{"id":307593,"date":"2017-05-11T02:53:38","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T01:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-korea-crisis-beyond-the-smoke-and-mirrors\/"},"modified":"2017-05-11T02:53:38","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T01:53:38","slug":"the-korea-crisis-beyond-the-smoke-and-mirrors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-korea-crisis-beyond-the-smoke-and-mirrors\/","title":{"rendered":"The Korea Crisis: Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p><em>Hong Kong.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Some outsiders to Asia are painting a skewed scenario of the current Korea tensions that casts China as co-villain (with the US), if not chief villain. This represents a serious misleading of what\u2019s going on in Northeast Asia.<\/p>\n<p>The real, core story here is not Donald Trump\u2019s attention-grabbing aircraft carrier diplomacy, which is a headline-hogging sideshow that is not designed to result in war. The main story is the steadily worsening relationship between China and North Korea, which accelerated with Kim Jong Un\u2019s rise to power five years ago and reached boiling point recently. Washington, of course, knows this and senses an opportunity to push through a decisive change in the geopolitical landscape of Northeast Asia. Trump is naturally trying to exploit it to maximum (US) advantage.<\/p>\n<p>The two-giants-joining-to-bully-a-principled-midget narrative is an alluring one that also happens to be cock \u2018n bull. Even more outlandish is the scenario favored in some leftist circles of \u201crevisionist\u201d China vs. \u201crevolutionary\u201d North Korea. Everyone in the real Asia knows that political ideology died long ago, in China and to a large extent even in North Korea. Lip service is paid while everyone goes about more mundane, practical pursuits. If any \u201cism\u201d applies meaningfully in today\u2019s Asia, it\u2019s nationalism.<\/p>\n<p>So what\u2019s the story between Beijing and Pyongyang? Their traditionally strong ties are well known, forged in blood and from history. The bottom&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/05\/10\/the-korea-crisis-beyond-the-smoke-and-mirrors\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hong Kong. Some outsiders to Asia are painting a skewed scenario of the current Korea tensions that casts China as co-villain (with the US), if not chief villain. This represents a serious misleading of what\u2019s going on in Northeast Asia. The real, core story here is not Donald Trump\u2019s attention-grabbing aircraft carrier diplomacy, which is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-307593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}