: 30 July, 2010, 05:53
Republic of Korea, Busan: This picture released by the US Navy shows aircraft carrier USS George Washington departing Busan on July 25, 2010. (AFP Photo / Adam K. Thomas/US Navy/HO)
(4.9Mb) embed videoTAGS: Military, Nuclear, Politics, North Korea
Despite threats of a nuclear response from North Korea, a joint navy drill between the US and South Korea is underway off the region's peninsula.
The exercise involves 20 ships, 200 aircraft and about 8,000 troops; it will last until Wednesday.
Tensions have been running high after an international commission blamed the North for the sinking of a South Korean ship back in March. Pyongyang denied any involvement in the incident.
Although the US says it does not want to invade, 28,000 American troops are based in South Korea and 50,000 more in Japan.
Leonid Petrov, a lecturer on Korean Studies at Sydney University, believes Washington’s actions are provoking Pyongyang.
“North Korea never threatens first. North Korea is a small, destitute, poor, impoverished, struggling, pariah state. I believe that North Korea simply reacts or, sometimes, overreacts to the threats that come from the outside. If the US decides to go ahead and execute invasion or regime change [in North Korea], I would not be surprised if Pyongyang at some stage decides to use its nuclear deterrence capability against whatever enemy is closest – and South Korea is going to be the first victim of it.”
The US military exercises are a show-up not specifically for North Korea, but for China and Russia, believes Pavel Leshakov, Director of the International Centre for Korean Studies in Moscow.
A possible attack on North Korea to overthrow the existing regime is out of question. The last time the Pentagon was actively preparing for war with North Korea was in 1994, recalled Leshakov.
It is true that North Korea has a big army, while a great part of its population lives in extreme poverty. Still, the “regime is rather stable, much more stable than 15 years ago when Kim Jong-Il took power from his father.”
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Sean Paranoia? It seems you don't know your history. North Korea was razed with US carpet bombing in the 1950-53 Korean war. The United States refuses to let South Korea sign a peace treaty and remove all American troops from the Korean territory. The South Korean puppet government does whatever her master orders. It is the United States that is keeping the Koreans apart. It is the United States that killed more than 3 million Vietnamese in their own land. It is the United States that bombed Serbia for 78 days to force her to leave her ancestral land of Kosovo. Iraq and Afghanistan are still going on and the murderous acts of the US military are being revealed daily. I just mentioned four countries that the courageous military of the United States destroyed. Finally, and in this case most importantly, It is the United States than sank the Korean warship to create a casus belli for military threats around East Asia, especially to China for not supporting the US lie about the North Korean responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean Ship. Tiger tim You're are so out of it I won't waste my time on you.
This report is obviously biased toward our vast worldwide, cross-the-boards RED China biz-nihilist power lobby. US troops are in South Korea BECAUSE, 60 years ago, North Korea, instigated by MAO and Stalin, invaded South Korea with the most massive artillery and rocket barrage history has EVER seen. YES, more massive than anything on the eastern front during WWII! FACT Its also a KNOWN FACT that RED China wants NO open, prosperous democratic societies on its borders. NONE. South Korea, by ALL accounts, is just that. South Korea is, in fact, the ONLY open, prosperous democracy ANYWHERE on the Far East mainland in history. Many scholars NOW agree, had the US prevailed in 1953, rather than 'holding the line' in the name of 'peace' that the illegitimate MAO regime would NOT have been able to maintain itself ---certainly NOT through such ghastly phases as its 'social engineering' crusades. IN FACT, had the Korean penninsula been libertaed and united there's a good chance that Vietnam would NEVER have happened ---and likewise Cambodia ---AND---MILLIONS of North Koreans would NOT have died in genocidal famines and the Cold War itself would have ended DECADES earlier. The Financial Times reported a few years back that even Kim Il Sung became AWARE that he himself had been duped by MAO. Recent scholarship claims he died of a stroke while reading the very brief of NK intelligence disclosures on the matter. -Deal with it!
July 27, 2010, 19:01, armen08 wrote > Finally, and in this case most importantly, > It is the United States than sank the Korean warship to create a casus belli for military threats around East Asia, especially to China for not supporting the US lie about the North Korean responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean Ship. So, the US is clairvoyant too?