Two solid weeks of reports that a nuclear war is imminent on the Korean Peninsula haven’t led to much of anything, and experts seem to agree that other than having another week or two of threats and maybe a missile test, it’s not really going to lead to anything.
It’s a fact not lost on Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, who says that he doesn’t see anything that suggests this is any different from the “long pattern” of similar rows with North Korea.
Indeed, this is a yearly thing, with the US-South Korea joint drills setting the stage for North Korean threats, retaliatory threats and escalating tensions until either the drill ends or China gets sick of the nonsense and calms everybody down.
South Koreans are used to this, as are the people of the US territory of Guam, both of which are taking the threat of nuclear annihilation in stride, noting that they’ve heard all of this before, and people in Guam welcoming the international attention as an opportunity to upgrade its profile on the global stage.
North Korea’s nuclear weapons, of course, are entirely speculative, as they have the conducted some underground tests but there is zero evidence they have any deliverable warheads. Likewise, their missiles are of dubious quality beyond the shortest of ranges, and all the talk of attacking the US mainland, experts agree, is simply nonsense.
All the two weeks of back and forth threats has to show for itself, realistically, is that the US has moved military hardware to the region at great expense and committed to a dramatic increase in missile defense spending against missiles that just aren’t coming.
Why is NK news? "North Korea rattles the US" (viz: the usually sane Guardian)? The world's most armed, most belligerent country trembles before Kim Jong-un? Why? Well, the Taliban are quiet, Syria's a stalemate mess, Iraqis are killing each other without American help. Nothing's happening. But the US "defense" budget will be cut – unless a new enemy can be invented, preferably near China. Who could that be? Too childish to contemplate…
Korea was one country with one nation, the same language and traditional culture until USA decided to divide the nation.., as always.., USA will lie to its teeth about how North Korea is difference then the south, how poor North Koreans are and how rich the southerner are.., if all that lies were true then question is…, how come that North Korean don't complain and millions upon millions of North Korean live in North Korea.., there are more American immigrants from America then North Korean "running" or fighting their way out of North Korea.., you don't need to agree with any political system.., but that doesn't mean that you have to lie about the truth…, by lying about matters that are true you create nothing but enemy's as US government have done for last 60 years.