The latest in the North Korea drama is the release of a video portraying US President Barack Obama and American troops going up in flames. But it's not just cheap and cheesy rhetoric by a new leader who wants to be taken seriously: North Korea is preparing for a war because the US has been preparing for an offensive.
Earlier this month, we were regaled with a similar video, this time portraying a US city being attacked by North Korean missiles. Before that, in December, North Korea launched a satellite, and its official news agency declared a "Nationwide preparation for an all-out great war for national reunification."
Earlier this week, satellite images indicated renewed activity at a North Korean nuclear site where a test was launched in early December. On 12 December, North Korea launched a long-range rocket putting a satellite into orbit. This is a major success for North Korea and few others have achieved it. (South Korea responded by successfully launching its own satellite into orbit for the first time in late January.)
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The Obama administration's stated policy on North Korea-the one for public consumption-is "strategic patience", but there's nothing patient about this policy. On the public platform, the media finds it amusing to jest about the careful and seemingly unserious US response to North Korean provocations. Behind the scenes, however, the US has been working up to an offensive since the death of Kim Jong-il a year ago-with Washington hedging its bets that the succession comes along with enough instability to open an window of opportunity for regime change.
Pyongyang's activities since then have been those of a country on edge, and this is why:
• The first joint military exercises between the US and South Korea since the death of Kim Jong-il suddenly changed their nature, with new war games included pre-emptive artillery attacks on North Korea
• Another amphibious landing operation simulation took on vastly larger proportions following Kim Jong-il's death (the sheer amount of equipment deployed was amazing: 13 naval vessels, 52 armored vessels, 40 fighter jets and 9,000 US troops).
• South Korean officials began talking of Kim Jong-il's death as a prime opportunity to pursue a regime-change strategy .
• South Korea unveiled a new cruise missile that could launch a strike inside North Korea and is working fast to increase its full-battery range to strike anywhere inside North Korea.
• South Korea openly began discussing asymmetric warfare against North Korea.
• The US military's Key Resolve Foal Eagle computerized war simulation games suddenly changed, too, simulating the deployment of 100,000 South Korean troops on North Korean territory following a regime change.
• Japan was brought on board, allowing the US to deploy a second advanced missile defense radar system on its territory and the two carried out unprecedented war games.
• It is also not lost on anyone that despite what on the surface appears to be the US' complete lack of interest in a new South Korean naval base that is in the works, this base will essentially serve as an integrated missile defense system run by the US military and housing Aegis destroyers .
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The bottom line here is that the US and South Korea have gone on the offensive, and this is prompting a flurry of activity by Pyongyang, which will now put even more effort into its nuclear program.
While it is perhaps more amusing to paint a portrait of Kim Jong-un as an eccentric attention-seeker, and while there is an element in Pyongyang's actions that is about solidifying stability at home, what this is really about is North Korea's belief that an invasion is imminent.
A move on North Korea would also be in line with the Obama administration's Asia-Pacific strategic shift, which has the US Navy bringing old forward bases back online across region, from Thailand and Vietnam to the Philippines and Australia.
By. Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com
Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com More
Comments
The United States is not going to preemptively strike North Korea.
While there have been joint operations, and while the operations have changed in size and scope over the recent years, it is not in response to North Korea, but rather aimed at China, as the US fears recent Chinese muscle flexing in the Pacific theatre.
While there have been military exercises, the United States under President Obama has shown a great reluctance to use the military in any significant fashion, notwithstanding the use in Libya or other areas of non-significance. In the end, President Obama greatly distrusts the military and prefers a diplomatic approach to the point of being a weak paper tiger.
Far from North Korea defending itself from a theorized attack, its nuclear programme is designed to elevate the country to what is believes to be a more even ground on par with such countries as the United States and other large players in the hope of gaining more leverage. This should not, however, detract from the understanding that there is indeed a built-in air of both paranoia and superiority which has been instilled by so many years of propaganda that they now believe the rhetoric they have been feeding on. This makes North Korea quite dangerous.
Will there be a war with North Korea? Probably. Will it go world wide? Not likely. Should you be prepared for it? Absolutely.
Prof. McCanney's stellar track-record in theoretical astrophysics is well-documented and unmatched by any other publically known scientist.
Prof. McCanney's incredibly sound and commonsensibly brilliant theory on the "electric universe" solves the insurmountable and therefore aggressively ignored problems with conventional mainstream astrophysics. Upon its submission it was at once shunned by the scientific community due to its radical plausibility and therefore potentially decimating to more than one research-grant thesis. Recently, conventional scientific theory began to pale and shrink in light of the exponentially-rising geological and weather-related catastrophes. A resulting deluge of the most elementary and pedestrian contrary observations were being magnified through the various, pseudo-literate National News Anchor celebrities. With nothing but the truth left to save credibility, the scientific community began to “discover” the “potential” that mysterious “electrical” forces may be playing a previously “unimaginable” role. Research-grants were immediately resubmitted based on these “new” insurmountable variables. Even the staunch disinformation campaign headquarters known as the “NASA Public Relations Department” put out an informal statement.
Anyone who follows Prof. McCanney knows him to be intensely adhered to scientific principles, i.e., if it is not observable and identifiable in repetitive experimentation, there simply is "no there, there".
For Prof. McCanney to make such an announcement, one may only surmise that supporting facts, if not from his own observation, must come from more than two trustworthy scientists giving personal eyewitness accounts and providing supporting, verifiable data.
Prof. McCanney, to my knowledge has never posited even a hypothesis without extremely reliable, overwhelming evidence prior to open assessment.
Geo-political activities around this event have been in the planning for decades. The North Koreans are mere pawns in the elites’ endgame as this red Dragon appears once more. Fear is their means of steering us through their destructive maze to what they scheme to be our unwitting end. They’ve made many slits through the sack-cloth as the cat begins clawing out of the bag. Fear grows from every imaginable threat as though an orchestra conducted by a single hand. But one facet is the lynchpin and also the guiding flame. Of that they have no control except the awareness of its presence and potential as a means for mass manipulation. Watch as they guide the world into a frenzy as it begins to rear its ugly head.