Or maybe not…
by Justin Raimondo, October 13, 2010
"Those North Koreans are so touchy, shooting torpedoes at South Korean ships – or maybe not – and threatening to take on the “Yankee imperialists” at the slightest provocation, either real or imagined. Except, it turns out, that the provocations have been more real than imagined, as the Associated Press reports:
by Justin Raimondo, October 13, 2010
"Those North Koreans are so touchy, shooting torpedoes at South Korean ships – or maybe not – and threatening to take on the “Yankee imperialists” at the slightest provocation, either real or imagined. Except, it turns out, that the provocations have been more real than imagined, as the Associated Press reports:
“From the 1950s Pentagon to today’s Obama administration, the United States has repeatedly pondered, planned and threatened use of nuclear weapons against North Korea, according to declassified and other U.S. government documents released in this 60th-anniversary year of the Korean War.
“Air Force bombers flew nuclear rehearsal runs over North Korea’s capital during the war. The U.S. military services later vied for the lead role in any “atomic delivery” over North Korea. In the late 1960s, nuclear-armed U.S. warplanes stood by in South Korea on 15-minute alert to strike the north....."
The new documentation reveals Pyongyang, and Beijing, have been threatened with nuclear annihilation by four US Presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford. The US stationed nuclear missiles in South Korea until Jimmy Carter pulled them out. Given this, how could the North have refrained from building nukes? The answer is: they couldn’t.
I love how the AP piece ends:
“Korea specialists generally accept Pyongyang’s stated rationale that it sought its own bomb for defensive reasons — ‘as a response to the U.S. deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea,” says author Selig Harrison.
“Yoshiki Mine of Japan’s Canon Institute for Global Studies, who as a diplomat dealt with both disarmament and North Korea, said the northern regime feels its existence as a nation is threatened. The U.S. nuclear option ‘does give the North Koreans an excuse to develop, acquire and own nuclear weapons,’ Mine told the AP. ‘They have indicated many times that as long as this basic security is not secured, they would not abandon nuclear weapons.’”
“Korea specialists generally accept Pyongyang’s stated rationale that it sought its own bomb for defensive reasons — ‘as a response to the U.S. deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea,” says author Selig Harrison.
“Yoshiki Mine of Japan’s Canon Institute for Global Studies, who as a diplomat dealt with both disarmament and North Korea, said the northern regime feels its existence as a nation is threatened. The U.S. nuclear option ‘does give the North Koreans an excuse to develop, acquire and own nuclear weapons,’ Mine told the AP. ‘They have indicated many times that as long as this basic security is not secured, they would not abandon nuclear weapons.’”
You might say the North Koreans feel an “existential threat,” a phrase the Israelis are quite fond of using whenever they ramp up the “bomb Iran” rhetoric. But not all feelings of existential dread are equal: some are more dreadful than others. "
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