With the icicles still glinting with the closing ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic games, US President Donald Trump, like any disgruntled child, wanted to reassert his relevance.  Little Rocket Man had assumed diplomatic pose, or at the very least adopted a stance of considered caution towards his South Korean counterparts.  While the US seemed stubborn and sulky, South Korea[Read More…]

  Pyongyang tested another intercontinental ballistic missile on Wednesday.  Fired nearly vertically, it reached an altitude of 4500 km (2800 miles).  That means it could travel 13,000 km (8150 miles) on a standard trajectory, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, putting the entire continental U.S. within its range.  In September, the North Koreans conducted a sixth nuclear test.  And[Read More…]

North Korea test fired a long-range missile today that appears to have the range to potentially hit most parts of continental United States, including its capital Washington DC. The test took place amid high tensions on the Korean Peninsula stoked by the Trump administration’s threats to use military force to destroy North Korea’s nuclear and missile facilities. North Korea fired[Read More…]

Are such designations ever useful?  At the stroke of a pen, an entire state is designated “terrorist” or a seemingly milder sponsor of terrorism, its name finding a way onto a list of supposed unmentionables and moral inverts.  Obscure groups and more notable countries huddle together, supposedly sharing some disreputable common ground and we are none the wiser on the[Read More…]

  To understand the United States’ stratagem in the Pacific, and against North Korea in particular, one has to understand the fundamental changes that are under way in that region. China’s clout as an Asian superpower and as a global economic powerhouse has been growing at a rapid speed. The US’ belated ‘pivot to Asia’ to counter China’s rise has[Read More…]

    After taking office Donald Trump has rendered the world restless through threats and blackmail against all countries in the world. He is unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country, and he is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician. Kim Jong-Un, Supreme Leader of the DPRK.[Read More…]

“I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.” Senator Bob Corker on Donald Trump, New York Times, Oct 8, 2017 Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may well be pulling out what tender remains of his hair are left.  With the North Korean-Trump spat now personalised to the point[Read More…]

The U.S.-North Korea confrontation has reached a perilous level and the risk of war is serious. The best starting point to take stock  of the perilous face-off betweenthe Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K.) and the United States of America is President Trump’s maiden speech at the UN General Assembly on 19 September 2017.Trump said,  “The United States has great[Read More…]

US President Donald Trump’s fascistic tirade at the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, in which he declared Washington “ready, willing and able” to “totally destroy North Korea,” shocked and horrified people around the world yesterday. The North Korean regime’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) warned that it might now attack US targets if it detects that US[Read More…]

The statement before members of the United Nations Security Council was both brash and high strung. The US ambassador had clearly decided that firm words were needed to understand the continuing military advances of North Korea. To do so, Nikki Haley, far from the sharpest tool in the US diplomatic toolbox, hit upon what Kim Jong-un was doing: “begging for[Read More…]

Very little, almost nothing has been mentioned in the press or on TV about Jimmy Carter and his negotiation resulting in an agreement by the North Koreans, in 1994, to halt its nuclear weapons program and to put its facilities under international inspection – an agreement that held for eight years until the treaty regime decayed due to lack of[Read More…]

  Not too far away from Seattle, Washington there are eight ballistic-missile submarines carrying the world’s large shipments of nuclear weapons. The 560-foot-long black submarines are docked at the Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, hauling what is described by Rick Anderson in a recent Los Angeles Times article as “the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the US.” “If it were[Read More…]

  North Korea has remained a pain in the neck for the “Free World” since the beginning of the Korean Crisis in 1945. The Cold War is over, but the crisis in the Korean peninsula, and the trumped-up nuclear threats from North Korea to its neighbours, and now even to the US, aren’t over. The end of the Korean War[Read More…]

  Trump has stolen the headlines again with more saber rattling against North Korea. American have to worry about Kim Jong-un. Preparing for war leads to war. Preparing for peace might lead to peace. Humankind never prepares for peace. Two schoolyard bullies threatening each other. Both are crazy so who knows if one or both of them will start a[Read More…]

About a hundred miles north of Bangalore, India, in the village of Thimmamma Marrimanu grows an eponymous banyan tree. There are all kinds of records for trees: the tallest, the stoutest, the oldest, and so on, but the record for the largest canopy, at an astounding five acres, is held by this banyan. And it also holds the key to[Read More…]

It’s all fine while it remains on the stage, a matter of contained, almost camp displays of grunting and strutting.  The diplomats can still have some say; the foreign ministries retain some hold over the military instinct. But the longer the Korean Nuclear Dance continues, the more likely it will repel the jaw jaw option in favour of war war.[Read More…]

  The North Koreans sent us a gift on July 4th. In the morning, — their time, it was still July 3rd evening here — they launched a missile. It reached a height of 1741 miles (2802 Km) which was 400 miles higher than the earlier May 14 launch. Calling it the Hwasong-14, they have claimed it has a range[Read More…]

  In its latest move early June 2017, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted a resolution drafted by the United States to expand the scope of sanctions against Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) over its latest missile tests. Prior to this the UNSC slapped the North Korea with six rounds of sanctions, but Washington and its allies[Read More…]

The world is watching with much fear and anxiety, admixed with some curiosity, the unfolding confrontation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un the supreme leader of North Korea. We still do not know whether the confrontation will lead to hostilities with predictably unpredictable and disastrous consequences or the two sides along with other interested parties will sit down and talk.[Read More…]

During the Korean War, the United States dropped more bombs and napalm on North Korea than was used against the Japanese during World War II. The carpet bombing destroyed all of the cities and most of the villages in North Korea. More than 3,000,000 Korean civilians died in the war—most were in the North. Since the war ended with a[Read More…]

  There have been over the years since the 1953 armistace periodic increases of tensions related to the policies of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Currently, the nuclear program and missile launches of North Korea, the establishment of sophisticated anti-missile systems in South Korea, increased sanctions against North Korea voted[Read More…]

  The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is deeply concerned that escalating tensions between North Korea and the United States of America could lead to war. This view was expressed at the end of the 30th ASEAN Leaders’ Summit in Manila on the 29th of April 2017. Given the gravity of the situation, ASEAN could perhaps have been a[Read More…]

Warring toddlers, fanatical children, one-eyed adolescents who confuse noise with constructive contribution – this is the state of the world, with the recent, and ongoing spat chapter of Washington and Pyongyang. However you wish to describe the stout, proud and foolishly dangerous Kim Jong-un, murderous leader of North Korea, comparisons must diminish somewhat before the trigger happy CEO of United[Read More…]