The Iranian-Korean Crisis

Commentary: North Korea gives Donald Trump a nuclear crisis from hell

Mon Feb 13, 2017 | 10:21 AM EST

By Peter Apps

George W. Bush invaded Iraq to remove its – ultimately nonexistent – weapons of mass destruction. Barack Obama used cyber weaponry and sanctions to deter Iran from building its own atomic bomb. Now Donald Trump faces North Korea, but stopping its nuclear and missile program may prove impossible, creating what may be his first and perhaps defining international crisis.

Trump has been left to confront North Korea’s nuclear activities because his predecessors failed to manage them. The regime in Pyongyang, meanwhile, continues to build ever more dangerous – and hard-to-destroy or intercept – weapons systems.

North Korea has been a thorn in the side of the United States since the days of Harry S. Truman. The Korean War came dangerously close to sparking a nuclear confrontation, with the White House preventing U.S. commander Douglas MacArthur from using atomic weapons to stop the Chinese and North Korean armies. Under Pyongyang’s current leader Kim Jong-un, it is reaching what may be its most dangerous point since then.

Washington’s foreign policy establishment has a host of disagreements with Trump. They think he is wrong on immigration, too soft on Russia, too dangerously hawkish on China. On North Korea they are in the same hole as he is with no real ideas about how to get out.

This is a crisis everyone has seen coming. That’s why Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been so desperate to court Trump, visiting him even before the inauguration. As North Korea launched an intermediate medium-range ballistic missile on Sunday, Abe was once again with the president – this time on a golf and bonding trip to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida retreat.

It’s also why U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis made his first official trip to the region. His priority was to reassure Japan and South Korea in particular that the United States would stand with them – whatever noises Trump made during his election campaign.

Pyongyang first demonstrated its ability to detonate a crude nuclear device in 2006 – becoming the only Iraq- or Iran-style “rogue state” to ever get that far. Since then, it has continued to develop not just the bombs but also the missiles to deliver them.

Ultimately, the regime would love to have the ability to strike the continental United States – a prospect Trump has tweeted to say “won’t happen”. For now, however, there are few signs anyone has a plan to stop it.

It’s not that Pyongyang has ambitions to launch some kind of unilateral strike – that would be suicidal. What it wants is a deterrent to protect it from any kind of Iraq- or Libya-style “regime change”.

To achieve that, it first needs a limited number of land-based nuclear-tipped rockets with the ability to strike at least as far as Japan. Each test brings that goal closer.

In the slightly longer term, it wants to be able to mount rockets and warheads on a small fleet of diesel electric submarines. These could be positioned offshore or along its mountainous coastline, hard to track and destroy and – because of the unpredictability of their locations – harder to intercept should the rockets one day be launched.

Nothing the United States has done has seriously frustrated that ambition. In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, Bush had limited success in using financial aid – and the threat of greater sanctions – to persuade Pyongyang to slow its program, even demolishing a cooling tower at the nuclear facility in Yongbyon.

That still wasn’t enough to stop the 2006 nuclear test. And with the accession of Kim Jong-un after the death of his father in 2011, North Korea has been much more single-minded in its atomic ambitions.

Following the apparent success of the Stuxnet computer worm against the Iranian nuclear program, there are suggestions the Obama administration tried something similar against North Korea, but the attempt was much less successful. Such covert activities have likely continued, but they may not be enough.

Since Bill Clinton in the nineties, successive U.S. presidents have been presented with options for more direct action such as air and missile strikes. How successful they would be, however, has never been clear. Pyongyang has no shortage of ways in which it could respond, not least through using conventional artillery to strike U.S. and South Korean targets. The South Korean capital, with its population of more than 10 million, is firmly in range of North Korean guns which, like its nuclear program, are believed to be stored in deep, hard–to-destroy bunkers.

One option now on the table would be for the United States to attempt to intercept a future North Korean missile test with some of its anti-ballistic missiles in the region. That didn’t happen on Sunday, perhaps in part because that test occurred over a relatively short distance, mostly over or near North Korean territory.

