by Pepe Escobar for the Saker blog
The 19th Party Congress has made it very clear that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” – as codified by President Xi Jinping – is China’s road map ahead. Not only the strategy graphically eschews those much-lauded “Western values”; it will, in Xi’s own words, offer “a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence.”
Xinhua even dared to venture, “the 21st century is likely to see capitalism lose its appeal while the socialist movement, led by China, rapidly catches up”.
To say this won’t go down very well in the West, especially in the US, may be the understatement of the century – even considering that the Chinese system is more like “neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics.”
It’s enlightening to crisscross what happened in Beijing with what was happening in Washington on the eve of President Trump’s trip to Asia, when he will visit China but also Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines. Discussion of virtually all the key issues in Asia-Pacific will be on the table.
Asia-Pacific is where the real action is – geopolitically and geoeconomically. And once again, the number one issue in the intractability stakes will be the DPRK.
At a recent meeting with top US military and intelligence chiefs Trump, referring to the DPRK, asked to be provided “with a broad range of military options, when needed, at a much faster pace.”
For his part, Pentagon head Mattis has emphasized that “the US army must stand ready.” He has been extolling his targeted military audience to read T.R. Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War – a history of the 1950-1953 Korean War, and even extracting a chilling quote from it; “You may fly over a nation forever, you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life. But if you desire to defend it… you must do this on the ground the way the Roman legions did: by putting your young men in the mud.”
Yet the real story regarding the Trump meeting is what was taking place behind the scenes involving key business/economic decision makers – call them some of the Masters of the Universe – as revealed to me by a high-level intel source privy to these meetings. The conclusions of the debate were then presented directly to Trump, ahead of his visit to Asia.
The Sudetenland revival
The source stressed how principals in these meetings were familiar with “key strategists above Mattis who were responsible for most of the major US defense programs in place.” They know, for instance, how “we are four generations behind in defensive missiles which seals the Russian airspace” – even though any expert in US Think Tankland persists in total denial.
The number one concern is about “the present satellite and missile capacity of North Korea to detonate nuclear bombs over the US knocking out the entire electronic infrastructure through a http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/north-korea-us-attack-emp-power-grid-kill-90-per-cent-american-population-electromagnetic-pulse-a8002756.html
electromagnetic impulse (EMP) attack liquidating 90% of the American population within a year. This concurs with public statements by Putin that tiny countries in the future can obtain the capacity to destroy superpowers.”
Putin’s comment should be interpreted as this possible DPRK threat being capable of affecting a very advanced nation much more than those in the Global South; a completely different dimension compared to the former MAD concept of mutually assured (nuclear) destruction.
In his own presentation to Trump, Mattis emphasized the EMP “as a potential horror beyond imagination. Within 24 hours Walmart shelves would have nothing on them. Food distribution would grind to a halt. Food riots all over the US would take place. 80% of the population would perish according to Mattis.”
The debate then moved to whether the DPRK already possesses submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). According to Heritage’s http://www.heritage.org/staff/bruce-klingner
Bruce Klingner, the DPRK has twenty Romeo class submarines capable of carrying SBLMs (their range is 9,000 miles; the distance from Pyongyang to New York City is 6,783 miles). True, they are old, built in the 1950s. The question is open on how far advanced the DPRK is in miniaturization.
The debate considered the possibility the EMP threat was “a leak from Mattis to justify war tension, or it so should be interpreted by China and Russia. Mattis said the US would lose 80% of their population based on Pentagon studies, though they did not go that far. Mattis has no strategic sense at all and should be no more than a minor Marine functionary as his ability is very limited.”
Regardless of Mattis’s judgement, the principals agreed that the highest concern is the miniaturization of a hydrogen bomb set off via satellite as an EMP attack – even though that would not be very high above the earth and could, in theory, be knocked out by US ground missiles.
What was interesting is that this possible DPRK threat invoked the specter of the Sudetenland.
“The Sudetenland analogy was one of the principals’ way of expressing that WWIII has already started”, according to the source. “My interpretation was that he was referring to actions of North Korea, and actions in Syria and Ukraine. Those were his words, not mine. You could say Russia occupied Crimea or exerts its influence over Donbass. Or has displaced the US in Iraq and Syria. The main point is that Russia and China are starting to roll back US influence. So the North Korea threat is also part of Sudetenland.”
What’s clear is that the DPRK drama is further straining US alliances, and not only in Northwest Asia. According to the source, “a lot of this has to do with a wide perception that US weaponry does not measure up to the Russians and Chinese. And that US interests such as stopping North Korea from reaching the US overrides US considerations of its allies. These alliance structures are falling apart out of sight of the public.”
In a nutshell, this behind the scenes debate does show how alarmed is the US establishment. It’s unclear what Trump will make of its conclusions as he gets ready to hit the Asia trail.
Wang Yang to the rescue?
The ultimate question for the US establishment is how to find some sort of balance in breaking up the Eurasian landmass from the long-term China-Russia strategic partnership embrace. Tactics include mixing a push to resurrect Pilsudski’s http://hungarianspectrum.org/2017/06/29/the-three-seas-initiative-and-donald-trump/
Intermarium Plan against Russia with countering China by seeking to ally India, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. This is by now classic Cold War 2.0 – but this time around with China and Russia massively stronger than the alliances attempted against them, and on top of it constituted as a Eurasian peer-competitor strategic partnership.
Progressive alienation, simultaneously, of China, Russia and Germany (for instance, via US Congress sanctions on German companies over Nord Stream Two), is not only a de facto act of strategic insanity. This will end up forcing the trio into a solid, long-term realignment in which Washington will be completely alienated from the entire Eurasian landmass to the benefit of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its spin-offs.
In their upcoming meeting in Beijing, a plausible scenario is Xi suggesting Trump the possibility of a deal with Kim Jong-un – eventually leading to de facto ending of the Korean War (instead of the current armistice). The process would include multilateral security guarantees (by the US, and endorsed/supervised by Russia and China) and a US no-sanction commitment towards some sort of economic opening if the DPRK freezes for good the testing of nuclear weapons and ICBMs. Xi would be a sort of guarantor of the DPRK. The question is whether Pyongyang would accept it.
In realpolitik terms there’s not much the Trump administration can do about the DPRK, except work through Beijing and Moscow to defuse the crisis. Some action is underway via the so-called “New York channel”, with Joseph Yun, US negotiator for North Korea, talking to diplomats at the DPRK mission to the UN. A potential, unilateral US attack on the DPRK could trigger the very World War destruction it’s supposed to halt, as China has made it quite clear.
So all eyes, once again, are on China. Apart from Xi, the man to watch with the emergence of the new 7-member Politburo Standing Committee is Wang Yang – the number four in the hierarchy who now becomes executive vice-premier.
Wang is the former party chief in both Chongqing and Guangdong, and previously vice-premier in charge of agriculture and foreign trade. He’s the top Chinese official dealing with Washington on economy and trade – and may now have his work cut out for him; to convince Team Trump, via Chinese diplomacy, that to do business with the DPRK is actually a good deal.
That certainly beats the specter of an EMP inferno.
Trump has apparently twitted himself into a corner where all of his options are off his table.
