Just when you think that the Korean situation can’t get more interesting, it does. The New York Times is reporting that President Trump has now declared that North Korea is “no longer a nuclear threat” to the United States. He said that Americans can now “sleep well tonight.”
That is one remarkable development, especially since North Korea has not dismantled its nuclear weapons.
Remember: It wasn’t too long ago when President Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA were saying that North Korea’s nuclear missiles posed a grave threat to the United States. They said that such a situation could not be permitted to stand. If North Korea failed to “denuclearize,” that meant that the U.S. would have to initiate a military strike to knock out North Korea’s nuclear weapons before the North Korean acquired the ability to strike U.S. targets at will.
Yet, today, suddenly, those nuclear weapons are no longer a threat to “national security.” Who would have thunk it? Apparently, however, Secretary of State and former CIA Director Michael Pompeo hasn’t gotten the memo because he just announced that the brutal system of U.S. sanctions on North Korea will continue until North Korea “denuclearizes.” But if North Korea’s nuclear program poses no threat to the United States and if Americans can sleep well tonight, as Trump says, what’s the point of continuing to cause starvation and illness among the North Korean populace with sanctions? Who’s in charge here?
What is the reasoning behind Trump’s remarkable conclusion? It’s all based on his new relationship with his BFF, North Korea’s dictator Kim Jung Un. The idea is that because Trump traveled to Singapore to have a high-level summit with Kim, where Trump showered Kim with accolades and compliments, the two leaders now have such a nice relationship and friendship with each other that Kim has now lost the will to kill the American people with nuclear bombs.
What a crock!
Trump is just stating the obvious. As I have been long been pointing out, North Korea’s nuclear missiles have never posed any threat to the United States, so long as the U.S. government didn’t attack or invade North Korea. North Korea’s nuclear missiles are not there to initiate a nuclear war with the United States. That’s because North Korea knows that if it were to fire a nuclear missile or two toward the United States, the U.S. government would immediately respond with a nuclear carpet bombing of every square inch of North Korea.
The purpose of the North Korean missiles has always been defensive. Their purpose is to deter a U.S. attack on North Korea. If the Pentagon or the CIA attack North Korea, as they did with Cuba, Iraq, Panama, Guatemala, Chile, and other countries, then North Korea threatens to respond by firing its nuclear weapons as part of defensive military operations.
But here’s the important point, one that is surely now dawning on Trump, if not yet on Trump’s army of acolytes: As long as the Pentagon and the CIA don’t attack North Korea, the North Korean nuclear missiles do not present any threat to the United States.
Whether he realizes it or not, that is what has caused Trump to issue his declaration. It has nothing to do with his new-found personal relationship with his new best friend. Trump has issued his declaration because he has no intention of letting or ordering the Pentagon and the CIA to attack and invade North Korea.
The same thing occurred more than 50 years ago during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The CIA had invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. The Pentagon was exhorting President Kennedy to order a full-scale invasion of Cuba, with the goal of ousting Fidel Castro from power and replacing him with another pro-U.S. dictator, similar to Fulgencio Batista, the brutal and corrupt pro-U.S. dictator who Castro ousted from power. The Pentagon also recommended a false-flag operation called Operation Northwoods, which called for a fraudulent excuse for invading Cuba.
That’s why Castro invited the Soviets to install nuclear weapons in Cuba. They were put there for the same reason the North Koreans have acquired nuclear weapons — to deter the U.S. government from attacking and invading Cuba (a country that had never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so) or, in the event of a U.S. invasion, to use the nuclear weapons in defense.
Ever since then, many mainstream commentators and U.S. public schoolteachers have taught that the Soviet missiles in Cuba were “offensive” in nature and that they posed a grave threat to the United States. That’s nonsense. The missiles were always “defensive,” not offensive. They were never intended to start a nuclear war with the United States. They were intended to stop the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking and invading Cuba.
To resolve the crisis, President Kennedy made a deal, the same type of deal that Trump is obviously trying to make with North Korea. Kennedy essentially said to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev: If you’ll remove your missiles, I vow to keep the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking and invading Cuba. Khrushchev accepted the deal. The missiles were withdrawn and Kennedy prevented the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking and invading the island.
Needless to say, the Pentagon and the CIA were livid. They called Kennedy’s resolution of the crisis the worst defeat in U.S. history. In their eyes, Kennedy was guilty of “appeasement.” He had capitulated to the communists. He had left a communist dagger permanently pointed at America’s neck from only 90 miles away from America’s shores. In the eyes of the Pentagon and the CIA, Kennedy’s actions had left America vulnerable to a communist takeover. (See FFF’s book JFK’s War With the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s.)
Trump has obviously shaken up the national-security establishment with his unilateral cancellation of Pentagon-CIA war games with South Korea and also with his expressed desire to bring U.S. troops home from Korea. Kennedy too shook up the national-security establishment with his unilateral dramatic announcement after the Cuban Missile Crisis to end the Cold War and establish peaceful and friendly relations with the Soviet Union (including Russia) and the rest of the communist world.
After the Singapore summit, the Pentagon immediately issued a statement referring to the U.S. government’s “ironclad” alliance with South Korea. The Pentagon is clearly throwing down the gauntlet. It is saying that under no circumstances will it ever permit Trump to bring those 28,000 U.S. troops in Korea home.
But what’s the point of having U.S. troops in Korea? If North Korea really did ever fire a nuclear missile at the United States, wouldn’t it be a good thing that U.S. troops were not in the vicinity of a retaliatory nuclear carpet-bombing of North Korea?
The Pentagon and the CIA know that they need those troops in Korea to serve as an ongoing crisis flashpoint. Crises and fear are the coins of the realm of a national-security state. The North Korean national-security establishment does the same thing to the North Korean people. National-security establishments need to keep people anxious and afraid. That’s what makes people feel like they need a national-security state. It’s what keeps those military, intelligence, and surveillance budgets forever expanding.
What if U.S. troops were to come home and then North Korea reinvaded South Korea? That prospect would be highly unlikely given that it is a virtual certainty that South Korea, with its economic strength and better-armed military, would win such a war. Nonetheless, why is Korea’s civil war any business of the Pentagon, the CIA, or the rest of the U.S. government? But in the event of such an invasion, the president, if he wanted, could still approach Congress and seek a congressional declaration of war against North Korea. That’s the process outlined in the Constitution. And that’s precisely why the Pentagon and the CIA don’t want those U.S. troops to come home. They want them to be sacrificial lambs whose deaths will automatically commit the United States to war, the Constitution be damned.
Trump is right: North Korea’s nuclear missiles do not pose a threat to the United States. They never have posed a threat to the United States, not even before after Trump and Kim became best friends forever. That’s why there was never any reason for Trump had to go to Singapore and shower a brutal and corrupt communist mass murderer, torturer, assassin, concentration camp operator, surveiller, censor, and destroyer of liberty with praise, honor, and compliments.
All that Trump had to do — and has to do — is permanently cancel the Pentagon-CIA war games with South Korea, immediately bring all U.S. troops home, lift the cruel and brutal sanctions, prevent the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking and invading North Korea, and leave Korea to the Koreans. That is the solution to the Korean crisis.