Attempting to shoot down a longer-range missile test would be easier – but the success of such an action could never be guaranteed. If it failed, the United States would essentially have advertised its inability to intercept a North Korean missile, sparking even greater concern in the region.

The political fallout of a botched intercept would also be significant for any U.S. president.

That leaves diplomatic options, such as applying pressure through China. Beijing’s economic support for North Korea is vital to its survival, and the topic was likely high on the agenda during Trump’s first call with the Chinese premier. But China is reluctant to do anything that might bring about the collapse of the regime and potentially put South Korean or U.S. troops on its border.

Beijing has also long argued that anything it did to undermine North Korea might hasten the unraveling of the regime, bringing with it the danger that Pyongyang might lash out, perhaps with nuclear force.

There are a variety of potential targets for North Korea even if it cannot reach the United States. They include regional U.S. bases such as Guam as well as South Korea. Many experts believe a Japanese target might be the most likely, not least because of lingering resentment over atrocities in World War Two.

In time, that threat might be enough to prompt Tokyo to acquire its own nuclear arsenal – something that would antagonize Beijing, and arguably make the region even more volatile.

Trump may see himself as a master of the “art of the deal”, and has raised the prospect he might meet North Korean leaders. His problem is that there may be no deal to be done. This situation may become more dangerous – perhaps until something truly cataclysmic happens.

(Peter Apps is Reuters global affairs columnist, writing on international affairs, globalization, conflict and other issues. He is founder and executive director of the Project for Study of the 21st Century; PS21, a non-national, non-partisan, non-ideological think tank in London, New York and Washington. Before that, he spent 12 years as a reporter for Reuters covering defense, political risk and emerging markets. Since 2016, he has been a member of the British Army Reserve and the UK Labour Party. @pete_apps)

No Close Calls This Time (Revelation 15:2)

 
Revealed: US almost launched nuclear weapons during Cuban Missile Crisis

Published time: 28 Oct, 2015 22:11
Edited time: 28 Oct, 2015 22:14

During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an Air Force airman says that his unit was ordered to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. His captain’s use of common sense over 50 years ago may have saved the world from a nuclear apocalypse.

An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists paints a picture of John Bordne, an Air Force airman who was stationed at one of four secret US missile sites in Japan during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. While the US Air Force has not come out and verified the claims, Bordne’s account is that, in the early morning hours of October 28, 1962, his unit of 32 Mace B cruise missiles inexplicably received launch orders.

Each Mace B cruise missile had an enormous payload 70 times more powerful than the atomic bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Within strike range were various communist countries: the capital cities of Hanoi, Vietnam; Beijing, China; and Pyongyang, North Korea, as well as the Soviet military facilities in Vladivostok.

Bordne says that a few hours before his shift began, the commander at the Missile Operations Center on Okinawa began a routine radio transmission to the missile sites, giving a string of characters that normally did not match the ones that the crews had. But this time was different: For the first time in history, the codes matched.

The fate of the entire world hung in the balance when US Air Force Captain William Bassett had clearance to open his pouch to see if his personal string of characters matched the last part of the code that was transmitted. They did. This authorized him to open an envelope to read his site’s launch instructions, but the captain declined to fulfill the order of launching a nuclear strike.

Bassett then saw that three of his four targets described in the envelope were not located in the Soviet Union. This was a fact that was corroborated over telephone correspondence with an officer at a different site. Indeed, the fact that they were only at DEFCON 2 added to the incredulousness of the orders: If they were actually supposed to launch their nuclear missiles and kick off World War III, they should have gone to DEFCON 1, the maximum possible level of alert, which is necessary for such a strike to occur.

The crew, with their fingers on the button, were ready to launch the nukes, but Bassett stalled them, as Bordne recalls, and ordered two armed airmen to “shoot the [lieutenant] if he tries to launch without [either] verbal authorization from the ‘senior officer in the field’ or the upgrade to DEFCON 1 by Missile Operations Center.”

“If this is a screw up and we do not launch, we get no recognition, and this never happened,” Bordne recalled the captain saying.

And the fiasco turned out to be a screw up indeed, one of a magnitude only a few notches away from nuclear war.

