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The Korean Peninsula is at the verge of collapse as North Korea touts “nuclear war deterrence” with submarine cruise missile test on Monday March 13, 2023 while the US-South Korea joint drills kicked off. North Korea said it tested submarine-launched cruise missiles in an apparent protest of the drills it views as an invasion rehearsal. The ballistic missiles hit on the occasion near a Japanese Island.
The reported launch details show Japan, including US military bases in Okinawa, is within striking distance of the cruise missiles, if they are fired from the North’s eastern waters, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. His assessment is the weapons could reach even the US Pacific territory of Guam if a North Korean submarine can operate further from its shore. Certainly, a haunting danger for the Korean Peninsula being created by the war merchants – they have done in Ukraine successfully.
North Korea warned the US-South Korea to conduct provocative weapons testing activities during the US-South Korean drills that are to run for 11 days. Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his troops to be ready to repel its rivals’ frantic war preparation moves. The South Korea-US drills include a computer simulation called the Freedom Shield 23 and several combined field training exercises, collectively known as the Warrior Shield FTX.
The CBS News reported that the US soldiers walked past military vehicles at a military training field near the South Korean city of Yeoncheon, close to the border with North Korea, March 13, 2023, as the US and South Korea kicked off the Freedom Shield joint military exercise, their largest drills in five years. They have said that the computer simulation is designed to strengthen the allies’ defense and response capabilities amid North Korea’s increasing nuclear threats and other changing security environments. The field exercises would also return to the scale of their earlier largest field training called Foal Eagle that was last held in 2018.
The US administration, whoever the top-head, is good in building up threats for its allies, and selling them the defence technologies and weapons of billions of dollars quite shrewdly. Finally, push them to the furnace of war with promises to support by all means. Recently, we have seen the brunt of its bond with Ukraine. A prosperous country is under debt of billions of dollars and has lost infrastructure of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Seems, the US has successfully mounted another threat, and this time the victim will be South Korea in addition to Japan. The US military interventions in the Korean Peninsula have gone up to the level where North Korea could be offended any moment. If not, the US marines would do a trick.
Strangely, the US does not consider the national interests of its key allies in the Asia-Pacific region, Korean Peninsula or elsewhere. Thus, despite the extremely negative attitude of the Japanese population towards the US military contingent stationed on the territory of the island nation, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced at a press conference that a new unit of the US Marine Corps would soon be stationed in Okinawa prefecture. The US defence chief noted that the measure was a forced step taken by the White House due to China’s increasingly frequent attempts at provocation against Taiwan, as well as “Russian aggression” in Ukraine.
The North Korea’s Monday tests hit the sea very close to the Okinawa territory where the US army is stationed, and more units will be joining them. Meanwhile, Tokyo expressed its full solidarity with Washington’s foreign policy course, stressing its readiness to continue developing bilateral relations, including in the military sphere. Meanwhile, the Japanese leadership continues to ignore statements by Okinawa Governor Danny Tamaki and numerous demonstrations by civilians demanding an immediate end to the US militarization of the prefecture. Such short-sightedness on the part of Japanese politicians has contributed to an active rise in the protest potential of the population. Japanese columnist Zuzo Kamata believes that Tokyo’s acquiescence to the growing rejection of US troops in Okinawa could have fatal consequences over time.
The US allies and friends, perhaps, need to understand well before the strategies and conspiracies of the war merchants – the US and NATO as how they create threats and wage wars for their own friends, and fuel it up.
