No Peace on the Korean Peninsula

On a regular basis, if not daily, a story will appear in the mainstream press which pretty much tells it like it is.

In yesterday's national edition of The New York Times international correspondent Edward Wong gave readers a snapshot of the beating heart of the United States, "Why Is the U.S. Wary of a Declaration to End the Korean War?"

Because the U.S. is a warfare state, plain and simple, particularly now that its soft power and its economic supremacy are on the wane.

Wong's story says that North and South Korea are unified in the goal to bring an official end to the Korean War. The U.S. is opposed. The problem with U.S. opposition is that it is stalling out denuclearization of Korean Peninsula.

By the end of Wong's dispatch the reader knows the real reason why the U.S. doesn't want a formal declaration of peace:

American officials worry a peace declaration could dilute the U.S. military in Asia.

Although a peace declaration is not the same as a binding peace treaty, it would start the process for one. That would mean talking about how many American troops are needed in South Korea. Before the Singapore meeting, Mr. Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare options for drawing down the troops there now.

For some American officials, the troop presence in South Korea is not just a deterrent toward North Korea. It also helps the United States maintain a military footprint in Asia and a grand strategy of American hegemony.

China has already begun challenging the United States’ military presence in Asia, which will only be reinforced as China becomes the world’s biggest economy and modernizes its military.

The officials also worry that President Moon Jae-in of South Korea might try to push for a lesser American military presence, or a weakening of the alliance, after an end-of-war declaration.

“For the United States, an end-of-war declaration or a peace declaration or a peace treaty has always had a broader context,” Mr. Yun said.

The U.S. doesn't want peace. There will be no peace.

The Gaddafi Option on Iran

For a compellingly plain explanation of why the U.S., its allies in Israel and among the sheikhdoms will continue to come up short against Iran and its allies read Eldar Mamedov's "Obsession With Iran Destabilizes The Middle East":

As the political track to roll back Iranian influence fails to produce desired results, Washington and its regional allies are debating whether to mirror what the Iranians did: build up proxies capable of challenging them militarily. This, however, is a daunting task. Organizations like Hezbollah, for example, are not just military groups acting on Iran’s behalf. It is a genuine Lebanese grassroots organization. Armed struggle is only one dimension of its activities. The rest is focused on social and political work, all of which integrates the holistic concept of “resistance”. By contrast, as the Syrian war has shown, the most militarily capable Sunni militant groups are in the orbit of al-Qaeda, pursuing a global jihad through means of nihilistic terrorism. And those Sunni militants that are outside this orbit, like Hamas, are in many ways allies of Iran and Hezbollah.

So, the notion of openly supporting al-Qaeda/Islamic State-type proxies against Iran/Hezbollah would be politically costly for the US and its allies and inevitably backfire, like it did on September 11. Kurds are not considered plausible proxies, given their own dynamic and complex relationships with Iran. There is, of course, an option of hiring an army of mercenaries paid by mainly Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. But in the long term, mercenaries are always at disadvantage when confronted with highly motivated and capable local foes.

Taken together, these aggressive efforts to counter Iranian influence would only stiffen the resolve of Tehran and its allies/proxies to protect their positions and contribute to the destabilization of countries like Lebanon and Iraq. In such a climate, any talk of Hezbollah giving up its arms and becoming a “normal” social and political Lebanese actor would be an obvious no-go. In Iraq, consensus-minded politicians like Abadi would find it difficult to retain power, while figures like Hadi al-Amiri would be on the ascendant. Any prospect of security sector reform, involving the demobilization of the Hashd Shabi militias or their integration into the official security forces of the state, would be rendered impossible. To the contrary, there will be ample incentive for Iran and its allies in Iraq to transform Hashd into an Iraqi version of Hezbollah.

Thus, Trump administration’s anti-Iranian offensive is likely to make the Middle East even more violent and unstable than it already is. There was no need for that. The JCPOA opened the way for engaging Iran, also on regional issues. None other than Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei recognized as much when he said that the JCPOA was a test that, if successful, could lead to opening up conversation between the US and Iran on other issues. That could have provided an opportunity to address and perhaps even remove the more objectionable Iranian policies in the region. The utterly unnecessary crisis manufactured by Trump precludes that possibility. The result is likely to be not so much Iranian rollback as more chaos and destabilization in the Middle East.

There appears be two options to the neocon U.S. pullout of the JCPOA, one oriented primarily around recreating the pre-JCPOA status quo -- economic strangulation through extensive sanctions and periodic terror attacks on critical infrastructure and personnel -- and the other an outright military strike a la Libya.

The first can't succeed because China, Russia and most likely Europe -- we'll have to wait and see what effect Italy's new government has on the neoliberal corporate hive mind in Brussels -- are absolutely not going back to the pre-JCPOA status quo.

The days when China and Russia go along with U.S. global leadership are long gone. Was it Obama's "pivot to Asia"? Was it the Umbrella Revolution? We know for Russia it was definitely Kiev February 2014.

So sanctions aren't going to work over the long haul. China and Russia will continue to trade with Iran, if not Germany and Italy. That leaves option #2, the Gaddafi option. But Iran is not Libya. Persia has been around for a long time, longer than Europe. It is going to take more than F-16s and Tomahawks to bring Iran down. That was the whole point of the JCPOA. There were enough people within the U.S. national security state who understood that the Gaddafi option wouldn't work for Iran. To think otherwise is insanity.

By now we should know that this is Trump's game. He bluffs, runs right up against the insane and the absurd, and then he sashays backwards, rubbing out his tracks as he retreats. But before we can cry foul, he's on to the next absurdity, cartwheeling and tweeting.

Trump has made himself vulnerable to China though. If he accepts China's reported offer of $200 billion in additional imports from the U.S., he'll have to capitulate on his demands that China end "Made in China 2025"; he'll have to give in on national security restrictions to Chinese purchases of U.S. tech.

Without China there is no peace deal on the Korean Peninsula. Trump badly wants a peace deal between North and South Korea. He's hungry for it because he believes it will guarantee him a second term and it will put him in the history books as one of the greatest statesmen of all time.

But Trump's foreign policy team, minus Mattis, is composed of full-spectrum dominance neocons, which is why he'll try to keep everyone on board by promising a Gaddafi option on Iran.

Mackey vs. Beeley + North-South Peace on the Korean Peninsula

This morning Niqnaq posts an illuminating exchange of tweets between the odious Robert Mackey and the excellent Vanessa Beeley. Mackey attempts to undermine last Thursday's news conference at the OPCW by alleging that Russia rushed the testimony of the eyewitnesses to the public without allowing the OPCW to interview them first. Beeley refutes this, with an assist from the Russian embassy in the Netherlands, and then demands that Mackey produce the OPCW statement that he says "asked Russia to let them interview the witnesses first, and not hold their event until after the inspectors finish their work and file their report." Mackey does not, which probably means that he just made it up.