He has clearly taken diplomacy off the table.
And a military strike would kill hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of South Koreans, so that is an option that is unlikely to be approved by America’s South Korean allies.
With no cards to play, Trump is now apparently returning to relying on China and Russia to provide him with an option. Although, the option they repeatedly give Trump has also been taken off the table as apparently American military drills are sacred and can not be even delayed to reach a resolution.
Trump has no personal experience in foreign policy or military matters. And if the months of Trump handling the North Korea crisis, his ‘art of the deal’ was all just BS to sell books. Which means that Trump is completely reliant on the generals he’s surrounded himself with as top advisors. And these don’t seem to be the cream of the crop of American generals, which isn’t a very elite crew in the first place. They seem to be good at using overwhelming force to crush far, far weaker opponents, but even then they don’t seem very good at anticipating what will follow and dealing with it.
I was hoping that this might just settle down into Trump and Kim throwing insults at each other like two American professional wrestlers, but lately the propaganda machine has been ramping up such that Kim is now being called a direct threat to the USA that must be dealt with.
Yet, Trump the Twit President doesn’t seem to have any options to deal with North Korea. He can kill a million people or so, and make sure that Seoul and its environs are destroyed like Raqqa and Mosul which won’t do anything good to the world economy. He can try to force a break between USA and China, which would destroy the American economy which is now reliant on near-slave-labor making cheap goods for Walmart. But its hard to see how even Trump can spin such outcomes as being good for the USA, and I suspect that the destruction of Seoul would completely destroy the US alliance system around the world because what sort of idiot would want to be America’s ally after they see that such an alliance got a million or so South Koreans killed and their economy destroyed.
My response to the courageously-named anonymous:
I agree, Trump is not a international statesman. Not a diplomat. He is a self-declared US nationalist, which is how he gained his presidency, by appealing to those who have been left behind in the ‘fly-over states’. He wants to see ‘America Great Again’. His comments (tweets) are always aimed at a domestic audience.
This necessarily means rolling back various free-trade agreements, which do nothing but encourage those companies with the wherewithal to move their manufacturing overseas where labour costs are vastly cheaper, for profitability, and necessarily damaging the domestic economy.
We’re talking about globalist companies here. You can say the same about the politics of the rest of the western world, who always follow their political masters in the US of A, since they are generally gutless arseholes who lack the courage to upset an existing apple cart (power structures), which will generally be to their own disadvantage, since they will be forced to admit their long-standing policies are utter failures.
What this also necessarily means is that those same globalist companies are anti-social. They are happy to destroy the very societies that nurtured them for their own greed.
And yet the vast amount of public income (taxation) comes from the poor buggers that have no say, except for this joke called democracy, which I think is little short of a rort.
https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
The links I provided above are only representative, any internet search (use your own favourite search engine, mine is certainly not Google) can provide many similar statistics that say the wealthy pay the least amount of their way, yet have most control over government policies in the west.
Which may be why they hate the Russian Federation / Peoples’ Republic of China so much. They retain state-owned industries, for the benefit of their socialist republics, for the benefit of their societies.
Dare I say it, a bit like Moamar Khaddafi’s Jamahariya.
I claim western economics has absolutely no future, yet western politics is dominated by economists. Referring back to the links above, all western economists will claim that all countries need a bigger population, so we can garner more taxes (consumerism), and therefore balance a public budget that increasingly needs to support those people left behind by global economic rationality.
Which seems senseless to me. Paying richer Peters to pay a lot more of poorer Pauls. I can’t see how that will can work. You’re asking for you’re own populist revolution.
Alright, off my usual high-horse.
Back to topic:
Any armchair general will know that USA simply has no good military options against North Korea. Any military strike against DPRK will result in massive civilian casualties for their alleged allies, particularly South Korea, maybe Japan to boot.
‘Decapitation strikes’ won’t work either, the People’s Party and military is thoroughly entrenched.
Especially now DPRK has nuclear weapons, and apparently the technology to deliver them. Which is purely for their own self-defense, as has been said, they have seen what has happened to independent governments that have no serious means of striking back against an insensate foe that can bring to bear massive materiel.
Most westerners have no clue about the recent history of the Korean Peninsula. Few understand that the Korean War was to stop the unification of the Korean people for Cold War reasons, not for the benefit of alleged ‘democratic’ South Koreans, who never wanted to be split from their North Korean brothers / sisters.
Neither the Russian Federation nor the People’s Republic of China will accept the ‘Great Satan’ on their eastern borders.
Any military action by the US of A against North Korea will not just result in great woe for South Korea, I think it will almost certainly result in a nuclear WW3.
I strenuously hope Mr. President Trump’s military council, and Mr. President Trump himself, fully understand that, all huff and puff to the side.
Re: your last sentence – Yes. And I think that this is something that Canasdians should take into deep consideration – along with eventually becoming the eastern terminus of the Belt and Road Initiative. This is reality, not the HollywoodLand that the USA has been living in for a century.
I agree with you but there is also the glaring fact that millions of Koreans have already been murdered by the the US of Arrogance.
” “…that tiny countries in the future can obtain the capacity to destroy superpowers.”…”
Indeed this is long established.
In 1964, I believe, at Cal Tech in Pasadena California there were presented objective science lectures – essentially engineering lectures, entitled “A Ballistic Missile for an Nth State” (if I recall the title precisely. Within or under that rubric a sub-set of lecture dealt with “pay-loads”. There could be at that time only one kind of payload.
Please refer to the Nth Country Experiment as to making payloads…there are strong implications.
Ahemmm. 1964. Get it?
forgot to be explicit…lecture series stated in absolute terms that IRBM and a layercake gadget were well withing the capacity in 1964 of many “third world” States.
Trump is being forced into a corner by halfwits claiming he is a Russian mole.
He is being threatened with impeachment on charges of treason. Not only that they are going to go after his kith and kin too. To save all he loves war might be only option he has. Crazy choice for sure but that is what you get when you accuse an innocent man of a crime he could not possibly have committed.
Kim Jong-un doesn’t want to go the way of Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddaffi. So he’s going to continue with the development of his nuclear defense.
The US “elite” is finally going to find out that they’re not the world bully any more. In case they would be so insane as to militarily attack North Korea they will find out the hard way. Even if they would attack, the whole world population will blame them for the destruction of millions of innocent citizens in North and South Korea. And possibly in the US as well. Especially the latter scenario would teach the US citizens that they must no longer trust the deep state and “elite” globalist power brokers. Because they do exist, and it will be known, no matter how the MSM they own has been concealing that.
If they don’t they’ll discover it the soft way. But either way, they will have to get used to the idea they’re not “exceptional.”
RT: “N. Korea won’t think twice about ‘pressing button’ if US strikes, defector and former diplomat warns”
https://www.rt.com/news/408562-nkorea-strike-south-defector/
Or to put it more accurately – if the US attacks North Korea, North Korea will defend itself – yes?
How is that different from what Russia would do, China would do, Iran would do and so on?
Don’t see the point of the RT article.
The RT article lets the voice of a North Korean insider be heard: that the US better think twice before attacking North Korea. For the consequences would be devastating. In the first place for US ally South Korea. And as Pepe pointed out, who will still trust the US after it has sacrificed an ally for its own interests?
