The UN Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting this Friday to discuss North Korea’s seven missile tests in the past four weeks. The meeting was requested by the United States, along with Britain and France, and agreed by Russia, which holds the presidency of UNSC for the month of February.

However, given the Russo-American saber-rattling on Ukraine at the Security Council on Monday and especially in view of Sino-Russian history with Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, one more UNSC meet on North Korea’s juggernaut is very unlikely to produce anything substantive.

In fact, anticipating this likelihood of an ineffectual – or worse, divided – UNSC, Britain, France and Germany on Wednesday pre-empted the council by calling on North Korea “to accept the repeated offers of dialogue put forward by the United States,” thereby putting the onus exclusively on the US.

Indeed, of these seven missiles tests – which included six ballistic missiles, two of them hypersonic – it was the last one, the Hwasong-12 IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missile) test last Sunday, that marked the longest-range missile test since 2017.

This is the one that startled US President Joe Biden’s administration, obliging it to approach the UNSC for early redressal. On normal apogee, the Hwasong-12 can reach 5,500 kilometers, which covers all of the US military deployments in North Korea’s periphery.

Last October as well, the US, UK and France convened a UNSC emergency meeting as North Korea, in defiance of the Biden administration’s calls, tested a submarine-launched ballistic missile that, at least potentially, enables Pyongyang to strike anywhere on Earth. Even at that time, the UNSC could not reach any consensus because of open opposition from China and Russia, leaving the US to fend for itself.

US taking the lead

The US track record in taking the lead of course throws up its own puzzles and pitfalls. In 2017, then-president Donald Trump began by name-calling Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man,” threatening him with “fire and fury,” but soon melted into exploring their “personal relationship” that resulted in two unsuccessful summits.

Other than obtaining a 17-month respite from North Korean tests, those two summits served only to embolden Kim, who has since rejected all US efforts to revive talks, underlining their trust deficit.

While candidate Biden, like Trump, had also begun by calling the North Korean leader “short and fat” and “a thug” and by being highly critical of Trump’s “love” for Kim, he has yet to follow the Trumpian U-turn by offering to hold a direct meeting with Kim Jong Un. This neglect of the “Dear Respected Comrade” by President Biden has since triggered Kim’s ratcheting up of this testing spree.

Also, while Biden continues to pursue the same Trumpian aims of complete denuclearization of North Korea as a precondition to lifting sanctions, his approach in engaging Pyongyang has remained rather subtle and piecemeal, if not insipid and lackluster. The US continues to seek refuge in lofty ambitions but its strategies so far have allowed the North Korean nuclear and missile programs to flourish unabated.

The Biden administration’s preoccupation with sanctions and its rhetoric of protecting its credibility with its regional allies have become increasingly mind-numbing and appear both rigid and dated. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un has continued building his deterrence capabilities.

Unstoppable Kim Jong Un

In a rare gesture in 2017, the UNSC unanimously slapped sanctions on North Korea’s oil imports and coal, iron, textile and fish exports. These, however, were followed by North Korea precipitously conducting its sixth nuclear test on September 3 that year, followed by Hwasong IRBM tests in November.

Two of those missiles were fired over the Japanese island of Hokkaido and three others demonstrated the ability to reach the US military base in Guam; plus it tested a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range of up to 13,000 kilometers, which could potentially hit the US mainland.

There is little doubt that Kim Jong Un’s buildup of a nuclear deterrent remains aimed at the United States and that its allies Japan and South Korea remain only a subset of his strategy. But even there, rather abrasively, Kim has called Joe Biden a weak coward and a real thug, while his powerful sister Kim Yo Jong warned the Biden administration that if “it wants to sleep in peace for the coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink as its first step.”

More recently, Kim Jong Un seems to be taking advantage of Biden being preoccupied with the Covid-19 pandemic and and the Ukraine crisis. There are even deeper insinuations of Ukraine having helped North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities.

Meanwhile, South Korean President Moon Jae-in sees that his country’s security could become marginalized in US calculations in dealing with the North Korean regime.

After the Hwasong-12 test, he was quick to express his anxieties, warning on Monday how these precipitous missile tests were bound to push Kim Jong Un closer to scrapping its April 2018 moratorium on nuclear and ICBM tests. This was immediately echoed by US officials as they began calling on Pyongyang to revive direct talks without any preconditions.

It is bewildering, however, to see the US repeating the same old rhetoric after the ground realities have changed rather rapidly. If anything, US officials have been urging Pyongyang for direct talks ever since the failed Kim-Trump Hanoi summit of February 2019, but have reportedly been rebuffed by the Kim regime. Understandably, the gulf between the expectations of both sides has expanded with the passage of time.

