PRESIDENT TRUMP’S WAR TALK IS BLUFF: NORTH KOREA

its source back to US authorities in 1988, “without the knowledge of the (rival country’s) military”. They add that “the drug offences (on which Noriega was charged) were carried out with the connivance of the CIA”, which is presumably why proof of such activities, as would satisfy a US court, was not difficult to find. They also mentioned a list of more than four-hundred names compiled by DPRK analysts, and which “contains the names of those who were ‘neutralised, often with extreme prejudice’, once they gave US authorities all that was demanded”, a list that they confirm includes such obvious names as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. No copy of this “list of the betrayed” was shown to this correspondent, and the only proof offered was the word of the sources talked to. The two have, however, been authenticated as genuine sources of factual information by analysts familiar with the region and its flashpoints. The “Leadership Thinking” in Pyongyang is emphatic that the US and its military allies “only wage war against a regime after that entity has surrendered its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and has also ensured access to US intelligence to map out every vulnerability in its defences”. Iraq, Libya and Syria were quoted as examples, it being added that President Bashar Assad made US intervention inevitable once he agreed to give up his chemical weapons stockpile. The gesture was under pressure from Moscow, which believed that the gesture would ensure either the ending of diplomatic moves by the US and the EU against the Russian Federation or a significant dilution in them. “Instead, the reverse took place and a year later, harsher sanctions got imposed”. The lesson drawn by Pyongyang is that “good” behaviour (i.e. obedience) is fatal, while only “bad” (i.e. flouting) can ensure regime survival. They say that so long as there are US troops in South Korea (which they call “Occupied Korea”), Japan and Guam, the US will not initiate hostilities against North Korea. However, in their view, “when confronted with a threat to their own cities, the US (administration) will not hesitate to expose Seoul and Tokyo” to attack from the DPRK and hence the DPRK will have immunity to attack once it gains the capability to target the continental US with nuclear weapons. clear that a war by the latter is imminent, which they say will not happen, “as all this war talk is bluff”, designed to make the DPRK expose itself to an attack by surrendering its nuclear weapons. While acknowledging the superiority in conventional weaponry of the Republic of Korea forces, they claim that the “revolutionary spirit of the Free Korean soldiers (i.e., those enrolled in the DPRK armed forces) will prevail over the RoK units, “the way they did against superior US combat units during the 1950s Korean war”. No mention was made by those close to the DPRK’s “Leadership Thinking” of the assistance in materiel delivered by the USSR or the crucial involvement of China’s People’s Liberation Army during those operations.

The sources claim that Kim Jong Un, while having “learnt much” from the example of the life of the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung, the present Supreme Leader of the DPRK sees his father Kim Jong Il as having had on occasion “an excess of trust” in the promises of those governments he was dealing with, and, therefore, initiating steps to downsize the DPRK’s WMD stockpile twice during his 1994-2011 tenure. They say that while Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un is open to the idea of unifying with South Korea, he is of the view that the unified entity must be a nuclear weapons state, “to avoid blackmail by Japan and the US”. Equally, the Leadership Thinking is that any merger must include a coming together of the two militaries and state institutions, as well as a “lifetime leadership role” for Kim Jong Un, rather than an Iraq or Libya situation, where an entire governance structure was eliminated and chaos resulted. They regard Kim as “the protector of the spirit of the immortal Korean people”. The individuals spoken to claim that in any future election, Kim Jong Un would emerge as the most popular leader of a unified people, although this claim may never be tested. They add that in the view of the leadership, the US would “not permit unification, unless it was certain that it could control the new entity the way it is still dominating Germany and occupying the country with troops”. Hence, “unification talks with Occupied Korea (sic) are only possible once (the DPRK’s) nuclear weapons are tested and brought to readiness, and delivery systems capable of entering the continental US are operational”. Only then would the US “be unable to block unification talks based on Korean, and not Japanese or US, principles”.

According to them, such a phase (of the DPRK evolving as an intercontinental nuclear weapons power) would “assure peace (in the peninsula),” as the US or Japan would then never have the “spirit” to wage war. But what of President Trump’s warning that the US would not accept North Korea crossing such a threshold of nuclear capability? According to Pyongyang’s “Leadership Thinking”, such talk by Trump is bluff and bluster, “as history shows the US acts only when it is first attacked, or when the enemy is weak”, neither of which is likely, according to others talked to in locations within two cities close to or bordering the Pacific Ocean.

Given that Pyongyang seems unwilling to reverse course, and that within President Trump’s first term, the DPRK will, on the present reckoning, have the capacity to reach the western shores of continental US, it will not be long before the world knows whether Pyongyang is correct in regarding Washington’s warnings of war as being “mere bluff that will not scare the most noble son of Korea”, i.e., Kim Jong Un, or divert him from his determination to make the DPRK a formidable nuclear weapons power.