The silver lining to the Douma false flag provocation is that it exposes intelligence agency assets like Robert Mackey who have burrowed into left-of-center outlets like The Intercept. Mackey will go on finding work, but his career will never be the same.

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Having had an opportunity to digest some of the reporting of the Kim-Moon talks at Panmunjom, my sense is that there is little chance for success because the U.S. is insisting on complete, rapid denuclearization before any sanctions are lifted. Call it the Gaddafi option. North Korean leadership is not as gullible as the ousted and lynched colonel.

Everyone knows by now that the United States is a bad-faith agent, something that will be even more pronounced when the U.S. pulls out the Iran nuclear deal sometime in May. It will be an official marker for the end of the U.S. unipolar world.

The North Korean strategy is to move South Korea away from the U.S. and closer to China. I think they will be successful.

There is No Shock and Awe Preemption When It Comes to North Korea

Regarding the possibility of a preemptive U.S. attack on North Korea, my question to anyone advocating such a course of action is -- Why do you think China won't intervene, as it did in 1950, to prop up its ally?

That question is taken up by Oriana Skylar Mastro, a warfare-state academic at Georgetown U., in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. The title of the article, "Why China Won’t Rescue North Korea: What to Expect If Things Fall Apart," is misleading in that it conjures up images of the Chinese standing back and watching while the Kim regime is bombed into submission by U.S.-South Korean shock and awe.

The conservative professor's article is actually down to earth and reasonable, but not sanguine when it comes to U.S. options. China might not be wedded to the survival of the Kims, but it has been planning for and is ready to secure the nation's nuclear arsenal. A better title of the article would have been: "China Will Not Rescue Kim Jong-un, But It Will Invade North Korea and Secure the Country's Nuclear Arsenal and Territorial Integrity If Things Fall Apart."

That's a sobering message for American Exceptionalists and neoconservatives. Basically it tells us case closed. There is no shock and awe preemption when it comes to North Korea.

Hence David Sanger's article published Sunday, "A Tillerson Slip Offers a Peek Into Secret Planning on North Korea," outlining the Trump administration's pitiful attempts to blunt the impact of professor Mastro's article by having Tillerson claim that the U.S. also has plans to secure North Korea's nuclear devices. Sanger notes that

But the reference to planning for North Korean collapse, while not drawing wide notice, caught the attention of those who have been drawing up military plans for a number of possible scenarios, including American pre-emptive strikes. Asked whether Mr. Tillerson had referred by mistake to entreaties to the Chinese that previous administrations kept secret, Steven Goldstein, the new under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, said it was quite deliberate.

“The secretary reiterated the position he has taken in meetings with Chinese counterparts,” he said. “He would like the U.S. and Chinese military leaders to develop a plan for the safe disposition of North Korea’s nuclear weapons were the regime to collapse.” He added: “While the secretary has never advocated for regime change, we all have an obligation to be prepared for any scenario.”

There is no indication that the Chinese have responded, or that military officials have met — though Beijing would almost certainly keep that secret if it occurred.

According to current and former American officials, the contingency plans to seize North Korea’s nuclear arsenal have grown in complexity in recent years, largely because the North Korean arsenal has grown.

There are competing estimates among American intelligence agencies over how many weapons the North possesses. Most estimates range from 15 to 30 nuclear devices, but the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for protecting American troops on the Korean Peninsula, projected this year that the number could be in excess of 50.

The North is presumed to have undertaken an elaborate effort to hide the weapons. The result, one senior military official said recently, is that even if dozens of weapons were seized and deactivated, there would be no way to determine whether many more were still hidden away, perhaps under the control of surviving members of Mr. Kim’s military.

In the secret American rehearsals of how to execute a seizure of the North’s weapons — more of which are planned for the first half of next year, officials say — speed is of the essence.

Finding those weapons, landing “render safe” teams to disarm them and airlifting them out of the country would be a difficult enough task in peacetime. But the American planning assumes a three-way scramble to seize both weapons and territory, involving Chinese troops who may find themselves facing off against the United States and its South Korean allies.

“Washington should assume that any Korean conflict involving large-scale U.S. military operations will trigger a significant Chinese military intervention,” Oriana Skylar Mastro, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, wrote this month in the journal Foreign Affairs, in a provocative article titled “Why China Won’t Rescue North Korea.”

China, she wrote, “will likely attempt to seize control of key terrain, including North Korea’s nuclear sites,” most of which are within 60 miles or so of the Chinese border. Because of geographic advantage, they would probably arrive long before American forces.

In the past, American planning was based on an assumption that China would come to the aid of North Korea, as it did during the Korean War nearly seven decades ago. But Ms. Mastro, who also advises the United States Pacific Command, wrote that today “the Chinese military assume that it would be opposing, not supporting, North Korean troops.”

Her analysis mirrors what is increasingly becoming the dominant thinking among American military planners. That has made the secret discussion that Mr. Tillerson alluded to all the more vital. Curiously, some Chinese academics have begun writing about the need for the United States and China to prepare a joint strategy. Such public airing of the issue would have been banned in Chinese publications even a few years ago.

In other words, the prevailing military-academic opinion is that regime change in North Korea will likely expand Chinese power, as regime change in Iraq has expanded Iranian power.

Nonetheless the Trump administration continues to goad North Korea into some sort of reaction that can be used to justify a U.S. attack. (See Sanger's latest, "U.S. Accuses North Korea of Mounting WannaCry Cyberattack.) Warfare appears to be the only foreign policy of the United States.

The Korean War and NSC-68

From this morning's Situation Report:

Show of force. There was some international cooperation on Sunday, when U.S., South Korean, and Japanese warplanes staged a major show of force over the Korean peninsula, releasing live weapons during a joint training exercise. The flight was “in response to North Korea’s launch of an intermediate range ballistic missile over Japan on September 14,” according to a statement from the U.S. Pacific Command. The mission included two B-1B Lancer bombers, four U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightnings, four South Korean F-15K fighters, and four Japanese F-2 fighters.

“North Korea will be destroyed.” The exercise came hours after U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley warned Sunday that if Pyongyang continues with its nuclear and ballistic missile tests, “North Korea will be destroyed. And we all know that. And none of us want that. None of us want war...we’re trying every other possibility that we have, but there’s a whole lot of military options on the table."