On top of that: North Korea is not a toothless country that can’t and won’t bite the US back like Iraq and Libya couldn’t and didn’t. Nor Syria. This time the US itself would most probably be militarily counter attacked on US soil. Something its current population hasn’t experienced. They are used to bombing other countries far away, Not that their own homes in the good old USA are being bombed by a foreign military power. That sure would be a shockingly sobering experience for them.
Very true.
And to add insult to injury, the Pindos would also be subjected to massive, nay huge, contempt and ridicule while the DPRK leadership gets standing ovations and congratulations from all over the world.
The State Department has been failing in the region for decades trying to treat North Korea and China as separate issues. Their various efforts to use “carrots” to encourage NK reform have made things worse. Trump is openly defying the U.S. establishment by announcing that there will be no further State Department appeasement of NK.
Trump states, accurately, that North Korea is readily controllable by China. They have a useful “stick” as supplier of necessary resources, such as fuel. Also, it is in China’s interests to bring North Korea into line. Violence on the NK/SK border would send millions of refugees streaming into China.
Maneuvering the situation to a bilateral negotiation between China and North Korea is a strong win for Trump’s anti-establishment administration. The solution keeps the State Department from malicious tampering. And, it prevents either side from blaming lack of progress on the U.S. or other parties.
from the above comment, the interesting question becomes “Why would China want to do that?”
So, yes, I understand that Trump and the American war machine and bankers would want to push this problem off onto China. But, China has been steadily making sure that this doesn’t happen. And I see nothing that has changed that. Why would China want to punish North Korea for the United States on behalf of the US war machine and US bankers?
Perhaps if Trump offered China a deal where the US would not continue to engage in a long running trade war with China? But, that’s exactly what Trump doesn’t seem to want with his America First rhetoric.
While Trump may dream of China solving the problem that Trump has created for himself with North Korea, I see no reason why the Chinese would want to do that. Particularly in that the Chinese have already offered Trump and his Generals a way out, one that cost the US pratically nothing, and that the US war machine loudly and completely rejected. I’m speaking of the no tests-no wargames solution that China has repeatedly offered the US.
Trump has offered nothing to China, and China has no reason to help Trump solve the problem he’s created for himself.
The various NK problem predate this administration. The establishment State Department’s appeasement policy has been exacerbating the issue for decades. Rather than continuing to fail, Trump is stepping away from this this strategy. It may not be pretty, but it is the first pre-requisite for any potential success.
China has a border with North Korea. Avoiding NK problems directly benefits China by avoiding spillover effects if the situation gets worse. China would be acting in their own enlightened self interest.
The question I would pose is, “Why would China stay un-involved when there national interest is at stake?”
By China’s vast populations size alone, absorption of the entire North Korean population (1.7%) would not be a critical problem. China has shown that it is willing to take great pain and sacrifice for its long term interest. An addition of 1.7% of population is far more acceptable than having a hostile US on its border bristling with more THAADs and what not.
Further, the Chinese character does not react well to bullying. A pillar of the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy is that it was they who finally managed to kick out rampaging foreigners after a Century of Humiliation. Westerners show that they do not understand how much this episode affects the Chinese attitudes towards West, when they start using terms like “carrot and stick”. Trump and the bungling State Department would do well to understand the Chinese mind before attempting to push it around like some small Latin American state. But that cannot happen before they learn some humility.
It is very much to the benefit of China that there be a truculent, threatening, and nuclear-armed North Korea.
This diverts attention away from China’s takeover of the South China Sea as well as its moves to seize control of the islands in the East China Sea, which -currently under Japanese control- form a barrier to China’s access to the Pacific Ocean.
Should there be war on the Korean Peninsula, China’s military will prevent refugees from leaving Korea. If war comes, China’s biggest challenges would be to determine how much military assistance it should provide the North, and when it should orchestrate a truce.
this maybe OT but great insight gained from the comment section from:
http://hungarianspectrum.org/2017/06/29/the-three-seas-initiative-and-donald-trump/
especially starting from the commenter Istvan. the level of delusion is breathtaking.
Iran bigger headache than DPRK? Include Iran in Russia-China strategic partnership?
“Northwest Asia”–that would be in Russia, would it not? Clearly that’s a typo given the context, yes? Curious as to the amount of disinformation Pepe’s inside source fed him. But what’s most curious is the–supposed–total lack of discussion about the ongoing highly organized drive to dedollarize global commerce, which is the actual “EMP” threat looming on the horizon that would cause the Outlaw US Empire to lose its leverage both globally and domestically. The propaganda mills are full of crap meant to be scary thanks to the constant indoctrination, but have said next to nothing about what I see as the scariest threat to the Deep State–the implosion of their dollar-denominated assets via a process they can do almost nothing to stop short of nuclear or biological war.
“…short of nuclear or biological war”
wrong. nuclear or biological war would only speed up the dedollarization process,
because world trade would halt and switch to a more localized trade.
game over $.
You may be right about attempting to give him disinformation, but I have a feeling Pepe Escobar is not easily played. That said, it is only my opinion based on his writings the last several years.
As far as I can see, neither the US Government nor the Washington political establishment know what they are doing, nor do they know what they have to do. Wall Street has global ambitions, and they expect the US Government to satisfy them, forgetting the old army rule which goes like this:”He who wants to control everything ends up controlling nothing”. On the one hand the US has a huge foreign and internal debt, printing large amounts of dollars backed by nothing, while on the other hand China and Russia are introducing the Eurasian Economic Union. China has already stated that it will introduce the petro-yuan from the beginning of 2018. Hardly good news for Washington and Wall Street. Trump is going to China to see what kind of a deal he can make with the Chinese.I don’t see him achieving anything of importance. Why should the Chinese, and Russians, back down ? Things might get really nasty upon Trumps return from his Asian tour, when Washington and Wall Street conclude that the East is going to take the lead, and that the only thing that can prevent this would be a war. I sincerely hope they will not decide on anything as foolish as that.
Its a technical point, but no one seems to understand the term petro-dollar.
The term petro-dollar meant the return of dollars to the US from oil producers like OPEC. The US understood that even with their dollar printing presses, an economy would be hurt with giant trade deficits going out to purchase oil. Thus, it became a deliberate US goal to get these dollars that go out to buy oil to then turn around and come back to be spent in the US. The giant arms purchases from Saudi Arabia, which used to upset the Israeli lobby, were a large part of this. Getting those dollars spent on oil to come back home. Purchases of companies and real estate by the Saudis were another way of accomplishing this goal.
And that’s what the term petro-dollar refers to …. the oil dollars coming back home to the USA. Its not that oil is priced or sold in dollars. It was the deals and understandings, primarily with KSA, that they would spend their dollars back into the US economy.
When Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, he made a deal with Saudi Arabia for it to sell all it’s oil in dollars. Others followed. This gave the dollar a huge advantage over other currencies. China is now introducing the petro-yuan, offering to buy oil in Chinese yuans, which will automatically cancel the dollar as the reserve world currency. According to one analyst, the Chinese and Russians have more than 60,000 tonnes of gold, and it’s only a matter of time before both introduce gold backed rubles and yuans, after which the dollar is finished. This explains why Trump is going to China, hoping to make some sort of deal. I wonder what he expects to achieve.