Changed ground realities

Taking a cue from his interactions with Trump, Kim Jong Un’s frequent and longer-range missile tests seem part of his attempt to apply the same maximum pressure “tit-for-tat” strategy to reverse Washington’s hostile sanctions policy.

In this context, the US strategy of imposing severe sanctions – which remains equally ineffective in the Ukraine crisis – or worse, posturing a redeployment of US nuclear forces in South Korea will only egg Kim on to accelerate these tests and eventually breach his April 2018 moratorium.

Kim Jong Un building up his robust nuclear deterrence capability makes denuclearization of North Korea a distant dream. At the most ambitious level, Kim now wants the US to recognize North Korea as a normal nuclear-weapons state – in fact to reward it for being a responsible nuclear state.

He now wants the US to convert its outdated strategy of nuclear disarmament-for-lifting-sanctions into one of lifting sanctions in lieu of suspension of North Korean tests – this swap being his prerequisite for a Biden-Kim summit. Kim aims to sign a much-anticipated peace treaty with the US, extending mutual diplomatic recognition, exchange ambassadors and finally remove US forces from North Korea’s periphery.

All this seems way beyond what US is even contemplating. Surely the current format of US North Korea strategy has stopped working and needs an urgent overhaul. Kim Jong Un’s increasingly robust nuclear deterrence makes it incumbent on the Biden administration to rejig its North Korea strategy.

Can it begin to think of calibrating incremental lifting of sanctions to buy time with a moratorium on North Korea’s missile tests? The US may also need to recalibrate its military deployments in the region to initiate foot-in-the-door diplomacy to hold its regional allies in good stead by redefining its alignments and objectives.

Can the US offer to desist from military exercises, downsize its military presence in North Korea’s periphery by potentially inducting its regional allies like Japan, South Korea and other friends into a more dynamic AUKUS-plus security mechanism to broad-base its advantages?

The Biden administration has to begin contemplating such out-of-the-box strategies to incentivize instead of alienating North Korea, an authoritarian regime with robust nuclear capabilities.

SWARAN SINGH
Dr Swaran Singh is professor of diplomacy and disarmament at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; adjunct senior fellow at The Charhar Institute, Beijing; senior fellow, Institute for National Security Studies Sri Lanka, Colombo; and visiting professor, Research Institute for Indian Ocean Economies, Kunming (China).

Source: https://asiatimes.com/2022/02/biden-administration-must-rejig-its-north-korea-strategy/

The post Biden administration must rejig its North Korea strategy first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

In a commentary published Thursday by the official Korean Central News Agency, a North Korea Foreign Ministry spokesperson accused U.S. diplomats of arriving at recent working-level talks in Sweden with an “empty hand, thus breaking them off.” The two countries have sought a deal by which North Korea would abandon its nuclear weapons in exchange for peace, security and the lifting of international sanctions, but Pyongyang has accused Washington of maintaining a maximalist position and of continuing to take provocative steps, such as last week’s nuclear-capable Minuteman III ICBM test out of California.

“As recognized by the international community, the United States conducted the recent intercontinental ballistic missile test-fire in a bid to pressure the DPRK. The DPRK can give tit for tat, but we are now exercising a restraint under the judgment that a counteraction is not necessary yet and it is still premature,” the North Korean official’s statement read, using an acronym for North Korea’s official name.

“But there is a limit to our patience and there is no guarantee that all our patience would continue indefinitely,” the official added.

The U.S. test, which the Pentagon said “demonstrates the United States’ nuclear deterrent is robust, flexible, ready and approximately tailored to deter twenty-first-century threats and reassure our allies,” came a day after North Korea tested an SLBM off the country’s east coast. The medium-range weapon, officially called Pukguksong-3, is the farthest-flying and first nuclear-capable missile to be tested by North Korea since its own previous ICBM test nearly two years ago.

That test came during a period of heightened tensions between President Donald Trump and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un that lasted throughout 2017 but eventually gave in to both inter-Korean and U.S.-North Korea peace talks the following year. Ahead of his debut meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Trump, Kim pledged to suspend nuclear tests and longer-range missile launches.

This self-imposed moratorium silenced North Korea’s missiles for nearly a year and a half, but after Trump and Kim’s second meeting failed to produce an agreement in February, two series of short-range weapons tests were conducted in May. Then too, the U.S. conducted a Minuteman III test at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California shortly after the North Korean launch.

As talks again appeared to stall, the two leaders once again came together, this time alongside Moon, for a historic meeting at the border between the two Koreas, still technically a warzone, in late June. As the U.S. and South Korea pressed ahead with joint military drills, however, North Korea began a new series of short-range tests that would last through September.

The Trump administration has mostly brushed off these displays, as well as last week’s SLBM test, acknowledging them as violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions but not commitments made by Kim to the U.S. leader. In response to European condemnations, North Korean officials have repeatedly stated that the country does not acknowledge U.N.-imposed restrictions on its missile program.

