It would have to have been Kim Jong-un and North Korea who would be the initial test between President Trump and a leader perfectly willing to push their luck beyond all reason. What we have here is a brewing cauldron about to blow its top. North Korea is pressing to get something for nothing and President Trump always has to receive something in order to make a deal. The problem for Kim Jong-un is his nation has nothing to offer other than peace. President Trump believes he already has peace and sees Kim Jong-un as a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum in the super market in order to get his parents to buy him some candy. President Trump is ready to deal some tough love to put Kim Jong-un in his place. Further, President Trump is not going to make any deal where he gets nothing and gives away anything, that’s the title of his book, “The Art of the Deal,” where giving up something for nothing is considered a fool’s game. Meanwhile, playing on the North Korean side of this threat are Russia and China with both preventing the use of the Security Council and the United Nations to calm things down from the current roiling boil. China and Russia have refused to defuse the situation and sit Kim Jong-un down and inform him that his screaming and making noise waving his arms around with a loaded gun in one hand is not working with President Trump and that Trump is a different kind of President than the ones North Korea has dealt with before. Instead, they are allowing this to reach a critical point and for what reason is not clear, but there are theories.
The one thing that everybody may be counting on is the claim by Secretary of Defense General Mattis, who said that any war in Korea would be a catastrophe. But on the other side of the coin there is what United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Wednesday when she stated that the U.S. is prepared to defend itself from the North Korean threat. Then there were the recent war games with South Korea and Japan where the United States fielded three super-carriers in the waters around Japan and within striking distance of North Korea. There was also the fly-by of within range of North Korea of a B-1B heavy bomber over the Korean Peninsula. Further, there have been B-52’s Nuclear Capable Heavy Bombers now stationed in South Korea along with stealth F-35 Fighter Jets with new floating of plans of B-1 Bombers also being stationed in South Korea in the near future. Much of this brought the area to the brink back in September while the build-up was done as much as a show of force and to have assets in place for the then up-coming war games. Even with time, the area has far from cooled as the latest has reported Kim Jong-un having tested an ICBM, which experts have claimed, is capable of striking the West Coast of the mainland United States. Military analysts have stated that the United States would be unable to prevent any nuclear or conventional attacks on South Korea or Japan and would be relegated to staging some retribution for the possible destruction of these allies and the deaths of United States service personnel stationed in these countries. Some have questioned the wisdom of staging such a retribution as it would do little to save the American allies which would have been decimated even if Kim Jong-un simply used conventional weapons and with nuclear weapons he could destroy both Japan and South Korea within minutes of ordering the strikes, and the United States would be left with the choice of escalation or conversation.
North Korea with South Korea and Japan
We would not pretend to understand or be capable of accurately predicting what reaction President Trump might take. What we can safely predict is testing President Trump with the wholesale destruction of South Korea, Japan or both would not likely end well for anybody. Such a provocation would very conceivably result in the rapid destruction of everything between the Korean Demilitarized Zone on the 38th Parallel north to the border with China. The North Koreans have made their position on unification of the Korean Peninsula clear from the very start of the armistice setting up the DMZ signed on July 27, 1953, in P’anmunjŏm of the North Hwanghae Province just above the delineated Armistice Line. Their idea of any unified Korea, they insist, would be simply the spread of their rule over the entire peninsula and the surrender of South Korea at which point all the wealth and industry of South Korea would enhance the Kim family’s iron grip on Korea and be used to produce weapons of mass destruction with which to threaten the rest of the world. The leadership of North Korea are only willing to accept one end to the standoff on what they consider their peninsula with South Korea simple being an American colonial outpost imposed upon them through the United Nations and deceptions sold there. This is a viewpoint President Trump had best get his arms around as it is the exact same view Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (or PLO) have concerning Israel seeing it as an American colony forced upon them through the United Nations and deceptions sold there. This was also the view of the North Vietnamese towards South Viet Nam, which originally may have been a French colony, but soon became an American colony imposed upon the people of Viet Nam. Russia under Putin sees many of the East European nations as stolen and made into American colonies and are a result of American Imperialism which is as much a cultural imperialism as it is a military one.
What is the solution to such view in which many see the world as being in a number of different camps all against the same enemy, American Imperialism? The Islamists view Europe as a rotting corpse being held up by the United States who treats them as if they were her colonies being kept protected through the NATO enforced American Imperialism. China sees the only threat to their spread into the South China Sea as an attempt by the United States to dictate to the Chinese what they are permitted to do and what is forbidden them because the American Imperialist views the entire world as theirs to define as they please and further that the Americans are simply looking out for their imperialist protections of Japan and the Philippines. It’s only a matter of time before Maduro claims that his opposition in Venezuela is nothing more than the fascist American Imperialist interests funneling funds to prop up those fighting against a better future for Venezuela and keeping it as an American colony and furthering American Imperialism. We have witnessed similar language coming from Fidel Castro against President Kennedy and will possibly hear the same from Raoul Castro should Trump prevent United States wealth from flowing into the Cuban economy propping up the Communist government in Cuba. All the other uses of the claim that American Imperialism is threatening some dictatorial kleptocracy, such as the bankrupt government of North Korea which still manages to grant Kim Jong-un and his closest compadres an extravagant and lavish life-style with grand feasts and banquets and celebrations as well as paying for their nuclear and missile programs while his people starve living off the scraps from his tables, are the simple fare of a world in revolt thrashing against what they all view as their lack of power against the democratic industrialized information age world against which they feel helpless. They know that there are weak points in this American Goliath, this behemoth which spreads its culture, music, movies, television, dances and dress, especially blue jeans, around the world robbing others of their ethnicity and culture often rooted in centuries passed. For Islam the time was a millennia ago when their thrusts into the world ended and their dream of world conquest, well, that did not die and they know that if they are to succeed in that conquest they must do so now. This is why Iran, whose glory was the Persian Empire which fell to the Greeks and the Greek culture today is represented to them by the American culture where there exists, in their eyes, a people fully debauched and ravaged by sexual misconduct and an overly sexually based culture robbed of any moral character. This is not the United States heartland but is the picture most often painted in film and music and is the impression they see. Iran has a plan to bring down the American cultural machine. North Korea has a plan to bring down the American cultural machine.