I think he is going to China to threaten XI. I guess you could say its to “deal”. But I have a feeling its to threaten to break up the US trade with China unless China supports the US against North Korea (and maybe other countries). If that is true.We will see how China reacts.Will they cave in to the threats (I hope not),or risk the loss of the US markets to Chinese trade.If they make the correct choice they will have to endure some short term economic pain.But there after be free from blackmail over trade by the US.I don’t know which choice they will make. But their sovereignty may depend on making the right one.
Only 17% of Chinese exports go to the US. I don’t think China will sacrifice her national security for 17% (and shrinking) of her earnings. China shows willingness to take pain and sacrifice for her long term interests. Like you, I don’t think Trump will be able to bully China around.
The US is not able to cut Chinese trade into the US because for every product and service available, China supplies assemblies or finished products where there are no alternatives. Any electronic device has Chinese parts or subassemblies. The US auto industry is dwarfed by Chinese auto production so China would have no problem absorbing the items it normally supplies to the US auto makers. In 2015 the US makers produced 4,000,000 cars in the US, and about 40% of the content of those came from China. China produced 28,000,000 cars the same year and produces all its own parts and subassemblies.
That is repeated in every industry. Retail fully depends on China and countries aligned with China on the New Silk Road.
So, not problem if Trump wants the country to return to living in caves, all he has to do is shut foreign trade. Try to find something in a store that is not filled with Chinese parts or was not made in China.
That trade threat is a non-starter and China knows it.
US sanctions and bullying behavior pushed a dream into reality with amazing speed…trade without dollars. It was only 10 years ago when China proposed a politically neutral reserve currency but that was rejected without discussion by the US.
The US sanctions against Russia for reasons never justified or explained except Obama wanting to destroy Russia. He made a simple demand to VISA and MasterCard and overnight 100,000,000 Russian credit cards stopped access their own money. That was enough for both China and Russia to move ahead with a plan to build non-political alternative for card clearing and bank to bank transactions to replace SWIFT. They did it quietly. More recently the OBOR got going to build the largest trade association and economic pact in history that does not use the US Dollar for settlement.They assumed it would take a generation to update or build from scratch the infrastructure in all surrounding countries, free, if they were members of the trade group.
This was not even talked about in the west, it never made the press but it is 10 times larger than the Marshall Plan and will include 3/4 of the world’s population. It was noticed however, just not talked about in the west but that was the urgent demand by Obama to hammer together the monstrous TPP that would have ended sovereignty and the middle class of every country in it. A bad but desperate plan to lock out 14 Pacific countries, pushed aggressively by Clinton as a co-author. It was a bad plan but was all the US could do to blunt the trauma such a trade group that did not include the dollar or the US.
The increased sanctions and additional aggression of the US accelerated the adoption of the New Silk Road so 110 countries have either signed up or made their intentions to join known. A full generation ahead of schedule, all because of irrational behavior of the US forced China and Russia to step it up.
Since the project includes parts of Africa and much of the Middle East, with countries like Afghanistan in key locations on the route that could be choke points, there is much to suspect the increased action by the US in Afghanistan, and why Syria was such a priority, capturing those, would block large sections of the ME and beyond from trade.
So we can expect more desperate moves to shut down the speedy adoption of this trade association that has the very hostile motto “Peace Through Mutual Prosperity” in keeping with China and Russia’s belief in national sovereignty and non-interference should be every country’s motto.
@Uncle Bob
What would China gain or why would the Chinese leadership be cowed by any thinly veiled threats from the US? China has been working to build its domestic demand (all those infrastructure projects, entire cities built from nothing, etc.) and is seemingly more focused on OBOR than trying to fill more Walmarts with more crap that Americans don’t have money to buy anyway. The US is a collapsing economy, and the Chinese leadership probably understands this better than most Americans. Trump could issue threats about trade war, but I wonder what leverage he has, really.
When Wall Street looks at the prospect of a war, and the prospect of major stocks like Apple and Walmart and probably Amazon getting crushed because of that war, I doubt it will look very attractive.
What happens to Apple’s share price when their supply of iPhone X’s is lost because of a war in the far east? What happens to Walmart stock, or Amazon stock, as their supply chains are disrupted?
If major players like some of the world’s wealthiest corporations take a big hit, that’s likely to cause a major sell-off across the markets. When billions and maybe trillions of dollars are lost because of a major market sell-off, I don’t think Wall Street is going to be happy.
What Wall Street wants right now is a tax cut. That’s the ball their eyes are on. Would a major war in the far east, and maybe a second front with Iran, kill off the tax cut? There are still a few budget deficit conscious politicians in Congress who are already arguing with the White House about how to pay for a tax cut. They seem to have lost at this time, but the expenses of a major war might change that.
Its already been said that Wall Street is likely to crash if the tax cut is not passed. Add to that, major losses for some of the wealthiest corporations in the world, and to me it seems highly unlikely that Wall Street wants a war.
As for Washington, I think that it is a bunch of idiots in a kindergarten on LSD, so who knows what they will think? Other than that, they’ll try to blame Russia somehow. But it seems rather unlikely that Wall Street will be happy with a major war right now.
“In his own presentation to Trump, Mattis emphasized the EMP as a potential horror beyond imagination. Within 24 hours Walmart shelves would have nothing on them. Food distribution would grind to a halt. Food riots all over the US would take place. 80% of the population would perish according to Mattis.”
Bring it on, please. Exceptional and indispensable folks are a plague to Planet Earth. Small Zionazi “revenge”: Kim Jong-Un will never become a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
So Mr. Escobar is now writing pieces specifically for the Saker Blog? That’s how I take the note below the title.
If so, that is excellent news. Both for readers of this blog who get to see some more pieces by Mr. Escobar they might not otherwise find, and I suppose for Mr. Escobar who finds ways to get around the media blacklist imposed against him by the western banker-owned press.
Thank you!
Well I found Pepe’s article also on Russia Insider: http://russia-insider.com/en/how-north-korea-freaking-out-us-establishment/ri21456
See it from the bright side: the more people are reading his articles, the better.
Cheers, Rob
It comes down to civilizational models , and which one will prevail , that will be determine the state of affairs of humanity for the 21st century and beyond.
The Chinese do business with briefcases and handshakes, a ‘win , win’ for everyone, especially in whatever country China does business with, they also come with a big checkbook and lines of credit ( on very easy terms). China also builds roads, housing, infrastructure, transportation etc for the host country in trade. Just ask the Venezuelans, or the Egyptians. Iran is gone to China ( and Russia) for good.
In fact, China has followed the model of Russia’s experience’s in the Caucuses against a Wahabbi/CIA/Mi6/Mossad insurgency and outright war against its Muslim Chechens, and how to deal with them with a long-tern vision.
