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Note: Numbered citations are included in the References section at the end of this document.

In some ways, it’s like a remake of The Mouse That Roared (only, as a horror movie instead of a comedy). In this case, the relatively tiny nation of North Korea is facing off against the U.S. uber-imperialist colossus, about 13 times its size in population and outputting a gross domestic product approximately 1,205 times larger. [1]

Over recent weeks (and months) the American public have been persistently assailed by shrieks of hysteria emanating predominately from the Trump regime, the U.S. liberal establishment, and the major media, hyper-ventilating against North Korea’s nuclear program (i.e., its effort to develop and bolster a credible nuclear deterrent) and especially its ballistic missile testing program. The intensity of U.S. intimidation has escalated despite the fact that America’s military forces have 6,800 nuclear warheads whereas North Korea is supposedly wielding the frightful number of “30 to 60” according to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency allegations. [2] In terms of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the USA’s arsenal is about 730 vs. a Pentagon estimate of “fewer than 50 launchers” for North Korean “intermediate range missiles … that can travel up to 2,000 miles”. [3]

While the Trump administration has been ratcheting up its posturing all the way to threats of launching a “preemptive” nuclear attack against North Korea, U.S. headlines and TV news ledes have tirelessly recycled warnings of the ominous “threat” of this small “rogue” nation having nuclear weapons and testing its own ballistic missiles. In contrast, for the USA, missile launches and the possession and testing of nuclear weapons are assumed to be an accepted, normal baseline. And this comes in the context of more than 60 years of virulent U.S. military action and very real threats against the original Korean social revolution of the 1950s and the bureaucratically deformed workingclass state created out of that revolution – North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). [4]

Even as Trump has been boasting of U.S. imperialism’s nuclear prowess and “locked and loaded” military might, pouring an “armada” replete with nuclear-armed submarines into the Sea of Japan off the Korean peninsula, and threatening to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea, U.S. imperialist spokesmen, from Trump on down, have continued to rant, rave, and foment fear and loathing against North Korea for every single missile test launch. Compliantly facilitating this campaign of war-drum-beating, America’s major media (even the liberal-leaning news platforms that Trump has hinted he would crush if given the chance) have frenetically framed North Korea as a crazed aggressor and a frightful nuclear menace.

“There are troubling signs today that North Korea may be getting ready to test another longrange missile as soon as tonight …” warned NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell in a July 26th broadcast. [5] Mitchell’s report focused on a “conversation” between herself and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented to an audience at “a recent security conference”. This gave the military representative plenty of air time to promote the imperialist characterization of North Korea’s nuclear deterrent as an alarmingly dangerous aggressive threat: “What’s unimaginable to me is allowing a capability that will allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver, Colorado …. My job will be to develop military options to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Mitchell’s report concluded with hints of U.S. military schemes to “remove” North Korean top leader Kim Jong Un and political efforts to impose harsher economic sanctions on the small country.

In a July 30th Fox News report, Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, U.S. Pacific Air Forces commander, warned North Korea that the United States and its allies are prepared to use what he called “rapid, lethal and overwhelming force” if necessary against what Fox News characterized as a “rogue nation”. “North Korea remains the most urgent threat to regional stability” intoned O’Shaughnessy. [6]

So North Korea is a “rogue” state presenting an “urgent threat”. In contrast, most mainstream news portrayals of American military activities – including test firings of deadly nuclear-capable ICBMs – are favorable and supportive.

Another Fox News report on August 1st approvingly emphasized America’s “significant missile offense” and reported plans for another ICBM test. [7]

A U.S. Air Force spokesman said the test was “long planned” and “routine.” It will be the fourth test of a Minuteman-3 ICBM from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this year. It is set to fly over 4,000 miles to a test-range in the Pacific.

This assumption of peaceful normalcy for U.S. missile tests has been typical of other major news media. “Test firing a ballistic missile in California was routine” reported the Washington Post in an August 2nd headline. [8] As the story elaborated, “The U.S. Air Force flexed its ability to launch global strikes early Wednesday morning, firing an intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific in a routine test amid growing tension between the United States and North Korea.” So while missile tests by North Korea are always “threatening”, a missile launch by U.S. imperialism is warmly described as “flexing” a capability to “launch global strikes” – implicitly assumed as desirable.

While this propaganda blitz seeks to portray North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs as intended for evil aggression (world conquest, perhaps?), the reality is that North Korea is seeking a nuclear deterrent against aggressive actions by the USA and other looming imperialist gorillas. Deterrence, as the term implies, is a strategy designed to “deter a more powerful adversary” – i.e., it’s a defensive strategy. From the Trump regime to much of the mainstream news media, the current campaign against North Korea aims to provoke an hysterical stampede driven by fear and rage to obscure this reality.