They shared this plan with one another and are both using the identical playbook and are cooperating with one another sharing technology and testing missiles and nuclear devices for each other. Currently Iran cannot test a nuclear device without it being detected and then President Trump having everything he would need to sanction Iran back to the Stone Age, trading-wise with Europe as well as the United States. Europe would complain as they trade with Iran and have been making hay since President Obama opened Iran up to the world and freed them from the crippling sanction they had been under since they took the American Embassy and kept the staff hostage back in 1979 during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. When President Obama opened Iran to the world allowing them free trading with Europe as well as the United States, the industrial world celebrated making deals right and left. President Trump has rolled back some of the freedoms placing sanctions on Iran for missile tests. A nuclear test by Iran would seal the deal and they would be cut off and anybody risking trading with Iran would face the wrath of United States sanctions. Thus, Iran cannot test their own nuclear devices, but North Korea is free to test anything they wish, they are already sanctioned to the hilt. Thus, the recent North Korean nuclear tests have shown very different signatures than their earlier tests. North Korea claims this is because they are using a new type of device, which is quite different than their earlier tests. They are telling the truth as the newer test devices are of Iranian design and are made for one kind of explosion, an EMP device which has a yield of approximately fifteen to twenty-five kilotons but sends a massive EMP pulse which would destroy most electronic devices over a large region depending on the location of the detonation. The prime location for maximum area of effect would be approximately five-hundred miles over the center of the target. Such a device could, if exploded over the central United States, destroy much of the electrical grid and pose a direct threat to the survival of much of the American population. This is the design for an attack by both Iran and North Korea. This is the point where the two nations differ, North Korea has developed longer range missiles even to their recent claim to have developed an ICBM. Iran has largely medium range ballistic missiles with a far lesser range but have perfected launching them from freighter ships which disguise the launcher covering it with shipping containers.
The Iranian attack would launch several devices from such ships off the three coasts, Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico with each EMP device being exploded as the missiles reached apogee destroying the coasts electrical grids and making the major coastal cities into a dark place without power until the transformers could be replaced. This process could easily take as much as a decade. North Korea has a completely different approach as they have satellite launch capability which means they can strike anywhere on the globe they decide to target. The only item would be how long it would take their satellite to get into position. They proved this as they already have a satellite circling the globe that passes over the United States as well as the rest of the planet many times each day. What this satellite does remains unknown and for anybody knows, it is a circling nuclear warhead or simply a large chunk of orbiting proof of an ability. This satellite does have an interesting orbit as it circles from the poles and comes across the United States often orbiting from the south through the gulf and continuing through the center of the nation. What is interesting about this trajectory is it exactly matches the orbit developed by the Soviet Union and China to defeat the NORAD defense grid. The Soviets and the Chinese realized that the United States NORAD grid faced out from the east and west coasts and continued north across northern Canada and Alaska but had almost no coverage facing south. This information was shared with the North Koreans by China and the Soviet Union and they shared the information with Iran. Fortunately, for the United States, Iran is not yet capable of implementing such a strike, but North Korea is capable, as their satellite has proven.
That brings us back to where the standoff stands today with Kim Jong-un waving his missiles in everybody’s face almost as if daring them to jump if they feel froggy. They do not fear the United States because they believe, quite possibly rightfully, that the United States would do nothing if both South Korea and Japan disappeared under a barrage of conventional and nuclear missiles tomorrow. If that is the case and North Korea tests the promises of America and is not destroyed immediately thereafter, that will be a lesson every nation will understand and the world will collapse into inevitable warfare from every angle. There will no longer be any threat of consequence for attacking whomever you please, as long as you leave the United States alone. That may have been the real lesson of the two World Wars that the United States never entered until she herself felt she was attacked. World War I it was the murder of her citizens on the Lusitania and World War II it took Pearle harbor, so maybe the United States is no more than the threat of power and never the use of power unless in her own interests. That would be a wake up call to every psychotic dictator and power hungry psycho on the planet to realize the United States talks the talk but won’t walk the walk unless it is in her defense or her own interests. Of course one can never tell quite what might tickle the interests of either the CIA or the State Department, which somehow always means that the Department of Defense will be close behind to finish the dirty work. Things appear to be heating up in the kitchen and we can only hope that Kim Jong-un does not plan on stirring things up just to see what shakes out, the world might not enjoy the answers. There is one thing assured, should Kim Jong-un explode anything in the mix, the world will be watching what follows with great interests, both the friends and enemies of America as they all have an interest in the outcome.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 