“None of us will discuss anything that happened here tonight, and I mean anything. No discussions at the barracks, in a bar, or even here at the launch site. You do not even write home about this. Am I making myself perfectly clear on this subject?” Bassett reportedly told his men after the crisis had passed.

Bassett died in 2011, and during his lifetime, the crew faithfully kept to his orders, with the public remaining oblivious to crisis until now.

But not even those stationed at the secret bases on Okinawa could have known that the Soviet Union was facing its own brush with starting World War III.

On October 27, 1962, just a day before Bordne’s experience occurred, Soviet Navy officer Vasili Arkhipov also saved the world from destruction in the middle of the Cold War’s tensest moment. He was the second-in-command of a B-59 submarine when American destroyers began to drop depth charges on it, trying to force the Soviet vessel to surface.

The submarine’s captain assumed that the Americans were trying to destroy his nuclear-armed submarine and that a catastrophic war had broken out. He ordered the B-59’s ten kiloton nuclear torpedo to prepare for firing on an enemy aircraft carrier that was leading the American task force near Cuba. The  launch of the B-59’s torpedo required the authorization of all three senior officers aboard the submarine, and Arkhipov was alone in denying permission. His level head, like Bassett’s, may have saved the human species.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, best known for its Doomsday clock, is now calling on the Air Force to release details on the harrowing Okinawa event. Other organizations have attempted to uncover this information through Freedom of Information Act requests, but the Bulletin notes that these requests could take years, if they are successful at all.

Pakistani Horn Now In Army’s Hands (Daniel 8:8)

Pakistan’s Ongoing Existential Crisis – Analysis

January 24, 2015
By SAAG
By Dr Subhash Kapila*

Pakistan’s existential crises generated by Pakistan Army’s repetitive onslaughts on Pakistan’s democratic fabric are widely recognised. Constitutional abdication once again stands forced by the Pakistan Army on PM Nawaz.

In wake of TTP suicide attack on Peshawar Army Public School, the Pakistan Army instead of shouldering responsibility for its institutional inadequacies deflected Pakistani public reaction and outcry by demanding a Constitutional Amendment for setting-up Special Military Courts for trial of terrorists.

Pakistan Army’s not so subtle manoeuvre in this direction is nothing but a “Back-Door Coup” in which Constitutional organs of the Pakistan nation-state like the Prime Minister, the Government and the Pakistan Supreme Court stand short-circuited and by-passed. Implicitly and effectively, the Pakistan Army Chief and his generals have taken over the administration of Pakistan.

Regular readers would recall that at the height of Imran Khan and Qadri’s protest movement besieging the government of incumbent PM Nawaz Sharif I had pointed out that this prolonged besieging of Pakistan Parliament and government offices in Islamabad was a Pakistan Army facilitation as a prelude to a possible coup or a soft coup. What has occurred in the wake of Peshawar suicide bombings was a subtle operation by the Pakistan Army without sending soldiers on the streets forcing PM Nawaz Sharif to virtually hand over effective reins of government to Pakistan Army Chief.

To give respectability to this insidious manoeuvre Pakistan’s polity was scared by the Pakistan Army General into passing the 21st Constitutional Amendment approving the setting-up of Special Military Courts for trial of all terrorism-related crimes. The Pakistan Army Act was also suitably modified.

Preposterous is the reality that with PM Nawaz Sharif having been returned to power on a solid majority and with the Pakistan Supreme Court in recent times asserting with judicial activism, the Pakistan Army had no faith in these Constitutional organs of the Pakistan State and goaded the political establishment for setting-up Special Military Courts. The Pakistan Army Sharif has done-in the Political Sharif.

The Pakistan Army would have gone in for a regular military coup and declaration of Martial Law except for the fear of international backlash and withholding of billions of dollars of US and Western aid.

The Pakistan Army Generals were smarting under the perceived insult of General Musharraf’s trials in civil courts and PM Nawaz Sharif’s conciliatory gestures towards India and hence all these contrivations. Further, the solid image of the Pakistan Army was being dented in public perceptions beginning with US liquidation of Osama bin Laden deep in the midst of Pakistan’s major military garrison and thereafter continuing terrorism attacks.