Despite this, six European nations including Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom expressed their “condemnation” toward North Korea’s SLBM test in a joint statement issued after a Security Council meeting. The North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson blasted the sextet in Thursday’s statement, accusing them of remaining silent towards the recent U.S. ICBM launch.

“The UNSC which champions fairness and equity picks fault with the just measure belonging to our right to self-defense while keeping mum about the test-fire of Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile recently conducted by the U.S. This is a serious provocation against the DPRK,” the official said, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

The Europeans had also called for North Korea “to engage in good faith in meaningful negotiations with the United States,” but Pyongyang and Washington exited their Stockholm talks with diverging messages of what transpired behind closed doors.

A graphic shows a broad overview of missile tests carried out by North Korea since 1984, based on data compiled by the Nuclear Threat Initiative. North Korea has demonstrated more advanced missile technology with a higher success rate in recent years.  Source: Statista

North Korean chief negotiator Kim Myong Gil told reporters that “the negotiations have not fulfilled our expectations and finally broke up” because “the U.S. would not give up their own viewpoint and attitude.” The State Department, however, argued that his comments “do not reflect the content or the spirit of today’s 8 1/2 hour discussion” and argued that the U.S. “brought creative ideas and had good discussions with its DPRK counterparts.”

“The United States and the DPRK will not overcome a legacy of 70 years of war and hostility on the Korean Peninsula through the course of a single Saturday. These are weighty issues, and they require a strong commitment by both countries,” it added. “The United States has that commitment.”

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson hit back with a statement Sunday, accusing the U.S. side of “spreading a completely ungrounded story that both sides are open to meet after two weeks.” The official said the country had “no intention to hold such sickening negotiations as what happened this time before the U.S. takes a substantial step to make complete and irreversible withdrawal of the hostile policy toward the DPRK.”

“We have already made it clear that if the U.S. again fingers at the old scenario which has nothing to do with new calculation method, the dealings between the DPRK and the U.S. may immediately come to an end,” the official added. “As we have clearly identified the way for solving the problem, the fate of the future DPRK-U.S. dialogue depends on the U.S. attitude, and the end of this year is its deadline.”

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-deal-missile-patience-1464439

The post North Korea tells U.S. to come up with deal or face bigger missile tests: ‘There is a limit to our patience’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Muslim leaders want to create an Islamic army to ‘protect’ the Palestinian Arabs after 62 of them died last Monday during attempts to invade Israel from Gaza.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad later admitted 53 of those killed during the attempted invasion of southern Israel were members of their terror organizations.

Muslim leaders met in Turkey at an emergency gathering of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), during which the Erdogan regime accused Israel of “willfully murdering” the Palestinian Arabs.

Erdogan further escalated his vile rhetoric against Israel by comparing the Jewish State to Nazi Germany.

“There is no difference between the atrocity faced by the Jewish people in Europe 75 years ago and the brutality that our Gaza brothers are subjected to,” Erdogan told his Muslim counterparts.

“I will say openly and clearly that what Israel is doing is banditry, brutality and state terror,” he added before claiming that the people “who were subjected to all kinds of torture in the concentration camps during World War II are now attacking the Palestinians with methods similar to the Nazis.”

The OIC call for the forming of a Muslim-only “international force” to “protect” the Palestinian Arabs came after the United States threatened to veto a resolution at the UN Security Council (UNSC) that suggested a regular international “peacekeeping force” in Gaza.

The Turkish campaign seeks to mobilize the Muslim world against Israel in a way that bypasses the United Nations, where the Trump Administration can too easily shoot down any measures hostile toward Israel.

Following the OIC summit, the Turkish strongman addressed a huge crowd in the center of Istanbul and insisted that the Muslim world must take “a physical stance” on Israel.

“The occupation of Jerusalem, the violation of the privacy of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the violation of the rights of the people of Palestine…we declare that we will not accept this,” Erdogan told the crowd, which was waving Palestinian flags along Turkish ones.

The hot-headed leader then claimed that he and his country are “targeted” all the time by Israel.

“Turkey is the country that is targeted the most by Israel, and the leader that is targeted the most by Israel is me,” Erdogan claimed.

The Turkish despot is currently trying to mobilize more moderate Arab Muslim states like Jordan against Israel after relations between Turkey and the Jewish state hit a new low last week.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi last week told CNN that the “source of all evil” is “the occupation,” meaning the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria.

PHOTO: Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah review an honor guard. (Flash90)

Source: http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/34048/Default.aspx

The post ANALYSIS: Muslim Leaders Seek ‘Islamic Army’ to Protect ‘Palestine’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.