Haley later told CNN that if the Washington exhausts its diplomatic options on North Korea, the U.S. military would “take care of it.” Haley continued, “We wanted to be responsible and go through all diplomatic means to get their attention first. If that doesn't work, General Mattis will take care of it.”

It is unclear what the point is of all these bellicose U.S. threats -- Proving credibility to allies? Instigating a war with North Korea? The U.S. military failed to "take care of it" 65 years ago; its track record since has not been anything to boast about.

I'm reading Nemesis: Truman and Johnson in the Coils of War in Asia (1984) by former Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau Chief  Robert J. Donovan. It is a mainstream history that hews closely to the "U.S. are the good guys" perspective. I thought it would be interesting to read a political history of the Korean and Vietnam wars written at a time before neoconservative revisionism clamped down on discourse.

One interesting, if not original, insight Donovan has is that the Korean War was key to enshrining the huge military budgets and perpetual war footing of the Cold War. Truman had been sitting on NSC-68 for months. Once hostilities broke out on the Korean Peninsula in June of 1950, adoption of NSC-68 became a fait accompli.

Since a militarized Cold War can be traced back to the Korean War, it is interesting now that we are in an era of a New Cold War, that the womb of the Old Cold War appears to be gestating. This bodes ill for Pax Americana.

For an excellent primer on the ignominious history of U.S. relations with North Korea read "End the 67-year war" by Robert Alvarez.

The Lunacy of U.S. Foreign Policy

For a snapshot of the lunacy of U.S. foreign policy, consult this morning's Situation Report by Paul McLeary and Adam Rawnsley:

On the road. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David M. Satterfield is on the way to Astana, Kazakhstan to observe the next round of Astana Process talks on Syria. The State Department “remains concerned with Iran’s involvement as a so-called ‘guarantor’ of the Astana process,” the department said in a statement Tuesday. “Iran’s activities in Syria and unquestioning support for the Assad regime have perpetuated the conflict and increased the suffering of ordinary Syrians.”

Sanctions. The United Nations unanimously passed a new round of sanctions on North Korea but Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is warning China that the U.S. won't ease up the pressure after they passed. "We will put additional sanctions on [China] and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system" if they don't enforce the latest sanctions, Mnuchin told reporters. 

Phase four. Al Monitor reporter Laura Rozen tweeted Tuesday night that she's heard Trump administration-affiliated think tanks are working on strategies on how to deal with insurgencies in North Korea in the aftermath of a potential war.  

It's war all the time for the United States. Unable to admit defeat and acknowledge reality, all the U.S. can do is wage war perpetually. There is a limit to such a strategy. When will it be reached? Possibly the Korean Peninsula.

Trump's Dead End

Today is one of those rare occasions when the editorial page of The New York Times is in agreement with the World Socialist Web Site. Donald Trump's flailing response to North Korea's missile tests and Sunday's detonation of a nuclear device is the agent of unification.

In "An Incoherent Strategy on North Korea" the NYT discards the conventional Western portrayal of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as an insane, power-hungry despot:

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, is certainly playing a dangerous game; Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, warned Monday that Mr. Kim is “begging for war.” But unless he is completely deranged he must know that war with the United States would be suicide. He seems to regard nuclear weapons as his only guarantee of survival in the face of American hostility.

He has reason to worry: Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, gave up his nascent nuclear program in 2003 in return for promises of economic integration with the West. But when rebels rose up against him, he was bombed by the United States and its allies, then executed by rebels.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have insisted that the United States is not aiming for regime change. But it could be doing considerably more to lower the temperature and lead the way to a more peaceful solution. On Sunday, Mr. Mattis seemed intent on doing just the opposite, promising a “massive military response” in return for “any threat” — not just an attack but the threat of an attack — against the United States; its territories, like Guam; or its allies. And while Mr. Mattis and Mr. Tillerson have both hinted at dialogue with the North, Mr. Trump tweeted that “talking is not the answer!”

The Times editorial writer might have lifted this notion of the influential nature of Qaddafi's downfall on North Korea's commitment to its nuclear and ballistic missile program from none other than Vladimir Putin. According to WSWS's Alex Lantier in "Danger of global war over Korea shakes Europe":

Speaking at the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) summit in Xiamen, China, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that aggressive action by the United States and its allies against North Korea could lead to world war: “Ramping up military hysteria in such conditions is senseless; it’s a dead end. It could lead to a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life. There is no other way to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, save that of peaceful dialogue.”

Putin made clear that Pyongyang’s reckless pursuit of its nuclear weapons program is a desperate attempt to deter an attack like the 2003 US war of aggression against Iraq or the 2011 NATO war in Libya, in which European powers including France and Britain played leading roles in launching.

He said, “We all remember what happened with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. His children were killed, I think his grandson was shot, the whole country was destroyed and Saddam Hussein was hanged ... We all know how this happened, and people in North Korea remember well what happened in Iraq. They will eat grass but will not stop their program as long as they do not feel safe.”

Everyone is calling for talks except Trump, who is acting as if this is nothing more than a hard-nosed Manhattan real estate deal (with nuclear weapons added). Stock indexes are beginning to factor in the volatility of the situation.

The Saker, in a post, "Make no mistake, the latest US thuggery is a sign of weakness, not strength," devoted to the recent U.S. "raids" on the Russian Consulate in San Francisco and the Russian diplomatic annexes in Washington and New York, captures how bizarre and out of control the situation has become:

This is also really scary. The combination of, on one hand, spineless subservience to the Neocons with intellectual mediocrity, a gross lack of professionalism and the kind of petty thuggery normally associated with street gangs and, on the other hand, nuclear weapons is very scary. In the mean time, the other nuclear armed crazies have just declared that they have a thermonuclear device which they apparently tested yesterday just to show their contempt for Trump and his general minions. I don’t think that they have a hydrogen bomb. I don’t think that they have a real ICBM. I don’t even think that they have real (usable) nuclear warheads. But what if I am wrong? What if they did get a lot of what they claim to have today – such as rocket engines – from the Ukies?

In one corner, the Outstanding Leader, Brilliant Comrade, Young Master and Great Successor, Kim Jong-un and on the other, The Donald, Grab them by the xxxxx and Make ‘Merica Great, the Grand Covfefe Donald Trump. Both armed with nukes.

Scary, scary shit. Really scary.

But even more scary and depressing is that the stronger man of the two is beyond any doubt Kim Jong-un.

All I see in the White House are vacancy signs.

Against the nearly universal call for talks, the neocon hive mind, as well as South Korean President Moon Jai-in, has settled on the idea of increased sanctions targeting Chinese oil sales and Chinese banks. This is no golden-ticket solution because China has ample representation in the United States Government. Chimerica is real.

