Here’s a radical suggestion: perhaps North Korea wants nuclear weapons because it’s scared to death of the United States. From Edward Hunt at antiwar.com:
In recent months, a number of U.S. officials have begun to reassess their understanding of why the North Korean government wants nuclear weapons. Rather than repeating the standard claim that the North Korean government is taking extreme measures to intimidate its enemies into making concessions, some officials have begun to suggest that the North Korean government desires nuclear weapons for defensive purposes.
After the North Korean government conducted its fifth underground nuclear test on September 9, 2016, former US official Victor Cha presented the new line of thinking. “This is not a cry for negotiations,” Cha told The New York Times. “This is very clearly a serious effort at amassing real nuclear capabilities that they can use to deter the US and others.”
A few days later, Cha shared the same logic with a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Testing was once interpreted by pundits to be an attention-getting effort for dialogue with the United States,” but “it would be irresponsible today to adhere to such an interpretation,” Cha stated. In today’s world, “North Korea is executing a strategy designed to demonstrate a survivable nuclear deterrent before the next US administration comes into office.” In short, Cha insisted that the North Korean government sought to acquire nuclear weapons for the purpose of deterring its enemies.
Threat or No Threat?
Of course, not everyone in Washington agrees with such thinking. Although Cha and other strategic analysts have proposed that the North Korean government is rationally pursuing a nuclear deterrent to defend itself against the United States, high-level officials in Washington insist that nothing could be further from the truth.
Notably, Secretary of State John Kerry has refuted the idea that the North Korean government needs to take defensive measures. For “any person of common sense,” the answer to the question of whether the North Korean government has to defend itself against the United States is “no,” Kerry announced on October 19, 2016. “Everybody knows that.”
After making his point, Kerry then insisted that the United States posed no threat to North Korea because the US government has made no recent efforts to destroy the country. “The United States has had the power to wipe out North Korea for years – for years,” Kerry noted. “And if indeed that was our goal, we wouldn’t be sitting around waiting while they’re getting additional nuclear weapons.”
Certainly, US officials have not recently attempted to wipe out North Korea. Although the United States had once destroyed most of North Korea during the Korean War, when it spent three years carpet-bombing the country and destroying most North Korean cities, US officials have not resorted to comparable tactics in the country since the armistice ended the fighting in 1953.
At the same time, US officials have continued to take other actions to pressure, marginalize, and isolate North Korea. For starters, US officials have worked with their allies to impose restrictive sanctions on the country. Certainly, “we’re always looking at ways we can continue to apply pressure,” State Department Spokesperson Mark C. Toner acknowledged during a press briefing on July 19, 2016. In fact, “the sanctions are pretty severe right now.”
To continue reading; North Korea’s Nuclear Ticket to Survival
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