Trump threatens North Korea with war
By
Peter Symonds
30 August 2017
US President Donald Trump has again threatened to take military action against North Korea following its test firing of an intermediate range missile yesterday that flew over Japan. He warned, in a statement yesterday, that “all options are on the table.” Trump condemned Pyongyang’s actions as “threatening and destabilising” and contemptuous of the UN, its neighbours and the “minimum standards of acceptable international behaviour.”
Trump’s comments effectively negated his remarks last week and those of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggesting that talks with Pyongyang might be possible. In a highly qualified comment, the US president had told a rally in Arizona that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was “starting to respect us,” adding: “Maybe, probably not, something positive will come out of it.”
Earlier this month, Trump deliberately inflamed the extremely tense situation on the Korean Peninsula by declaring that North Korea would face “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it continued to threaten the United States. Far from resiling from this unprecedented threat of nuclear war, Trump followed it up by declaring that the military options against Pyongyang were “locked and loaded.”
US allies—particularly Japan, South Korea and Australia—have roundly condemned the latest missile launch, greatly exaggerating the threat posed. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe branded it “an outrageous act that poses an unprecedented, grave and serious threat.” The media in the US and internationally followed suit, declaring it “an unprecedented provocation” (the Australian) and “the most aggressive step … in almost 20 years” (Financial Times).
North…