North Korea and Iran

With North Korea sending a ballistic missile over Hokkaido, Trump has opted for the tried and true “all options are on the table” over the incendiary rhetoric he used earlier this month.

North Korea continues to launch test missiles in response to ongoing U.S.-South Korean war games. The U.S. mainstream media downplays the importance of the war games, usually burying them far down in any story about the North Korean missile tests. Most stories emphasize the irrational, aggressive nature of North Korean leadership, when in fact it is the United States that continually acts in an aggressive and contradictory fashion.

This will be on full display shortly when Trump attempts to scuttle the Iranian nuclear accord. The IAEA is set to report that Iran is in compliance with the agreement. The Trump administration is casting about for a way to end the deal without risking international isolation for the United States. The Israelis have floated the idea of de-certification without withdrawal. The Iranians will likely not be bated. Europe will honor the agreement. With trade restricted with Russia thanks to the U.S.-launched New Cold War, economic expansion in Persia looks particularly appetizing to Berlin and Paris.

There is linkage between North Korea and Iran as Gardiner Harris reported yesterday in "If Report Says Iran Is Abiding by Nuclear Deal, Will Trump Heed It?":

[Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat] said that scrapping the deal without any evidence that Iran was seriously violating its terms would damage American credibility around the world and all but guarantee that North Korea would refuse to undergo a similar set of negotiations to end its own nuclear program, now Mr. Tillerson’s top goal.

“If the president voids this without any evidence of a breach, it calls into question the credibility of the United States not just on Iran but North Korea and everything else,” Mr. Durbin said. “That cannot be in the interests of the United States.”

American credibility is already mortally wounded.

Maidan Blowback: North Korea's ICBMs

UPDATE: In a post today, "Hyping North Korea To Relaunch Reagan's Star Wars?," Moon of Alabama denies the veracity of the entire NYT story:

One missile defense marketing pundit claimed today that the North Korean missile engines used in the recent tests were bought from factories in Ukraine or Russia. The usual propagandist at the New York Times picked up on that to further their anti-Russian theme:

"Mr. Elleman was unable to rule out the possibility that a large Russian missile enterprise, Energomash, which has strong ties to the Ukrainian complex, had a role in the transfer of the RD-250 engine technology to North Korea. He said leftover RD-250 engines might also be stored in Russian warehouses."

But the engines in question are of different size and thrust than the alleged R-250 engines and the claimed time-frame does not fit at all. The Ukrainian government denied any transfer of missiles or designs. The story was debunked with in hours by two prominent experts. But implicating Russia, however farfetched, is always good if one wants to sell more weapons.

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The New York Times is one of the chief purveyors of Russophobia. Usually the newspaper's anti-Russia propaganda, at first glance at least, appears plausible. But that's not the case with this morning's offering by William Broad and David Sanger, "North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say."

The story, based on a new study by an International Institute for Strategic Studies missile expert, is that North Korea's recent ICBM success is due to the acquisition of Russian-designed engines, RD-250s, from a plant, Yuzhmash, in Dnipro, Ukraine. As Broad and Sanger explain:

Analysts who studied photographs of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, inspecting the new rocket motors concluded that they derive from designs that once powered the Soviet Union’s missile fleet. The engines were so powerful that a single missile could hurl 10 thermonuclear warheads between continents.

Those engines were linked to only a few former Soviet sites. Government investigators and experts have focused their inquiries on a missile factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, on the edge of the territory where Russia is fighting a low-level war to break off part of Ukraine. During the Cold War, the factory made the deadliest missiles in the Soviet arsenal, including the giant SS-18. It remained one of Russia’s primary producers of missiles even after Ukraine gained independence.

But since Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was removed from power in 2014, the state-owned factory, known as Yuzhmash, has fallen on hard times. The Russians canceled upgrades of their nuclear fleet. The factory is underused, awash in unpaid bills and low morale. Experts believe it is the most likely source of the engines that in July powered the two ICBM tests, which were the first to suggest that North Korea has the range, if not necessarily the accuracy or warhead technology, to threaten American cities.

“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine — probably illicitly,” Mr. Elleman said in an interview. “The big question is how many they have and whether the Ukrainians are helping them now. I’m very worried.”

Throughout the story, Broad and Sanger repeatedly try to link the engine transfer, at least rhetorically, to Russia. There is no stronger tell than the highlighted passage above where Dnipro is painted a city on the front lines of the civil war. It is unclear from the sentence which side of the Novorossiya border Dnipro is located.

This is nothing more than crass propaganda. Dnipro has always remained loyal to the coup government in Kiev. It removed its Lenin statues and even changed the name of the city, Dnipropetrovsk, to comply with the 2015 decommunization law. (The city had been named after the Communist leader of Ukraine Grigory Petrovsky.)

If anything this story is your standard tale of CIA blowback. The United States instigated a coup in 2014 and, subsequently, one of its designated rogue nations has a powerful ICBM arsenal to go with its small stockpile of nuclear bombs.

"The Mainland United States Will be Catapulted into an Unimaginable Sea of Fire.”

It has been a red-letter day for apocalyptic rhetoric. Trump's "Fire and Fury" quote has topped Google News for a complete cycle. I think North Korea got the better of the exchange. According to Peter Baker and Choe Sang-hun reporting in "Trump Threatens ‘Fire and Fury’ Against North Korea if It Endangers U.S.":

Undaunted, North Korea warned several hours later that it was considering a strike that would create “an enveloping fire” around Guam, the western Pacific island where the United States operates a critical Air Force base. In recent months, American strategic bombers from Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base have flown over the Korean Peninsula in a show of force.

“Will only the U.S. have option called ‘preventive war’ as is claimed by it?” the Strategic Force of the North’s Korean People’s Army, or K.P.A., said in a statement. “It is a daydream for the U.S. to think that its mainland is an invulnerable Heavenly kingdom.”

The U.S. should clearly face up to the fact that the ballistic rockets of the Strategic Force of the K.P.A. are now on constant standby, facing the Pacific Ocean and pay deep attention to their azimuth angle for launch,” the statement said.

[snip]

This week, after the United Nations vote, North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said, “The day the United States dares tease our nation with a nuclear weapon and sanctions, the mainland United States will be catapulted into an unimaginable sea of fire.”

There might be some hope for those of us lost in the daydream of our impregnable imperial heavenly kingdom. Experts believe that while North Korea has the ability to miniaturize a nuclear bomb and stow it aboard a intercontinental ballistic missile that could likely hit key populations centers in the the United States. What North Korea has not been able to perfect is the heat shielding required to protect the nuclear device from disintegrating upon the missile's scorching descent through the atmosphere.