In northwest China, the same masters of discord, subversion, war and unnecessary human suffering, have been fermenting tension and discord, getting China’s Muslims agitated. Well, that’s being nipped in the bud, as we speak. China is simply using vast resources to bring the standard of living much higher, and using a ‘soft’ approach. That’s what Putin did with Chechnya, and it was a smashing success. Chechen battalions in the Russian armed forces are in Syria today. And many hardened, seasoned veterans of the Chechen conflict went to the Donbass to offer their support to their Orthodox, Slavic brethren/countrymen. Russian Muslims and Orthodox, fighting and dying together, just like at Stalingrad. Ya, Russia has come a long way.
Look for China / Russia/ Iran to offer humanity a just, righteous and mutually beneficial relationship for all, and to all. Harmony instead of destruction, on all levels.
Or, the civilizational model we have now. Where the western world, Israel have all power and influence over the affairs of humanity. The Anglo-Christian bible-thumping televangelistic right, along with their masters, Jews, offspring of Russian territories of the tribes of Khazar, essentially want to maintain the miserable status quo, that humanity finds itself in. Bible thumpers and their masters, the Talmudists, will stop at nothing in order to not become irrelevant and fall by the wayside into a has-been empire. We all know the ‘fate’ of ‘former champs’. It’s usually no good.
Little by little countries are going to or already have broken out of the orbit of the miserable status quo of the western/Jewish model. And some are even fighting back, either in hot combat or by proxy.
The future is going to come from God, almighty, and by him from the east. ‘The writing is on the wall for the west/Israel.
There was a young man eating lion & nations rose up, caught him & put him in a pit.
China & Russia have been appointed by “nature’s God” to reign in man eating lions such as the US.
See Ezekial 19
” he went up and down among lions, he became a young lion, and learned to catch prey, and devoured men.
he knew their desolate palaces, and he laid waste their cities; land was desolated, … by noise of his roaring.
Then nations set against him on every side … , and spread their net over him: he was taken in their pit.”
What was motivation behind the source acting to betray the confidentiality of a secret meeting? Presumably such an act is a very significant felony…is it not? What’s motivation? Is leaker saying truth? Lies? Mix? Why this profile of mix?
Read critically, Comrades…
Is this a backchannel statement? If so, is it genuine or true?
XX has questions. Maybe this is setup for a FF over city X-ray…we live in a tragic comic book…
Please note the new descriptor being used by the US: Indo-Pacific region.
This is to further induce India-Modi to participate in the coming PATO, bastard sister of NATO. The US wants India all in. So the conflict region is now Indo-Pacific, not just Asia-Pacific.
The other thing is about State Dept. and how historically they have looked at North Korea and China as a unity.
Not so. They mistake the two nations as virtually one because they look at the ruling parties of each, Communist, and see them as united. (Ideologues only see other Ideologues.)
They aren’t, especially over the last three decades. North Korea is a family regime housed inside the Communist Party. China is as separate from North Korea as it was from the USSR.
The little observed North Korean relationship is with Russia. And the highly ignored in recent years is the efforts, discernible if one looks at principals in motion. For three years, the Russians have conducted “talks” with Pyongyang using Shoigu and Putin himself to coax Kim to come out of the caves and behave like a true head of state. Putin invited Kim and North Korean military to participate in the great 70th anniversary events and parade in Moscow two years ago. At the last minute, the North Koreans decided not to attend.
Now, Russia and the NK FM deputy who relates to “North America” have had several recent in-person talks in Moscow. Putin has personally led these “discussions”. In other words, Putin is coaching Pyongyang how to step back from the brink and open space for Russia and China to set up diplomatic talks with the US. These are part of the US “back channel” talks. It is Russia who is holding everyone’s hands, not China.
Kim continues to insult Beijing. He recently sent a seven-man hit team to Beijing to kill the son of his murdered half-brother. So his murderous schemes are still in play. And to do this during the transition week of President Xi and the creation of the new Standing Committee is mind-boggling insulting by Kim.
I think if anything peaceful comes about regarding the Korean Peninsula, it will be a product of Putin and Russian efforts.
The recent kiss-and-make-up between China and South Korea are other indications that China has zero leverage on Kim and his regime. President Xi and Kim have never met, never talked, and despise one another.
China is building a six-lane highway in border region to facilitate a massive move of PLA if things go badly. China will not allow NK to fall into the hands of SK and the US.
However, Russia is doing the heavy work of trying to get Kim to act in concert with the Russian-Chinese diplomatic and info-war efforts to forestall any attack by the US.
When all is said and done, denuclearization of NK is the goal of all superpowers.
In order for that to happen, either Kim and his top tier go or they accept the protection offered by Russia and China.
If he does not give up the nukes, Japan will go nuclear. China absolutely will not allow that trigger to be pulled that gives the Japanese nukes. So, Kim will, at some point, have to find the offer from China and Russia his only option, or he will be eliminated.
DPRK can not be eliminated without global nuclear war.
Hayden,
If you believe that the continued existence of a North Korean state, under its current leadership, is considered by both China and Russia to be vital to their security and prosperity, then you may be right to think that global nuclear war would be the inevitable consequence of a war on the Korean Peninsula. But, I don’t think so.
But, I do believe that it is vital to China that a there can never be a united Korea, controlled by the current regime based in Seoul, as long as it is also a military ally of the United States and there is an American military presence on the Korean Peninsula. If China believes that it must go to war against the USA and ROK in order to prevent this, then the scope of the war would go well beyond the Korean Peninsula.
Hi Hayden and L445.
DPRK can be eliminated without global nuclear war. I had a strange thought: The DPRK joins the Russian Federation as a republic, whereby officially ending the Korean War and the current phony standoff. The real standoff will still be on between Russia+China vs the empire but NK, China and Russia will continue prosper and strengthen.
The USA, SK and Japan would be crying bloody murder, even more dramatic than the reunification of Crimea to Russia.
However, Iwonder would such a scenario be even possible.
That’s a very interesting, creative solution, Ali, I had never considered: NK joining the Russian federation. But upon further reflection, it isn’t a good plan because it could drive a wedge between Russia and China: China has closer economic and cultural ties with North Korea; they also have a treaty of mutual defense; comparatively, a more practical solution, in terms of protecting the people in North Korea via incorporation into a larger entity, would have NK join China.
The answer is simple. But I don’t see it being offered. Unless it is the situation can’t be solved. If Russia and China were to “publicly guarantee” the security of North Korea.Sign a treaty of alliance. Saying “any and all” attacks on North Korea will be considered and responded to as if an attack on themselves.Then North Korea would have no reason for nuclear weapons.In other words sign the same type of agreement with North Korea that the US has with South Korea and Japan.The North Koreans are almost certain to reject giving up their nuclear program on the “word” of the US alone. They would be idiots to do that.But I don’t see Russia and China willing to “put their money where their mouth is”. And the North Koreans can see that too.Which means they must ask themselves,”if Russia and China” aren’t certain about the US keeping their word,how can they trust it.
Just a few points here that I don’t think are correct.
” Putin is coaching Pyongyang how to step back from the brink and open space for Russia and China to set up diplomatic talks with the US”
As I’ve shown in another post here China and NK have been offering talks for years. It is the US that won’t negotiate – and it’s military occupation of puppet regime South Korea makes things worse. The US has no business even having forces in the region. None whatsoever.
