US imperialism and the threat of nuclear war against North Korea
11 August 2017
The world is poised on the brink of a war on the Korean Peninsula that could rapidly escalate into a global nuclear conflict.
US President Donald Trump has doubled down on his inflammatory threat to engulf North Korea in “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Yesterday he commented that his words were “maybe not tough enough” and warned that the US response to any attack “will be an event the likes of which no one has seen.” He added that the US nuclear arsenal was in “tip top shape.”
Asked whether he would carry out a “pre-emptive strike” against North Korea, Trump said he would not talk about military options, but did not rule it out. That a strike is under active consideration in American ruling circles was underscored by an article in the New York Times entitled “If US attacks North Korea first, is that self-defence?” The commentary treated a unilateral, aggressive attack on North Korea as a legitimate option, debating whether it would meet the legal standard for a pre-emptive strike.
A chilling article in the Washington Post went further to examine how Washington could launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike attack on North Korea. It concluded that Trump could order a nuclear first strike without securing the agreement of his advisers, and that neither the military nor Congress could overrule his order.
Whether Trump is seeking to goad the highly unstable Pyongyang regime into a desperate act to which the US would respond with overwhelming force, or creating the conditions to launch pre-emptive strikes on North Korea, the US is preparing a monstrous crime “like the world has never seen.”
Even if the war were confined to the Korean Peninsula and restricted to…