Who are certainly to be bereft of hope are the citizens of Seoul. Since Trump has assumed his throne in the Oval Office and been locked in rhetorical battle with his younger opponent Kim Jong-un, various tallies of Seoul's population have appeared in the press. Nine million people reside in the city itself; 20 million in the metropolitan area; I have seen estimates as high as 40 million in the area along the DMZ vulnerable to North Korea's artillery.

Commentators usually quote 100,000 fatalities in Seoul, as Allan Nairn did on an appearance this morning on Democracy Now!:

ALLAN NAIRN: For years, there was a consensus, a complete consensus, within the U.S. establishment and military, that military action against North Korea was unthinkable, because, just with conventional artillery, North Korea could immediately devastate Seoul, killing more than 100,000, perhaps. But recently, the political culture and discussion around military action against North Korea has shifted. Colonel Guy Roberts, who’s a longtime Pentagon and NATO official, last year wrote an article calling for the U.S. to adopt a first-strike nuclear policy, to be willing to use nuclear weapons against a country—and he specifically mentioned North Korea as one—in the event they use conventional weapons. He wrote that last year. This year, Trump nominated him to be the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear policy. John Bolton recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the U.S. should consider a ground invasion of North Korea. Lindsey Graham recently quoted Trump as saying that the U.S. should be ready to destroy—

AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to that quote.

ALLAN NAIRN: —North Korea itself.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to that quote of Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, being questioned last week on the Today show by Matt Lauer.

MATT LAUER: Every military expert says there is no good military option. 

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well, they’re wrong. There is a military option. 

MATT LAUER: What’s a good one? 

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: To destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself. He is not going to allow—President Trump—the ability of this madman to have a missile to hit America. If there’s going to be a war to stop him, it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here. And he’s told me that to my face.

Those 100,000 fatalities don't usually include the North's body count, which I imagine, given the superiority of U.S., South Korean and Japanese arms, would be greater than 100,000.

So conservatively we're looking at quarter-of-a-million war dead right off the proverbial bat. And given the U.S. track record in conflicts over the last half century, chances are there wouldn't be a fast finish to hostilities followed by an all-encompassing peace treaty.

But who knows? Maybe the Chinese would intervene, as they did during the Korean War, and the hot war would come to a rapid halt, if only because of the global outrage over nuclear fallout filling the atmosphere.

I don't mean to be glib, but at a certain point there is only so much anger one can muster for our totally defiled political class. That's why I shouldn't rant about the lack of an anti-war movement. The overwhelming feeling now is one of "What is the point?" There is almost zero contact between official power and the common folk. No wonder Game of Thrones is so popular.

Eventually though we're going to have to find our way back into the streets, and not just to #Resist.

Ask yourself  when was the last time you heard anything about the great "Resistance Summer"?

Sanctions Bill Puts World on Notice That It's Not Only Trump Who is the Problem. It is the Entire U.S. Government.

UPDATE: Corker is now said to be fine with the House sanctions bill. From Matt Flegenheimer, "Key Senator Drops Objection, Clearing Way for Russia Sanctions":

“We expressed concerns about it,” Mr. Corker said of the addition of North Korea to the House plan, citing a desire for greater Senate input before placing new sanctions on the reclusive country. “They decided to add it. I don’t take affront.” 

Hours later, Mr. Corker said the Senate would move to approve the House version after all, but demanded that House leaders “expeditiously consider and pass enhancements to the North Korea language, which multiple members of the Senate hope to make in the very near future.” 

Some hurdles remain. Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said it was not yet clear if the Senate would approve and send the bill to President Trump’s desk before lawmakers leave for the August recess.

**** 

There is a spat between Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy over the inclusion of North Korea in the House sanctions bill that appears to be holding the legislation up.

Assuming the sanctions bill eventually finds its way to Trump's desk, it is noteworthy that not one Democrat in the House voted "No." All three nays were from Republicans, which means all my donations and phone-banking for the "peace" candidate, who ended being elected to represent my congressional district, were for naught. Ambition trumps principle once again.

The sanctions bill codifies the New Cold War begun by the Obama administration in 2014. The silver lining is that the Democrats, so completely bellicose and Russophobic, will continue their accelerated collapse. Even The New York Times greeted their "Better Deal" reboot with derision. How can you front with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and expect otherwise?

The other silver lining is that Europe can no longer run away from the Trump bogeyman with the expectation that Obama's Second Coming is right around the bend. No, this is deeply-rooted institutional madness that is not going anywhere until something crashes or blows up.

The sanctions bill also moves the U.S. in a direction to undo the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) by targeting Iran's ballistic missile program. Iran's ballistic missile program was a sticking point during JCPOA negotiations, and it was purposely fudged by John Kerry so as not to kill the deal. (To get a look at the Israeli wish-list for U.S. policy toward Iran, read "Strategy to Restore U.S. Leverage Against Iran," by Eric Edelman and Charles Wald. It's basically war.)

The silver lining here is that the U.S. will be alone, except for the usual accomplices, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, maybe Poland. The sanctions bill has put the world on notice that it's not only Trump who is the problem.It is the entire U.S. government.

Two Big Votes in Congress Today + The Demography of Tech Feudalism

Two big votes are scheduled in Congress today. In the Senate, repeal of Obamacare; in the House, sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea. The Senate vote is being criticized as a Star Chamber. No one knows what is being voted on other than a motion to begin debate. McConnell has to proceed under a cloak of darkness because enough senators have said that they will vote No on a motion to open debate if what is going to be proposed is repeal without a replacement.

The sanctions bill is being sold as a defense of Western democracy. According to David Sanger in "For Trump and Putin, Sanctions Are a Setback Both Sought to Avoid":

Last week at the Aspen Security Forum, four of his top intelligence and national security officials — including Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director — said they were absolutely convinced that the Russians were behind the effort to influence the election.

“There is no dissent,” Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, said on Friday at the Aspen conference. The Russians, he said, “caught us just a little bit asleep in terms of capabilities” the Kremlin could bring to bear to influence elections here, in France and Germany. The Russians’ goal was clear, he said: “They are trying to undermine Western democracy.”

The wording of the legislation agreed to by House and Senate conferees over the weekend indicates that many Republicans agree with the intelligence assessment: For the first time, it imposes penalties, though not very onerous ones, on anyone determined by the United States government to have participated in the election hacking.