The real issue however is recognized by some observers. Even Josh Marshall, publisher and editor of the liberal Talking Points Memo online news site, has implicitly acknowledged that the North Koreans’ launch of a longrange missile shows them “to be well on their way to creating a serious nuclear deterrent against the United States.” [9]

And increasingly, North Korea’s prerogative (actually, desperate need) to have a nuclear deterrent is being recognized – and supported – by various analysts on the left. Taking note of Washington’s darkly threatening “ultimatums” to North Korea to simply “cave in … and do what they are told …”, in an April 17th analysis published on the radical-liberal Counterpunch magazine website [10] journalist Mike Whitney argues that

… the North has never succumbed to US intimidation and there’s no sign that it will. Instead, they have developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons to defend themselves in the event that the US tries to assert its dominance by launching another war. There’s no country in the world that needs nuclear weapons more than North Korea. Brainwashed Americans, who get their news from FOX or CNN, may differ on this point, but if a hostile nation deployed carrier strike-groups off the coast of California while conducting massive war games on the Mexican border (with the express intention of scaring the shit of people) then they might see things differently. They might see the value of having a few nuclear weapons to deter that hostile nation from doing something really stupid.

By far, the staunchest and most consistently principled defense of North Korea appears to be voiced by the revolutionary Marxist movement. In an August 12th statement – with the deck (sub-headline) «Crazed U.S. Imperialists Threaten Nuclear War» – the Political Bureau of the Spartacist League/U.S., a section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), argues why the global proletariat (working class) must back the defense of North Korea, including its need for a nuclear deterrent: [11]

It is vital for the international proletariat, not least in the U.S., to stand for the defense of North Korea and China against the predatory U.S. rulers, their Japanese allies and their South Korean underlings. The overturn and expropriation of capitalism in these countries are historic gains for the international working class. Their unconditional military defense against imperialist attack and capitalist counterrevolution is integral to the cause of world socialist revolution. Such defense necessarily includes these countries having nuclear weapons and delivery systems to deter imperialist attack. There is much that is bizarre and unsavory about the dynastic, mythologized, bureaucratic rule of Kim Jong Un and his predecessors. But Pyongyang’s drive to secure nukes is a rational, essential policy of self-defense, not least against the U.S., which openly threatens a nuclear “first strike” against its perceived enemies. It is welcome that the North has gone some way toward developing a credible nuclear deterrent. If not for such a deterrent, the U.S. would have already bombarded North Korea, as it has so many countries in the Near East and elsewhere.

References

[1] Calculated from data in «Country comparison United States vs North Korea», CountryEconomy.com website.

http://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/usa/north-korea

[2] «North Korea now making missile-ready nuclear weapons, U.S. analysts say», Washington Post, 8 August 2017.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-missile-ready-nuclear-weapons-us-analysts-say/2017/08/08/e14b882a-7b6b-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html

[3] «United States and weapons of mass destruction», Wikipedia, last edited 15 August 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

«What to know about North Korea and its weapons programs», ABC News, 31 July 2017.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/north-korea-weapons-programs/story

[4] «The Problem is Washington, Not North Korea», Counterpunch.com website, 17 April 2017.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/17/the-problem-is-washington-not-north-korea/

«Hands Off North Korea!», Statement of the Political Bureau of the Spartacist League/U.S., section of the International Communist League, 12 August 2017.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/leaflets/korea2017.html

[5] «North Korea could soon launch international nuclear missile, Pentagon says», NBC News, 26 July 2017.

https://www.today.com/video/north-korea-could-soon-launch-international-nuclear-missile-pentagon-says-1009829443777

[6] «US conducts ‘successful’ THAAD missile test after latest North Korea missile launch», Fox News, 30 July 2017.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/07/30/us-conducts-successful-thaad-missile-test-after-latest-north-korea-missile-launch.html

[7] «US to conduct intercontinental ballistic missile test, US Air Force says», Fox News, 1 August 2017.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/01/us-to-conduct-intercontinental-ballistic-missile-test-us-air-force-says.html

[8] «Test firing a ballistic missile in California was routine. Growing tension with North Korea is not», Washington Post, 2 August 2017.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/02/the-air-force-test-firing-a-ballistic-missile-today-was-routine-growing-tension-with-north-korea-is-not/

[9] «Trump’s Korea Policy is a Fast-Forward, Stupider Version of Bush’s», Talking Points Memo, 5 July 2017.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-korea-policy-is-a-fast-forward-stupider-version-of-bushs

[10] Counterpunch, op. cit.

[11] «Hands Off North Korea!», Statement of the Political Bureau of the Spartacist League/U.S., section of the International Communist League, 12 August 2017.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/leaflets/korea2017.html

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