



What does little North Korea possess to become a target for the US empire? Oil, minerals, opium perhaps? Probably nothing. Then why Donald Trump is choosing to escalate tension with the country at this moment?





We can think at least two reasons, both for distraction purposes.





First, the Donald tries one more time to 'relocate' tension from Russia towards China's door. We've seen recently a further escalation of diplomatic conflict between the US and Russia, as Trump couldn't do anything to prevent further sanctions against Russia which led to proportional retaliation actions by Putin. When heat goes up in the US-Russia relations field, Donald provokes the right man to be used as a frightening clown who will jump out of the closet to lure and distract the US warmongering establishment: Kim Jong-un.





Second, Kim Jong-un is the most suitable to attract white nationalist voters, who appear to be one of the key components of Trump's electoral base. It is not accidental that Trump's recent provoking statements about 'fire and fury' against North Korea came right after the rapid decline of his popularity.





The Donald does that. He 'adjusts' his rhetoric whenever needed to recover or increase the number of his voters. Recall that, right after the Bernardino incident, Le Pen's National Front marked an unprecedented victory in the first round of the French regional elections. Seeing Le Pen's huge success in France, and on the occasion of Bernardino incident, Trump expanded his far-Right rhetoric against Muslims.













Trump appears to be desperate to present something positive after his rapid and unconditional retreat from his pre-election positions towards almost everything that shapes the US neocon/neoliberal establishment agenda.





His recent remarks about the booming of the stock market, jobs, etc. was such an attempt to present something positive. Yet, as Michael Hudson explained recently, this is nothing more than, essentially, one more big bubble that is expected to burst sometime, like all the others in the past.





Mehdi Hasan described recently why North Koreans hate the US. He wrote:





How many Americans know that “over a period of three years or so,” to quote Air Force General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, “we killed off … 20 percent of the population”? Twenty. Percent. For a point of comparison, the Nazis exterminated 20 percent of Poland’s pre-World War II population. According to LeMay, “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea.” Every. Town. More than three million civilians are believed to have been killed in the fighting, the vast majority of them in the north.





How many Americans are familiar with the statements of Secretary of State Dean Rusk or Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas? Rusk, who was a State Department official in charge of Far Eastern affairs during the Korean War, would later admit that the United States bombed “every brick that was standing on top of another, everything that moved.” American pilots, he noted, “were just bombing the heck out of North Korea.”





How could Koreans forget so much brutality?





So, what Donald Trump does, is to provoke Kim Jong-un every time things are getting ugly inside, and the deep state is pushing him to escalate tension with Russia. Because he knows that Kim Jong-un will respond at the same time. And Kim Jong-un loves it. Because he finds something to show to the isolated people of North Korea to distract them from their real problems, for a while.



