North Korea says it is 'ready for war' with Donald Trump's United States

[Banglar Bir]

North Korea says it is 'ready for war' with Donald Trump's United States
'The nuclear force of [North Korea] is the treasured sword of justice and the most reliable war deterrence'

Samuel Osborne
@SamuelOsborne93
Tuesday 21 March 2017 11:12 GMT
North Korea just said it's 'ready for war' with America
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North Korea has declared it is ready for war with the United States and does not fear possible preemptive military action to halt its nuclear and missile buildup.

Comments from North Korea's foreign ministry slammed US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's recent talk of tougher sanctions, more pressure and possible military action, and said the north would not be deterred in its nuclear program.

"The nuclear force of [North Korea] is the treasured sword of justice and the most reliable war deterrence to defend the socialist motherland and the life of its people," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted the spokesman as saying.

"We have the will and capability to fully respond to any war which the US wants. If the businessmen-turned-US officials thought that they would frighten us, they would soon recognise that their method would not work."

Inside the daily life in North Korea
The comments come after US President Donald Trump rebuked North Korean leader Jim Jong-un for "acting very badly" after it conducted a ground test for a new type of high-thrust rocket engine.

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• Donald Trump to take unspecified 'new approach' to North Korea

The North Korean leader called it a revolutionary breakthrough for the country's space program.

Last week, Mr Tillerson signalled a tougher strategy and left open the possibility of preemptive military action against the North.

"Let me be very clear: The policy of strategic patience has ended," he said after visiting the heavily militarised border between the rival Koreas.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table."

Graphiq
Tensions have worsened after a series of ballistic missile tests as the North attempts to miniaturise a nuclear warhead able to be mounted on an inter-continental ballistic missile.

North Korea has accelerated its weapons development, violating multiple UN Security Council resolutions without being deterred by sanctions.

It conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests last year. Experts warn it could have a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the US mainland within a few years.

 

[Banglar Bir]

VOICE
The Game Is Over, and North Korea Has Won
Donald Trump can whine all he wants, but we're now living in a world where American power is less relevant than ever.

BY JEFFREY LEWIS
AUGUST 9, 2017

The Washington Post reported yesterday that North Korea has a large stockpile of compact nuclear weapons that can arm the country’s missiles, including its new intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of hitting the United States. That’s another way of saying: game over.

Also: I told you so.

There are really two assessments in the Post’s report. One, dated July 28, is that the intelligence community — not just the Defense Intelligence Agency, contrary to what you may have heard — “assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles.” The other assessment, published earlier in July, stated that North Korea had 60 nuclear weapons — higher than the estimates usually given in the press. Put them together, though, and its pretty clear that the window for denuclearizing North Korea, by diplomacy or by force, has closed.

These judgments are front-page news, but only because we’ve been living in collective denial. Both intelligence assessments are consistent with what the North Koreans have been saying for some time, for reasons I outlined in a column here at Foreign Policy immediately after the September 2016 nuclear test titled, “North Korea’s Nuke Program Is Way More Sophisticated Than You Think: This is now a serious nuclear arsenal that threatens the region and, soon, the continental United States.”

Authors rarely get to pick titles, and almost never like them, but I think the editors at FP got this one about right. It is about as subtle as a jackhammer, although even so the message didn’t seem to sink in.

Let’s walk through the evidence.

North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests. That is really quite a lot. Looking at other countries that have conducted five nuclear tests, our baseline expectation for North Korea should be that it has a nuclear weapon small enough to arm a ballistic missile and is well on its way toward testing a thermonuclear — yes, thermonuclear — weapon.

A lot of people got the wrong idea after North Korea’s first nuclear test failed, and subsequent nuclear tests seemed smaller than they should be. There was a common view that the North Koreans, well, kind of sucked at making nuclear weapons. That was certainly my first impression. But there was always another possibility, one that dawned on me gradually. According to a defector account, North Korea tried to skip right toward relatively advanced nuclear weapons that were compact enough to arm ballistic missiles and made use of relatively small amounts of plutonium. That should not have been surprising; both Iraq and Pakistan similarly skipped designing and testing a more cumbersome Fat Man-style implosion device. The disappointing yields of North Korea’s first few nuclear tests were not the result of incompetence, but ambition. So, while the world was laughing at North Korea’s first few nuclear tests, they were learning — a lot.

And then there is the issue of North Korea’s nuclear test site. North Korea tests its nuclear weapons in tunnels beneath very large mountains. When my research institute used topography data collected from space to build a 3-D model of the site, we realized that the mountains are so tall that they may be hiding how big the nuclear explosions are. Some of the “disappointments” may not have been disappointments at all, and the successes were bigger than we realized. I think the best interpretation of the available evidence is that North Korea accepted some technical risk early in its program to move more quickly toward missile-deliverable nuclear weapons.

The fact that North Korea’s nuclear weapons used less fissile material than we expected helps explain the second judgment that North Korea has more bombs than is usually reported. The defector claimed that North Korea’s first nuclear weapon contained only 4 kilograms of the limited supply of plutonium North Korea made, and continues to make, at its reactor at Yongbyon. (For a long while, experts claimed the reactor was not operating when thermal images plainly showed that it was.) The North Koreans themselves claimed the first test used only 2 kilograms of plutonium. Those claims struck many people, including me, as implausible at first. But they were only implausible in the sense that such a device would probably fail when tested — and the first North Korean test did fail. The problem is North Korea kept trying, and its later tests succeeded.