But the latest from the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) argues that

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

Though Sanger soft-peddles the impact of the sanctions bill, if Congress goes ahead with it, and Trump signs it, Europe is ready to retaliate. Apparently the Europeans feel that it weakens their energy sector. From Patrick Martin's "US sanctions bill against Russia set for passage with bipartisan support":

Besides opposition from the White House—largely behind closed doors—there has been public criticism by the European Union of at least one provision in the sanctions bill, which bars companies from doing deals with Russian partners where the Russian company owns more than a one-third interest in the venture. This could potentially threaten the Nord Stream II pipeline between Russia and Germany, financed by several Western companies but owned by Russia’s Gazprom.

Is Congress worse than Trump? When it comes to war and peace the answer appears to be "Yes." Outside of the U.K., I don't see much left of "Western Democracy" to undermine.

A foul opinion piece over the weekend by American Enterprise Institute president Arthur C. Brooks is a fine example of what the elite excel at -- blaming the victim. Brooks blames young people "for an increasing paranoia about taking big leaps" like starting a business or a family or moving out of town for a new job. He states the obvious, that there are economic reasons for this risk-averse behavior, but he doesn't let that stop him from lacing into youth for spinelessness:

Here’s what all this means: Our sin tends to be timidity, not rashness. On average, we say “no” too much when faced with an opportunity or dilemma.

Once you start looking for this imprudently risk-averse behavior, you see it everywhere, particularly among young people. According to data from the General Social Survey collected by NORC at the University of Chicago, people under age 30 today are almost a third less willing than under-30s in 1996 to relocate for their careers. And as the economist Tyler Cowen observes in his new book “The Complacent Class,” the fraction of people in this age group who own their own businesses has plummeted by about 65 percent since the 1980s.

Economic changes have contributed to both trends, to be sure. But there is another culprit: a diminishing frontier spirit and an increasing paranoia about taking big leaps.

Family formation, perhaps the ultimate personal leap of faith, looks to be another victim of this imprudent hesitation. Census Bureau demographers recently reported that while only a quarter of 24- to 29-year-olds were unmarried in the 1980s, almost half of that age group is unmarried today. And delaying the jump to adulthood has real social consequences. Last August, the Centers for Disease Control announced that the United States fertility rate had fallen to its lowest point since they began calculating it in 1909.

I think this is proof of the eminent rationality of young people, as well as the constricting, plutocratic spirit of our times. We are experiencing an age of tech feudalism. I fear it will only end when things fall apart. There are plenty of signs that the collapse is beginning.

The U.S. Scraps "Strategic Patience" with North Korea in Favor of a "Provocation Cycle"

As good a place to start as any this morning is The New York Times unsigned editorial "The Way Forward on North Korea," which calls for direct talks with North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile program: 

Mr. Trump may also be learning another lesson, that he can’t rely on China alone to force North Korea to rein in its nuclear program. What he hasn’t grasped is that a solution will eventually require direct dialogue with the North.

While it refreshing to read that "the newspaper of record" has embraced the obvious, the editorial, in its recapitulation of recent events, tiptoes around something else that is obvious. Trump precipitated North Korea's successful launch of an ICBM Tuesday:

After Mr. Trump acknowledged in a recent tweet that depending on China “has not worked out,” his administration took steps that reflected his annoyance. It approved a $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province; it imposed sanctions on a Chinese bank accused of acting as a conduit of illegal North Korean financial activity; and an American naval destroyer passed near disputed territory claimed by China in the South China Sea. There is now talk of Washington moving on steel tariffs, which would be aimed partly at China.

Nudging China to ratchet up the pressure on North Korea is not a bad thing. But an outright break between the United States and China would very likely embolden North Korea. In a sign that neither leader wants to escalate tensions, Mr. Trump called Mr. Xi on Sunday to discuss North Korea, and Mr. Xi accepted the call. Mr. Trump warned Mr. Xi that America was prepared to act on its own in pressuring Pyongyang.

The Times should call a spade a spade. Trump has scrapped Obama's "strategic patience" in favor of what is known as a "provocation cycle" where the U.S. makes a move, such as sanctioning a Chinese bank used by North Korea, hoping to elicit a response; and when the North responds, the U.S. is ready with a follow-up.

That's where we are today. The U.S. and South Korea launched their own missile exercise on South Korea's eastern coastline.

A good long story, "How to Deal With North Korea," by Mark Bowden, in the July-August issue of The Atlantic, replete with quotes from military brass and think-tank intellectuals, comes to a slightly different conclusion than The Times' editorial board.

Writing clearly from a bellicose deep-state perspective -- for instance, there is not one word about the cataclysmic saturation bombing North Korea sustained from the U.S. during the Korean War -- Bowden thinks the U.S. should tacitly acknowledge the North's nuclear power status, not give up too much in talks, and hope that time runs out on the Kim dynasty.

Bowden breaks down deep-state thinking in regards to North Korea into four courses of action: 1) Total preventative war; 2) "Turning the screws," in other words, a "provocation cycle," where we appear to be today; 3) Decapitation: a surgical strike to take out Kim and his leadership; and 4) Acceptance.

Bowden dismisses a "provocation cycle" as too risky because it can rapidly spin out of control.

Trump will meet with Putin and Xi at the G-20. Russia and China are seeking to freeze the North's nuclear and ballistic program on the basis of U.S. and South Korea suspending their war games. Seems reasonable to me. Hopefully Trump will see it the same way.

One thing I think is obvious to everyone: after Yugoslavia, after Iraq, after Libya, and with Iran's continued harassment despite coming to terms with the West over its nuclear program, no rational actor would believe that renouncing one's nuclear program guarantees acceptance, peace and prosperity.

North Korea's Nuclear Deterrent is Here to Stay

David Sanger and William Broad published a piece yesterday, "North Korean Tests Add Urgency for U.S. to Fix Defense Flaws," that read like a long lament. Given the recent success North Korea has had with solid-fuel rockets, the country's nuclear deterrent now has to be accepted. As Choe Sang-hun reports today, "North Korea Claims Technological Progress in Latest Missile Launch":

So far this year, North Korea has conducted nine ballistic missile tests, some of which analysts later said demonstrated new technologies. Its midrange Pukguksong-2 used solid fuel, eliminating the need for a lengthy fueling process, which means it can be rolled out from a concealed location and launched quickly. The intermediate-range Hwasong-12, which the North tested on May 14, had a longer range than any missile it had launched before.