“Kim continues to insult Beijing. He recently sent a seven-man hit team to Beijing to kill the son of his murdered half-brother”
Do you have a link for that?
“When all is said and done, denuclearization of NK is the goal of all superpowers”
What Russia and China have said all along is they seek the denuclearisation of the whole Korean peninsula ie including American nuclear weapons in SK and many other locations.
” Kim to come out of the caves and behave like a true head of state.”
Be assured nobody lives in caves in NK
http://www.4thmedia.org/2017/06/the-social-and-economic-achievements-of-north-korea/
but please tell us what you think NK should actually do.
Stop testing it’s defences?
Would that bring an end to sanctions or reduction in US belligerence?
No. Of course not. So just what should NK do?
Lastly the implied hostility between NK and China is false notwithstanding sanctions.
“SEOUL (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping replied to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s congratulatory message on China’s recently completed Communist Party Congress, saying he hopes to promote ties between the two countries, North Korea’s state news agency said.
China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing, China October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee
“I wish that under the new situation, the Chinese side would make efforts with the DPRK side to promote relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development and thus make a positive contribution to … defending regional peace and stability and common prosperity,” Xi wrote in the message dated Nov. 1, according to the North’s official news agency KCNA.”
“While China has yet to issue its account of the message, Xi has previously sent messages to Kim, most recently last year when Xi expressed his congratulations for a party congress in North Korea.”
http://panafricannews.blogspot.co.uk/
As I said elsewhere too many comments about NK are sadly based on ignorance, prejudice and dare I say it views which don’t indicate support for a multipolar world where the sovereign rights to peace of all countries are respected. And support for Nk’s right to be free of US terrorism and to plow it’s own peaceful furrow is the acid test of those who claim support for multipolarity.
I am very surprised why the North Korean fleet of quiet mini diesel electric submarines isn’t mentioned so often.
It can some major problems for those aircraft carrying sitting ducks :-)
The current nuclear missile capability of DPRK, as described by Escobar in this article, is a gross exaggeration. The threat of nuclear destruction of the USA by North Korean forces could become more than bluster over the next decade; but for the time being that’s all it is.
Sometime within the next year, the North Koreans may be able to create a warhead that can be put into the tip of an ICBM. It will take a bit longer to develop the guidance and control mechanism to assure that the warhead could be delivered to the proximity of the intended target. (Unless China has made its warhead and control technology available to the DPRK already.)
As long as the THAAD missile batteries remain operational in South Korea, it would take a volley of such missiles, in order to achieve a high probability probability that one ICBM could survive the launch phase. (In this phase of missile attack, missiles are unable to maneuver. That is why the Russians are so alarmed by the deployment of US anti-missile batteries in Romania and Poland.)
Unfortunately, this assessment of the DPRK’s current capability has encouraged too many “Neville Chamberlains” in the USA, ROK, and Japan to argue that restrained diplomatic negotiations should be the preferred response to North Korean threats. However, no such efforts have been successful in the past.
People of South Korea are justifiably concerned that a military intervention by the USA could trigger a decision by the DPRK regime to launch an invasion of ROK. So also are the people of Japan to fear that North Korea would launch what few missiles they may have already against the Japanese Islands. But they will have much more to fear, once the North Koreans have accumulated a nuclear arsenal. The leaders of both countries are certainly aware of this. That is being demonstrated by the intense joint military drills going on, in which the military forces of both countries are in feverish preparations with those of the USA to fight North Korea.
I believe that Escobar is correct when he opines that Xi will offer a “diplomatic solution” to Trump when the two meet next week. Any agreement, intended to freeze weapons and missile development, would be just another way to elevate the international standing of the North Korean regime; and will be nothing more than a pause in its efforts to achieve a viable nuclear deterrent.
The DPRK “regime” will enjoy massive soaring global popularity if and when it wreaks havoc on mainland US. The 911 fireworks are a very credible precedent regardless of who the perpetrators were. The event was greeted by spectacular joy and Schadenfreude all over the planet — don’t let the Ziomedia convince you otherwise.
It’s amusing how Westerners can’t stand a hardcore nationalist society which is nationalist for all the right reasons. Instead, they prefer being spied upon, coerced, and poisoned by the rotting, degenerate, hard-core nationalist US regime.
What does North Korea need a nuclear deterrent against? The US?
Why did Putin launch 4 ICBMs this week, missiles that can destroy America? Is it because he needs a credible deterrent against the US? Same as NK.
You say ” restrained diplomatic negotiations should be the preferred response to North Korean threats. However, no such efforts have been successful in the past.”
So here are the facts –
The offer by NK of talks has been on the table for years
“As a first step, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises,” (Chinese Foreign Minister) Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress.
North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015. The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again. This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again.
North Korea is understandably nervous each and every time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large maneuvers and openly train for invading North Korea and for killing its government and people. The maneuvers have large negative impacts on North Korea’s economy.”
“killing it’s government?” Shows me it is the US that is the aggressor. Wouldn’t you agree?
Surely once the DPRK has weapons that can hit America – as Russia and China have – the US will give up , defeated and impotent.
The North Korean head of state Kim Jong-un has officially announced a no-first-use policy for its nuclear capabilities:
“As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes,” Kim told the Workers’ Party of Korea congress in Pyongyang. Kim added that the North “will faithfully fulfill its obligation for non-proliferation and strive for the global denuclearization.”
https://www.sott.net/article/348138-Why-North-Korea-needs-its-nukes-and-how-they-would-give-them-up
Most people – not all – commenting on North Korea only “know what the tv told them”. which means they know next to nothing about it. It would greatly enhance knowledge if people took a little time to research the truth.
Surely we can manage a higher level of debate here than “how can the US mass murder the North Koreans and get away with it?” as seems to be your perspective.
.
Pepe’s articles are always interesting to read. His knowledge of events is huge and impressive whether he is discussing Latin America, the middle east, central Asia, Europe or the US and he must spend a lot of time just doing his research. He is a great asset to the multipolar effort.
As we should all know, the US has become a fascist police state run by military generals and Rothschild “Israel first” Zionist bankers.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/10/above-all-the-junta-expands-its-claim-to-power.html
Trump’s sole job is to read the scripts his bosses have written for him when he visits Asia.
The trip is meaningless and will amount to nothing, just froth in the msm.
Pepe’s most interesting comment is about Germany which imho it seems is slowly being pulled towards the east. This is worth following.
Good relations between Russia and Germany are surely also something “freaking out” the US. The
But Pepe is on the nail regarding Korea.
The US won’t attack the DPRK because the real reason for US militarism and massive force concentration in the S. China sea is to threaten China with either a blockade or war.
Consider the US claim that their navy is in the S.China sea to protect freedom of navigation.
As with everything else the regime in Washington says this is a complete inversion of the truth.
New Zealand writer Tim Beal reproduced a map showing volumes of navigation and nationalities of shipping using the S. China Sea.
http://www.timbeal.net.nz/Marty_Sage/M&S1_Nostalgia8.htm
In this article with maps he shows that the US and it’s “allies” hardly use the S.China sea at all.
He points out that the one country most dependant on freedom of navigation through the S.China sea is in fact China itself whose fear of a US blockade has led them to build maritime defences further out from the mainland.