The question that arises is as to why the Pakistan Army never made demands for Constitutional Amendment and setting-up of Special Military Courts earlier when right from Karachi to Lahore similar suicide bombings had taken place?

The second question is more major and profound. Is Pakistan condemned to alternate currents of Pakistan Army’s political interventions and control and aborting democracy taking roots in Pakistan which recently showed promise when governance passed from one political regime to another through the ballot box rather than bullets?

Does this plague of Pakistan Army military interventions and short-circuiting of democratic transformation not represent that the Pakistan nation-state is in an existential crisis? Would then not the question be ceaselessly asked regionally and globally that how long Pakistan can survive as a nation state with such debilities?

Pakistan’s existential crisis has been the subject of incessant debates in the strategic community and strategic analyses. Moreso, concerns arise because Pakistan is a rogue nuclear weapons state with the nuclear triggers in the hands of an adventurist Pakistan Army. They can be expected to act impulsively and brashly without caring for the consequences.

Reflective of the above was an interesting scenario of “Pakistan 2018” included in an article in the British newspaper ‘The Telegraph ‘of September2010 which spelt out that in 2018 as Pakistan returned to civilian rule after five years of military dictatorship, the Pakistan Army refused to hand over the codes and keys for the nuclear arsenal. The ousted Pakistan Army also seized missiles silos with the Pakistan Army splintering into those supporting the civilian regime and those unwilling to take orders from the civilian Government. The latter join the Taliban in Afghanistan and resort to cutting off of supply routes to US Forces remaining in Afghanistan

In response a UN Coalition led by US Task Forces with support from Chinese Task Force attack Pakistani missile silos. But the Pakistani Army rebels manage to launch two nuclear warheads towards Mumbai which are intercepted and destroyed by US Forces. The UN Coalition Forces eventually defang Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal

The above is not a far-fetched alarmist scenario and requires serious consideration by United States, Russia and China as major powers as to how Pakistan Army’s nuclear arsenal is de-fanged to prevent doomsday scenarios. How can China guarantee that a 9/11is not repeated on China by Pakistan based radicals supporting their co-religionists in Xinjiang?

Even ardent supporters of Pakistan within the US strategic community now express doubts over the survival of the Pakistan nation-state. Their logic is that if Pakistan stood partitioned by emergence of Bangladesh within 24 years of the first partition what guarantee is there that with the uninterrupted crumbling of Pakistani governing institutions currently underway that Pakistan could survive as a nation-state in the coming 36 years.

It needs to be highlighted that Pakistan’s existential crisis underway is not the handiwork of any Indian diabolical plot but the havoc wreaked by the Pakistan Army on the survival of democracy and democratic institutions in Pakistan. This author has been propagating that ‘Pakistan’s Democracy is a National Security Imperative for India” in his SAAG Papers so entitled.

Concluding it needs to be stressed that Pakistan’s long entrenched strategic patrons like the United States, UK and China would have to re-write their strategic narratives on the Pakistan Army if Pakistan has to be retrieved from its ongoing existential crisis before it irretrievably stumbles into an abyss with dangerous implications for the region.

*Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, Camberley and combines a rich experience of Indian Army, Cabinet Secretariat, and diplomatic assignments in Bhutan, Japan, South Korea and USA. Currently, Consultant International Relations & Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. He can be reached at drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com

Antichrist Plans to Help Iraqi Gov’t Settle Security Crisis

Iraq’s Sadr Planning to Help Gov’t Settle Security Crisis

Fars News Agency

 

Antichrist Addresses People 8-19-14

 

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iraqi cleric Seyed Muqtada al-Sadr plans to cooperate with Iraq’s new government in an attempt to resolve crisis in the country, media reports said.

Iraqi speaker Saleem al-Jobouri met with Sadr delegation on Monday in which both sides discussed ways to counter terrorism in the crisis-hit country, Alforat news agency reported.

The delegation presented a proposed governmental program suggested by the head of the movement, Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had earlier vowed to “shake the ground” under the feet of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorists.