North Korea: War is ‘Imminent’

The fear is that Kim Jong-un and North Korea, combined with working ICBMs armed with nuclear warheads, would mean disaster for the U.S. and much of the world. Rather than behaving responsibly and rationally, it is thought that Kim might, in a fit of rage, push the button. Hence the U.S. and other nations have made it a point to stop him from getting that far. It has not been easy.

The U.S. has promised consequences if North Korea persists in its quest to acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them worldwide. President Trump has emphasized this in recent weeks with public remarks, the moving of military assets to the vicinity of North Korea, and briefings with the entire Congress.

Kim Jong-un responded by testing another missile.

North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile in the early hours of Saturday morning, reports in South Korea said, amid rising military tensions with the US.

The missile, launched from a region north of the capital, Pyongyang, appeared to have blown up a few seconds into flight, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.

The exact type of weapon being tested was unclear. It was the second failed test of a ballistic missile this month and came amid a flurry of rhetoric from North Korea warning of “imminent” war against the US.

Even thought it appeared to be yet another embarrassing failed test by North Korea, it puts President Trump on the spot. Will he respond in some way, or risk appearing to be a paper tiger like Mr. Obama was?

The U.S. has been attempting to get China to intervene to curb North Korea’s ambitions, but that does not appear to be happening — at least not publicly.

On Friday, Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, warned that failure to curb North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes could lead to “catastrophic consequences”.

He called for a greater enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea and requested the help of the rest of the world in pressuring North Korea to step back from its military threats.

China said it was not only up to Beijing to solve the North Korean problem.

“The key to solving the nuclear issue on the peninsula does not lie in the hands of the Chinese side,” Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister said.

And North Korea’s public statements could hardly indicate any less willingness to cooperate with anyone.

North Korea’s deputy UN ambassador responded by stating US efforts to get rid of his country’s nuclear weapons through military threats and sanctions were “a wild dream”.

Clearly, President Trump as well as U.S. military leaders are not willing to be sanguine in the presence of the threats that North Korea, in its own words, has made.

Donald Trump, the US president, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that a “major, major conflict” with North Korea was possible over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

The top US military commander in the Pacific warned earlier this week that North Korea could strike American soil.

“I don’t share your confidence that North Korea is not going to attack either South Korea, or Japan, or the United States … once they have the capability,” Admiral Harry Harris, who heads the US Pacific Command, told Congress.

He was defending the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile defence system by the US in South Korea.

The move was “in response to North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile threat”, a US military statement said, amid concerns that Pyongyang was planning its sixth nuclear test since 2006.

Japan is in the middle of this as well, since that nation is clearly within range of North Korea’s currently operational missiles. Yet it’s going to take a lot more than their lodging of complaints with the U.N. — a symbolic gesture that is useless.

If North Korea is going to be stopped, the onus for doing that will fall on the U.S. with assistance from South Korea and perhaps a handful of other nations.

Now that Kim Jong-un has publicly defied President Trump with the latest missile launch, the ball is back in his court. Possibility millions of lives will depend on what the president does or does not do.

North Korea disrespected the wishes of China & its highly respected President when it launched, though unsuccessfully, a missile today. Bad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 28, 2017

Source: Telegraph