The purpose of the US navy there is not to protect freedom of navigation but to end it – for the Chinese.
The author, Tim Beal, also argues that another reason for the US preparing a blockade is “China’s main submarine base is reportedly on Hainan and so to get the SLBMs through to the deep waters of the Pacific they have to transverse the shallow waters of the South China Sea.”[10]
The US thinks it can contain China’s nuclear missile submarines !
The DPRK strategy seems to be twofold – to continuously remind the US that it can defend itself and to await the inevitable collapse of the regime in Washington.
Pepe says the DPRK is freaking out the US.
That assumes a degree of sanity and connection to reality which I don’t see any evidence of in the regime, more a collective psychosis combined with paranoia and denial but if the DPRK is freaking them out, then so surely must the ending of the petrodollar a hundred times more so.
We should watch their warmongering closely of course but other wise ignore them and concentrate on the positive developments everywhere else.
Pepe’s opening remarks -“The 19th Party Congress has made it very clear that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” – as codified by President Xi Jinping – is China’s road map ahead. Not only the strategy graphically eschews those much-lauded “Western values”; it will, in Xi’s own words, offer “a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence.”
(Iran doesn’t trust the US one bit – an innocuous media disclosure in Iran that Trump had sought a meeting with President Hassan Rouhani during the latter’s visit to New York in September to address the UN General Assembly, but the latter spurned the overture summarily. On Sunday Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahran Qassemi commented crisply, “A request indeed was made by the US side, but it wasn’t accepted by President Rouhani.)
https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2017/11/02/irans-snub-to-us-has-meaning-for-india/
China is just getting into second gear and will shove America aside leaving them raving away about Clinton, Obama, pizzagate, Trump, Russia gate, “terror” attacks, civil war statues, transgenderism, the fake economy and so on like a thoroughly boring tv soap opera of no interest to anyone . I saw a video yesterday with Katy Perry extolling the virtues of eating human meat (murdered children) Way to go satanists!
It won’t be a missile from the DPRK that destroys America, it will be it’s own ruling class.
I don’t know which is sadder – that America has become a fascist luciferian police state or the fact that the American people don’t even seem to care that it has.
But the rest of the world will move on.
Recently, the Chinese moved several subs through the chokepoint of the Strait of Malacca out to the Indian Ocean, shocking the Indian Navy and embarrassing the US Navy.
The depths of the South China Sea are not all the same. In the nine-dot-line perimeter, the depths are 4000 ft. Thus, there are very substantial zones for Chinese subs and subsea drones to operate with deadly effect as offensive or defensive weapons.
As for military doctrine, the Chinese have stated only a second strike use of nukes, and their posture and training is generally very defensive, except as it relates to Taiwan which they exercise for invading should the government of Taiwan and the US decided to break from present policy and take Taiwan independent. Everything else is pure national defense. The Chinese have no intention of fighting wars, invading neighbors or projecting global superpower. They decided to follow their 4000-year history and become number one with wealth from trade, not weapons and imperialism.
Containing China with US Navy is a pipe dream. The Chinese would sink the US carriers with a few missiles. Does the US think they are pushing around some third world country?
Yes, I believe that the U.S. deep state are arrogant enough to believe that. It looks similar when Alaric was beating down Rome’s door to negotiate and the Romans with their infinite arrogance thinking they were still the mighty empire of the past refused to do so. Alaric then sacked Rome.
“In their upcoming meeting in Beijing, a plausible scenario is Xi suggesting Trump the possibility of a deal with Kim Jong-un – eventually leading to de facto ending of the Korean War (instead of the current armistice). The process would include multilateral security guarantees (by the US, and endorsed/supervised by Russia and China) and a US no-sanction commitment towards some sort of economic opening if the DPRK freezes for good the testing of nuclear weapons and ICBMs. Xi would be a sort of guarantor of the DPRK. The question is whether Pyongyang would accept it.”
Sigh… What on Earth is the worth of “security guarantees” and “no-sanction commitment” by the Zionazi Pindo Regime? It would most definitely testify to the “regime” in Pyongyang being clinically insane were it to accept such utter drivel as sincere.
There is literally no chance that North Korea has EMP capability in its satellites. And the entire “90% of the population dead” story is complete and utter BS being pushed by One Single Individual – plus Newt Gingrich and James Woolsey, both of whom have been trying to get the US to attack North Korea for the last decade.
We also know from Dr. Theodore Postel and two German scientists that North Korea can Not – yet – hit the continental US from North Korea with a nuclear warhead. The likelihood of NK subs being able to launch nuclear missiles is not very high.
For one thing, keep in mind that if North Korea fired an EMP over the US, what about the several US Navy nuclear carrier groups and the numerous nuclear submarines that would be completely unaffected and could instantly rain down enough nukes on North Korea to destroy the country several times over? You think North Korea is that stupid? If so, then you’re stupid.
While it may be possible for a solar event to cause an EMP – and we have zero evidence as to how or how much – any man-made EMP event will be a prelude to nuclear war. And in a nuclear war, you’ve got more to worry about than your iPad and iPhone not working.
EMP Myths http://www.futurescience.com/emp/EMP-myths.html
Electromagnetic Pulses (EMPs): Myths vs. Facts
http://www.eei.org/issuesandpolicy/cybersecurity/Documents/Electromagnetic%20Pulses%20(EMPs)%20-%20Myths%20vs.%20Facts.pdf
A North Korean Nuclear EMP Attack?
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/05/08/a_north_korean_nuclear_emp_attack__111332.html
The EMP threat: fact, fiction, and response (part 1)
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1549/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1549/2
The EMP threat: fact, fiction, and response (part 2)
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1553/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1553/2
Renowned Physicists Cast Doubt on Gingrich’s Far-Fetched EMP Scenario http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2011/12/renowned-physicists-cast-doubt-on- gingrichs-far-fetched-emp-scenario.html
The electro-magnetic pulse produced by a nuclear bomb explosion high above the atmosphere. Jack Steinberger. September 2006.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/272552-the-electro-magnetic-pulse- produced-by-a-nuclear.html
The real reason for the current NK crisis is that North Korea has 6-10 TRILLION DOLLARS worth of undeveloped natural resources. In other words, it’s all about the MONEY the US and South Korea and others intend to gain if Korea is “re-unified”.
Hack:
You’ve done your homework. It is not always all about the money, though.
China is building and promoting the Silk road in part to channel natural resources into China while moving Chinese (and other) products to the northern half of the Eurasian landmass. China is heavily invested in resource extraction and infrastructure projects in Africa.
Yet, they have little to nothing going on in North Korea. North Korea’s primary export is coal, plus a few other natural materials. China’s primary exports to North Korea is fuel and industrial goods. Therefore, I suspect that the trillions of dollars of natural resources that you believe exist in North Korea may not be worth the trouble to China. If not to China, then why would it be so to any other country?
I believe that North Korea is no more than a Stalinist state, ruled by a cruel communist monarchy, that is obsessed with power. It is constrained by Koreans to the south who have evolved from the same medieval roots as those to the north; but spared the consequences of tribal tyranny.
