Does North Korea Have a Thermonuclear Weapon?

North KoreaIt is now apparent from all reports that the weapon set off by North Korea yesterday was an atomic, not a hydrogen bomb. For many years North Korea has asked for a non -aggression treaty with the United States and a free trade agreement but the US has consistently refused to end the war with North Korea. In fact it is the longest unfinished war in US history, the reason being that North Korea is very valuable to the Pentagon.

Military officers practice war games in the Pentagon using North Korea as the enemy and very often  such war games end up in nuclear war.

In the 1953 Korean War Armistice Agreement stipulated that within three months’ time, the signatories—China, the DPRK and the United States—should sit down at the peace negotiating table and hammer out a permanent peace agreement, and that all foreign forces be withdrawn from the Korean Peninsula.

According to Bruce Cumings at the University of Chicago, a foremost Korean War historian, the Korean war was one in which the U.S. commanded mastery over the skies, it was an asymmetrical war that resulted in a total of about four million deaths, 70 percent of whom were civilians. the majority of which were civilians.  Cumings said the war was a “bombing holocaust,” and the air war was genocidal in nature.

So the US is still locked into a state of war with North Korea while China withdrew its forces almost immediately at mid-century. The U.S., much to its extreme disgrace, in 2016 now maintains 28,500 military personnel on the South Korean Peninsula and over 40 military bases.

The US and South Korea  practice extremely provocative annual war games named U.S.-ROK “Key Resolve” and “Foal Eagle” with B52s launched from Guam, usually in March, and “Ulchi Freedom Guardian” in August. These “war games”  typically last for months and involve tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and deployed from the United States, as well as hundreds of thousands of South Korea counterparts.

U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, and Space Command forces organize  these exercises. The scenarios they practice include the removal of North Korea’s leadership, occupation of Pyeongyang, and reunification of the peninsula under U.S. and South Korean control.

The B-52 bombers carried out simulated nuclear bombing raids on North Korea as part of ongoing U.S.-South Korean military exercises, Pentagon officials said on. “It’s not any secret that we are in the midst of sending a very strong signal that we have a firm commitment to the alliance with our South Korean allies,” Little said. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said during a visit to South Korea on Monday that the bomber flights are part of the U.S. “extended deterrence” – the use of U.S. nuclear forces to deter North Korea.

The B-52 flights are part of the U.S. Pacific Command program called Continuous Bomber Presence. (Washington Free Beacon, US). And the U.S. has consistently maintained the possibility of a nuclear strike as an option and has threatened North Korea over nine times.

Recently when Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham visited North Korea he had a very serious message he was conveying from Kim Jong-un to Barack Obama, which Obama refused to receive – the substance of the message was: “I don’t want war. Call me.”

And to add  through its massive military buildup across Asia and the Pacific, the United States has amplified regional tensions.  It is committed to deploy 60% of its air and naval forces to Asia and the Pacific to reinforce its so-called air-sea-battle-doctrine.  Within President Obama’s “pivot” policy, U.S. bases in South Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Hawaii, and Guam are ever more important.

Moreover, the Obama administration has been pressing hard to open up previously closed U.S. bases in geo-strategically vital nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines.

Of course all this military posturing by the US enhances the production and foreign arms sales which last year accounted for $36.2 billion, an increase of 10% from the previous year totalling 50% of global weapons sales.

America has also surrounded China and Russia with anti-missile bases and anti-missile Aegis ships while encouraging Japan to renounce its peaceful constitution and to allow it for the first time since World War II to engage in provocative wars overseas.

Hence the situation as seen from a broad geo-strategic perspective is could not be more provocative to North Korea and  could not be more dangerous.

2 thoughts on “Does North Korea Have a Thermonuclear Weapon?”

  1. It is not clear at this time exactly what kind of nuclear device North Korea exploded (underground) on 6th January 2016. Seismic data seems to indicate that the device was not significantly more powerful than the previous North Korean atomic test in 2013, which leads analysts to conclude that the device was not a real hydrogen (a.k.a. thermonuclear) bomb.
    Also, it is not clear what kind of message North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un is trying to send to his own people, South Korea, Japan, China or the rest of the world.
    I would guess that it is the same of kind of reptilian subliminal message that was expressed by the U.S. general who once confided to Dr. Caldicott that he would consider giving up on his nuclear arsenal as similar to giving up on his “family jewels”.
    In any case, the nuclear device test was announced to the North Korean population as a reinforcement of their national defensive capabilities, which is obviously contradictory with the plain fact that atomic bombs are inherently offensive in purpose.
    We live in strange times: three days after this puzzling North Korean atomic bomb test, we are back to business as usual, the North Korean “hydrogen bomb” is not in the headlines of any mainstream news media anymore, (mostly Syrian) refugees are still arriving in Europe by the thousands every day, and North Korea will remain one of the poorest countries in the world, with its GDP per capita between Haiti and Rwanda.
    And in 2016 the U.S. will probably still spend around 3.5% of its GDP on its military apparatus or around $600 billion, a good part of which to maintain and modernize its nuclear arsenal, which includes approximately ready-for-delivery 1,800 thermonuclear warheads, the rather expensive “family jewels” that I mentioned above.

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