Sunday's test was conducted from a mobile launcher. According to this morning's SitRep:

This week in North Korean launches. North Korean missile launches are becoming a weekly occurrence and this week's launch consists of what North Korea claims is a new, more accurate missile. The North fired the missile from a mobile tracked vehicle in Wonsan, on the country's eastern coast, raising the prospect that the missile in Sunday's launch may be the same one shown off in an April military parade in Pyongyang. South Korea's military identified the missile, which landed in waters within Japan's exclusive economic zone, as a Scud variant.

The missile defense system that the U.S. Air Force is testing this morning has proven successful in the past only because the launch location, the Marshall Islands, is known ahead of time. North Korea's technical prowess with mobile solid-fuel rocket launches renders the U.S. system obsolete.

Writing in "Behind the US war drive against North Korea," Peter Symonds summarizes the U.S. response to the news:

The test firing by North Korea of a short-range missile on Monday, the latest in a series of similar missile trials, has provoked another round of condemnations and warnings by Washington and its allies, amid a continuing US military build-up near the Korean Peninsula. The US Navy announced last week that it was deploying the USS Nimitz and its battle group to the region, bringing to three the number of aircraft carriers able to direct their massive fire power against North Korea.

President Trump responded to the missile test by tweeting that North Korea had shown “great disrespect” towards its neighbour China, which was “trying hard” to compel Pyongyang to bow to US demands to abandon its nuclear and missile programs. Washington has placed immense pressure on Beijing, above all through the threat of a war on its doorstep, to use its economic muscle to rein in the Pyongyang regime.

Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, US Defence Secretary James Mattis made clear that China had limited time. He condemned North Korea as “a direct threat to the United States,” adding: “We don’t have to wait until they have an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear war head on it.” Mattis warned that any war with North Korea would be “catastrophic” and involve “probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”

The US war drive against North Korea has been accompanied by an incessant campaign in the media vilifying the Pyongyang regime and the alleged threat posed by its tiny nuclear arsenal. Mattis has already indicated that any attempt by North Korea to use a nuclear weapon would be met with an “effective and overwhelming” response—that is, annihilation, using America’s huge nuclear armoury.

To understand why North Korea is not going to buckle under threat read Bruce Cumings' "A Murderous History of Korea" in the last issue of London Review of Books. The U.S. has annihilated the country once before but failed to conquer it. The entire organizing principle of North Korea is the memory of that annihilation.

There is no possibility of rolling back North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program. Do Trump and his generals realize this? They must. So the question becomes how much bellicose posturing must the U.S. engage in to maintain the illusion of "full-spectrum dominance"? And once the posturing begins can the U.S. be sure that events won't escalate out of control?

Hodeidah, Mosul & the "Generosity" of the U.S. Military

Yemen is almost never covered by The New York Times anymore. But recently posted on LobeLog is a dynamite assessment by James Spencer of current Saudi plans for the country. Every paragraph in "What Does Victory in Yemen Look Like?" is rock solid, but try this one out. It pertains to the often spoken of Hodeidah offensive, the one Deputy Crown Prince Salman wants direct U.S. (Special Forces) help with.

The first, and most pressing, problem with this operation is that even if everything goes as hoped, it is likely to have a very severe impact on the flow of food to the majority of Yemen’s population. Putting Hodeidah—through which nearly 90% of Yemen’s food imports pass—out of action even for the minimum four weeks would be catastrophic, let alone if the plan is at all disrupted. Further, even after displacing the Houthi-Salehis from the ports of Aden and Mokha, it has taken a long time for the coalition to provide or enable food supply: those areas held by the coalition are now the worst affected by famine. Given the slow going to capture Aden, Mokha, and Ta’iz, even six weeks is probably not accurate. Mosul, a town of similar population, has taken the Iraqis six months so far, required the active involvement of UK and US Special Forces, and is still far from secure.

Speaking of Mosul, there is a terrific piece called "The Baghdad Road" by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, published in the last issue of London Review of Books, about the Iraqi Special Operations Forces fight to take the western part of the city from the Islamic State. It's gritty war reporting that readers of the prestige press almost never get nowadays since all U.S. wars are being fought under a cloak of secrecy with the support of the mainstream media monopoly. Abdul-Ahad provides an interesting abbreviated history of Daesh's control of Mosul. Once again, indicators point to a foreign intelligence service at the core of the Caliphate:

‘I have to be honest,’ he added. ‘When the Islamic State first entered Mosul everyone was happy. People started clapping for them. They allowed us to remove the concrete blocks the army had installed to close the neighbourhoods. Before, it would take an hour to go from one area to the other, afterwards the roads were open and we felt free. They let the people alone and didn’t mind if people smoked, if people prayed or not. You could go anywhere, do anything you wanted, as long as it didn’t hurt them. I would go to the woods with a friend, sit in a café, smoke a nargileh, and they would turn up. Tall, muscled and mostly foreigners, they wouldn’t dare say a word to you. In the early days we said this was the life.’

Not to leave legacy media completely out of the picture, there was this obligatory reference to the beneficence of G.I. Joe from an account by Choe Sang-hun of South Korea's newly elected president, Moon Jae-in:

Mr. Moon’s parents fled Communist rule during the Korean War and were among tens of thousands evacuated from the North Korean port of Hungnam by retreating American Navy vessels in the winter of 1950. They often told him about the Christmas sweets that American troops handed out to those packed into the ships during the journey.

For an excellent primer on the bestial savagery of the U.S. military during the Korean War see Moon of Alabama's "How Bio-Weapons Led To Torture ... And North Korean Nukes."

Now That THAAD is Nearly Operational U.S. War Drums Being Muffled

A good rundown of yesterday's developments in the Trump administration's war moves toward North Korea is provided in "White House briefing signals escalating war preparations against North Korea," by Mike Head writing for World Socialist Web Site:

US Pacific Command chief Admiral Harry Harris, who would lead any attack on the Korean Peninsula, gave an indication of the Pentagon’s message. Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, he asserted that denuclearisation by North Korea—the goal outlined publicly by the White House—is no longer a realistic option.

Harris said he had no confidence that North Korea would refrain from “something precipitous” should it succeed in miniaturising a nuclear weapon to mount on a ballistic missile. He said the US had “a lot of preemptive options,” but declined to provide specifics.

The admiral advocated greater shows of military force, including overflying the Korean Peninsula with nuclear-capable B-1 and B-52 bombers. This would be on top of the current visits and exercises by two US destroyers, the guided-missile submarine USS Michigan and the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike.

Harris acknowledged that possible reprisals stemming from a strike against North Korea would place at risk the lives of millions of Koreans and Japanese, as well as the 28,500 US troops in South Korea. But he argued this danger was outweighed by the prospect of “a lot more Koreans and Japanese and Americans dying if North Korea achieves its nuclear aims.”