North Korea exists to serve the ego-maniacal ambitions of the Kim clan: nothing more and nothing less.
They don’t need satellites to deliver the nukes. If their spy agencies are any good at all, they will already have nukes buried in building basements of every major city in the US.
The problem for the US is they’ve come up against somebody who can and will fight back. That’s new, and it adds a whole new dimension to their warfare.
Absolutely correct! As we can see, this is infuriating to some esteemed folks around here as well. MSM über alles.
Pepe, follow closely the language on KCNA when it describes fusion weapon of unique Korean design. First realize that Operation Castle Bravo missed that Lithium 7 was fusible by 9 megatons. Or did CIA disinformation misrepresent which light element was fusible? There are dozens of light isotopes with fewer than 12 protons. Each isotope needed high energy conditions to test fusibility. The DPRK path was to be the only state agency that sponsored cold fusion.Cold fusion allowed high energy testing of fusible isotopes. Remember in 2010 KCNA when DPRK claimed “fusion breakthrough”. The US and USSR required over 1000 test nuclear detonation to test isotope fusion energy yield . Do you think US would announce their finding that other isotopes had higher yield/mass ratio ? The 6 megaton yield / ton warhead is based on public declassified yield of US USSR two stage designs with Lithium 6…not the “best fusion ” isotopes. Then imagine a focus energy fusion device able to focus energy toward an ABM missile or target 60,000 feet away. A focus nuclear detonation would have asymmetric energy in the blast cavity. So if DPRK did lose people investigating a nuclear blast cavity it was doing asymmetry analysis of the cavity. The DPRK with a GDP lower than 100 countries even claimed it made a breakthrough allowing reactor fusion[cold fusion] .Google “Minjok Tongshin , nuclear reactor ,DPRK”. The US is deliberately lying about fusion potential of widely available materials. The US will not declassify all test info on it 1000 nuclear tests. The Pharisees need people to be stupid .
Hi. Fascinating article by Mr. Pepe Escobar. If I’m not wrong, he’s from my country: Latinoamérica (Parabéns!).
Two factors that aren’t addressed in the article nor the comments:
1. Serious blogs of free journalism claim that the development of nuclear technology in N. Korea has been merely a transfer and veiled support by the Satanic RothSchilds and their atomic related companies.
2. Other credible(?) bloggers comment that N. Korea is in fact, the biggest producer of Amphetamines, which are then distributed everywhere by the CIA (the biggest drug dealer). So in fact, the leadership would be a zioshill or a ziopatsy.
Who can confirm or debunk these versions? Thanks.
Haha, now this is Western demagogy reeking of jealousy at the DPRK’s successes. The obvious propaganda template here is that Stalin and the USSR could only have succeeded in breaking the West’s monopoly on nukes by thievery. As per Western dogma, inferior peoples, cultures, and leaders just cannot make scientific breakthroughs on their own.
Now, if the Rothschilds are the DPRK’s buddies (alongside the Ukronazis), they must have great fun at the West’s 99%. Kudos to them for making a very good choice for once.
The amphetamine nonsense could, in my opinion, be improved by some equally unfounded hogwash about, say, paedophile rings. Anything goes!
NK during the escaltion in rhetoric had more or less stated they would send a nuclear armed missile on a test towards Guam, and they would direct the missile to hit the sea 50km before the island. They even warned they would do it as part of their national day celebrations on October 10th This threat was serious enough for Trump to take action.
So, there is some talk about the fact that Trump/Mattis may have already taken decisive action against the NK nuclear facilities. The theory being that specially trained South Korean and Japanese special forces infiltrated NK in such a way that if discovered they are able to pass as NK ekite troops. These units then guided a secret, non nuclear, deep penetrating munition into the mountain that holds the NK Nuclear facility.
Of significance, US Geological Survey registered seismic events of magnitude 3.6 on 23 September and then 4km away magnitude 2.9 on the 12th of October and in the area, it was a significantly lower disturbance than the previous underground tests.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/#%7B%22autoUpdate%22%3A%5B%5D%2C%22basemap%22%3A%22terrain%22%2C%22feed%22%3A%22us1000aqsx%22%2C%22listFormat%22%3A%22default%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A%5B%5B-11.695272733029402%2C25.6640625%5D%2C%5B79.78116424879934%2C251.015625%5D%5D%2C%22overlays%22%3A%5B%22plates%22%5D%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3A%5B%22restrictListToMap%22%5D%2C%22search%22%3A%7B%22id%22%3A%22us1000aqsx%22%2C%22isSearch%22%3Atrue%2C%22name%22%3A%22Search%20Results%22%2C%22params%22%3A%7B%22endtime%22%3A%222017-11-02T16%3A41%3A08.320Z%22%2C%22latitude%22%3A41.3739%2C%22longitude%22%3A129.0549%2C%22maxradiuskm%22%3A250%2C%22minmagnitude%22%3A1%2C%22starttime%22%3A%222017-09-21T16%3A41%3A08.320Z%22%7D%7D%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C%22timezone%22%3A%22utc%22%2C%22viewModes%22%3A%5B%22list%22%2C%22map%22%5D%2C%22event%22%3A%22us2000ati7%22%7D
Fox news on October 13th reported that the head of NK Nuclear program and also the head of the missile program had not appeared at important state events on October 10th, which was noteworthy.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/10/12/top-north-korean-officials-in-missile-program-missing-from-recent-celebrations-report-says.html
Then there was this, which I literally stumbled on. The two crown wearing gentlemen are pastors from the Sanctuary Church in PA. If you remember the ‘moonies’ the asian guy in this video is Rev Sun Moon’s son and now ‘King’ of the Unification Church. In this video they discuss another video where a South Korean academic presents his theories and evidence that bombing of NK has already started and special forces have been infiltrated via submarine.
https://youtu.be/YUEA77bHAXM
Here is the South Korean academics video but it’s in Korean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5ZVauhBr5g
And then on November 1st we start getting these reports via North Korea
Where a tunnel collapse has killed 200 at the nuclear facility.
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://news.sky.com/story/more-than-200-dead-in-north-korea-tunnel-collapse-following-nuclear-test-11106844&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjcrqDjrKnXAhWIkJQKHc_9C5AQFggRMAQ&client=internal-uds-cse&cx=partner-pub-8190282414219958:1580124626&usg=AOvVaw1AZLOJm22FXD6u0YQM9DNN
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-korea-tunnel-collapses-nuclear-test-site-workers-killed-punggye-ri-a8028901.html&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjcrqDjrKnXAhWIkJQKHc_9C5AQFggaMAc&client=internal-uds-cse&cx=partner-pub-8190282414219958:1580124626&usg=AOvVaw3TIZKZfVe92DB39K3VCD4O
It may just be coincidence. It may be the actions behind Trumps “fire and fury speech…”
And what kind of weapon could penetrate a mountain and cause massive damage to underground facilities, while leaving no trace of explosion?
http://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-rods-from-god-kinetic-weapon-hit-with-nuclear-weapon-force-2017-9?IR=T
Before following the herd and believing Trump is a blowhard, just take stock and consider why and how he ended up as POTUS. He isn’t there to talk, he believes in actions.