Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

My take on North Korea

This isn’t really about North Korea it is about Bush’s obsession with China. The United States is purposefully sabotaging negotiations with North Korea and deploying military forces and weapons to the area which are directed primarily against China.

Clearly, ending North Korea's nuclear crisis or even eliminating "evil" is not the ultimate goal of the US. What the US really wants, and is exploiting the North Korea "crisis" to achieve, is to deploy sufficient military forces and resources in the western Pacific (especially close to Taiwan) so as to encourage Taiwan independence, thereby checking China's growth as a power that might compete with the US. Not long ago, the US and Japan were talking about using Japan's Shimoji Island as a military base. Only about 200 miles from Taiwan, Shimoji has a "runway capable of safely handling a fully loaded F-15C fighter jet", observed James Brooke in the New York Times.
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To this end Cheney has effectively stalled negotiations with North Korea.

Charles Pritchard, the special envoy for talks with North Korea during president Bill Clinton's second term in office, said Cheney's volley was "deliberate".

"It certainly had an effect that many in the Bush administration would like to see and that is the cooling of the possibility of the North Koreans returning to the six party talks," he said.

"The chances of the North Koreans coming back to the talks anytime soon are now less likely," Pritchard said.

He noted that Cheney's criticism of the North Korean leader came just two weeks after US special envoy Joseph deTrani held a rare direct meeting with North Koreans asking them to return to the six-party meeting.

North Korea has boycotted the talks -- also involving China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States -- since the last round a year ago due to what it called hostile US policy.

"The stated policy of the Bush administration is to bring North Korea back to talks and precisely while the North Koreans were considering this, given the message by ambassador Joseph deTrani on May 13, the Vice-President has essentially trumped that message and it had caused the North Koreans predictably to react the way that they have," Pritchard said.
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050602225535.tthpmpla.html

The administration has also rejected entreaties by China and South Korea, in particular, to put on the table what it might be prepared to offer if North Korea were to strike such a deal.

KEDO, a U.S.-led international consortium formed to implement a nuclear deal with North Korea, on Tuesday decided not to renew the contract of its executive director Charles Kartman, who had been a strong proponent of discussions with the North.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200505/200505290008.html

It becomes obvious the United States is exploiting the North Korea "crisis" in order to deploy sufficient military forces and resources in the western Pacific which will strengthen Taiwan’s resolve for independence and check China.

In recent weeks, Washington also has sent 17 Stealth warplanes to South Korea as part of a series of steps to increase pressure on the North.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GF04Ak01.html

In mid-April of this year, the Japanese government agreed to let the US Army's 1st Corps transfer from Fort Lewis, Washington, to Camp Zama near Yokohama.

Besides the recent decision to re-deploy the 1st Corps, the US is busily building up Guam as a "power projection hub", with, in the words of Pacific Commander Admiral William Fargo, "geostrategic importance". The US is also trying to shift Guam-based bombers to Yokota airbase near Tokyo. Christopher Hughes of Warwick University, an expert on the region, told the (British) Guardian, "The ramifications of this would be that Japan would essentially serve as a frontline US command post for the Asia-Pacific and beyond."

A number of Bush administration sounding boards, such as neo-conservative Charles Krauthammer, have openly advocated Japan going nuclear as a way to offset the growing influence and power of China. Acquiring nuclear weapons would be relatively easy for Japan, which has plenty of fuel to reprocess, as well as missiles and satellite targeting systems.
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In the first step toward erecting a multibillion-dollar shield to protect the United States from foreign missiles, the U.S. Navy will begin deploying state-of-the-art destroyers to patrol the waters off North Korea as early as next week.

The mission, to be conducted in the Sea of Japan by ships assigned to the Navy's 7th Fleet, will help lay the foundation for a system to detect and intercept ballistic missiles launched by "rogue nations." - Sep. 25, 2004
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-Am