In another indication of war planning, Harris urged Congress to add ballistic-missile interceptors to installations in Alaska and California, and to “study” placing interceptors in Hawaii while immediately bolstering defensive radars there.

Harris took aim at China, saying it had substantial leverage against North Korea. He labeled as “preposterous” China’s alleged pressure on South Korean companies to stall the placement of a US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile battery in South Korea.

The US claims the THAAD facility is a purely defensive weapon to intercept incoming missiles. In reality, its radar capacity is designed to probe deep into China and the system’s underlying purpose is to block any attempt by North Korea or China to respond to a US first-strike nuclear attack.

Defying protests by China, as well as hundreds of local residents, US personnel yesterday began to install the THAAD equipment at a former golf course in Seongju. It was an earlier-than-expected move, effectively preempting South Korea’s presidential election on May 9.

Television footage showed military trailers carrying large units, including what appeared to be launch canisters, on to the site. Protesters hurled water bottles at the vehicles, despite the efforts of thousands of police to block them.

Baek-Gwang-soon, 73, who has lived in Seongju all her life, told the Guardian she was “speechless with anger.” She explained: “This is a quiet place, where we welcome outsiders with open arms. Now it’s being ruined by the arrival of American weapons that have turned us into a North Korean target.”

The THAAD deployment provoked further alarm bells in Beijing. Yesterday’s editorial in the state-run Global Times declared: “It is infuriating that the US and South Korea have stabbed China in the back at a critical time when China and the US are cooperating to prevent North Korea from carrying out a new nuclear or missile test.”

At the same time an Op-Ed in the People’s Daily, the official organ of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, continued to plead for an accommodation with Washington. Citing this month’s meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the commentary held out the hope that such “high-level dialogues” should “help dispel the old idea that the two sides are destined for war.”

In reality, yesterday’s developments demonstrate an escalating confrontation, driven by Washington’s determination to assert unchallenged hegemony over the Asia-Pacific region, at China’s expense.

While the official organ of the Chinese Communist Party is soft-pedaling the possibility of war, so too is the official organ of the U.S./global deep state. The New York Times's Mark Landler writes in "The Drumbeats Don’t Add Up to Imminent War With North Korea" that

President Trump summoned all 100 members of the Senate for a briefing by his war cabinet on the mounting tensions with North Korea. An American submarine loaded with Tomahawk missiles surfaced in a port in South Korea. Gas stations in the North shut down amid rumors that the government was stockpiling fuel.

Americans could be forgiven for thinking that war is about to break out. But it is not.

The drumbeat of bellicose threats and military muscle-flexing on both sides overstates the danger of a clash between the United States and North Korea, senior Trump administration officials and experts who have followed the Korean crisis for decades said. While Mr. Trump regards the rogue government in the North as his most pressing international problem, he told the senators he was pursuing a strategy that relied heavily on using China’s economic leverage to curb its neighbor’s provocative behavior.

Recent American military moves — like deploying the submarine Michigan and the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson to the waters off the Korean Peninsula — were aimed less at preparing for a pre-emptive strike, officials said, than at discouraging the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, from conducting further nuclear or ballistic missile tests.

“In confronting the reckless North Korean regime, it’s critical that we’re guided by a strong sense of resolve, both privately and publicly, both diplomatically and militarily,” Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the Pentagon’s top commander in the Pacific, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

Similar soft-pedaling can be found in this morning's Situation Report.

The contradiction here is that in order for this strategy of constantly ratcheting up military threats to work, stories can't appear in official publications proclaiming them nothing but parade exercises. Once Pyongyang processes this information, not to mention Beijing (unless Beijing is collaborating with Trump here) then the stated goal of all this saber-rattling, keeping the North Koreans from conducting another nuclear test, will be lost as Kim Jong-un will have nothing to fear.

Then what does Trump do? As Landler admits:

None of this is to say there is no risk of miscalculation that could escalate into hostilities. Mr. Trump’s penchant for provocative statements introduced an element of unpredictability to a relationship in which the uncertainty has historically been on the North Korean side. How Mr. Kim reacts is the major variable in a complicated equation.

Much of this seems directed at the good citizens of South Korea who filled the streets and brought down the business-as-usual corrupt president Park Geun-hye. South Koreans are also opposed to THAAD. When you want to cow the citizenry mock up or actually go to war.

It's a real problem. But now that THAAD is nearly operational hopefully the war drums will go silent.

North Korea Will Not Relinquish Nukes: Trump on a Glide Path to War

A particularly good Situation Report this morning on the continuing escalation towards military conflict between the United States and North Korea:

The guns of April. Happy Tuesday, which the regime in North Korea marked by launching a massive live-fire artillery exercise. The South Korean news agency Yonhap said that as many as 400 pieces of long-range artillery participated in the exercise, and were the same type of guns which are stationed along the border with South Korea, putting the 10 million residents of Seoul well within their range.

The exercise marked the 85th anniversary of the founding of the North Korean army and popped off the same day the USS Michigan, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, made a port call in Busan, South Korea intended as a show of force. The Michigan can carry about 150 cruise missiles and launch Special Operations teams while submerged offshore.

Speeding up. The Trump administration has shown a sense of urgency in dealing with the North and its ongoing missile tests, and expected upcoming nuclear test, which would be its sixth in the past decade. The New York Times’  David Sanger and William Broad write that the urgency stems from a “a stark calculus: a growing body of expert studies and classified intelligence reports that conclude the country is capable of producing a nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks.”

In a meeting with members of the United Nations Security Council at the White House on Monday, Trump told the diplomats it is “time to solve the problem” of a nuclear North Korea. That meeting will be quickly followed up on Wednesday by a remarkable gathering of all 100 U.S. Senators at the White House for a classified briefing on North Korea, and a Security Council meeting on Friday chaired by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that will be focused on the rogue nation. 

North Korea is not going to relinquish its nuclear program as the Iranians did. The country's leadership understands the obvious: You trumpet your nuclear-free status and you end up bombed by the West, as was the case with Serbia and Libya. Plus, look at Iran. Has the nuclear agreement brought economic integration with the West? A few trade deals, yes. But not economic integration. If anything Iran bought herself a few years. But with a new president who loves kowtowing to al-Saud, the U.S. gunboat is wheeling back around. War is on the horizon. First things first though. Regime change in Syria.

The first and last points of Trump's strategy on North Korea appear to be scaring China into acting. But this assumes that China has the ability to denuclearize the North. It doesn't. I don't even think that any type of oil-for-inspections hooey is possible at this point.

No, it looks like we are on the glide path to war.