We also must take seriously that North Korea has perhaps stretched its supply of plutonium by integrating some high-enriched uranium into each bomb and developing all-uranium designs. North Korea has an unknown capacity to make highly enriched uranium. We’ve long noticed that the single facility that North Korea has shown off to outsiders seems smaller than North Korea’s newly renovated capacity to mine and mill uranium; we naturally wondered where all that extra uranium is going. (My research institute thinks it might be fun to estimate how much uranium North Korea enriches based on how much it mills, if you know anyone with grant money burning a hole in her pocket.)

Unless the intelligence community knows exactly where North Korea is enriching uranium and how big each facility is, we’re just guessing how many nuclear weapons the country may have. But 60 nuclear weapons doesn’t sound absurdly high.

The thing is, we knew all this already. Sure, sure it isn’t the same when I say it. I mean, I am just some rando living out in California. But now that someone with a tie and real job in Washington has said it, it is news.

The big question is where to go from here. Some of my colleagues still think the United States might persuade North Korea to abandon, or at least freeze, its nuclear and missile programs. I am not so sure. I suspect we might have to settle for trying to reduce tensions so that we live long enough to figure this problem out. But there is only one way to figure out who is right: Talk to the North Koreans.

The other options are basically terrible. There is no credible military option. North Korea has some unknown number of nuclear-armed missiles, maybe 60, including ones that can reach the United States; do you really think U.S. strikes could get all of them? That not a single one would survive to land on Seoul, Tokyo, or New York? Or that U.S. missile defenses would work better than designed, intercepting not most of the missiles aimed at the United States, but every last one of them? Are you willing to bet your life on that?

On a good day, maybe we get most of the missiles. We save most of the cities, like Seoul and New York, but lose a few like Tokyo. Two out three ain’t bad, right?

I kid — but not really. Welcome to our new world. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Photo credit: KNS/AFP/Getty Images
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/09...l&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

[C130]

Donald Trump can whine all he wants, but we're now living in a world where American power is less relevant than ever.

we are waiting for NK tofire the first shot. they keep saying they'll nuke us but they never follow through. pretty impotent fat boy is. either he's scared or China has the chain very tight around his neck.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Chinese president speaks with Trump and urges calm over North Korea

• Xi Jinping says all sides should avoid rhetoric
• Trump’s ‘locked and loaded’ tweet earns rebuke from Angela Merkel

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Trump hopes North Korea ‘fully understands gravity of situation’
Julian Borger in Washington

Saturday 12 August 2017 06.35 BST. First published on Friday 11 August 2017 14.00 BST

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has told Donald Trump in a phone call that all sides should avoid rhetoric or action that would worsen tensions on the Korean peninsula, according to Chinese state media.

Reports quoted Xi as saying: “At present, the relevant parties must maintain restraint and avoid words and deeds that would exacerbate the tension on the Korean peninsula.”

Trump has pushed China to pressure North Korea to halt a nuclear weapons programme that is nearing the capability of targeting the United States. China is the North’s biggest economic partner and source of aid.

Trump on Friday went further to turn the crisis into a personal battle of wills between him and Kim Jong-un, warning the North Korean leader he would “truly regret” hostile acts against US territory or US allies.
The warning came a few hours after an early morning tweet from the president that claimed US military options were “locked and loaded” for use if Pyongyang “acted unwisely”.

The tweet triggered worldwide alarm and a rebuke from the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who said: “I consider an escalation of rhetoric the wrong answer.”

But Trump stood by his words when asked about them at his golf resort in New Jersey. “I hope they are going to fully understand the gravity of what I said, and what I said is what I mean,” he said. “Those words are very, very easy to understand.”

Trump then issued an ultimatum to Kim Jong-un himself. “This man will not get away with what he’s doing,” he said. “If he utters one threat in the form of an overt threat … or if he does anything in respect to Guam or anyplace else that’s an American territory or an American ally, he will truly regret it and he will regret it fast.”

Boris Johnson, the UK foreign secretary, said on Twitter that Britain was working with the US and other countries in the region to end the diplomatic crisis.

He said the international community stood “shoulder to shoulder in ensuring North Korea stops its aggressive acts”, adding:
Boris Johnson(@BorisJohnson
The North Korean regime is the cause of this problem and they must fix it
August 12, 2017
The North Korean leadership has warned it will launch four missiles at the waters around US Pacific territory of Guam as a warning to the US if it persists with its practice sorties by long-range bombers based on the island.

Despite gung-ho language from the US president, there was no change in US deployments in the region or a change in the alert status of US forces. And it was reported on Friday that the Trump administration had reopened a channel of communication between US and North Korean diplomats at the UN.

According to the Associated Press, the “New York channel” had been broken off by North Korea in protest against sanctions in 2016, but it was revived this year between Joseph Yun, the US envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song-il, a senior North Korean diplomat at the country’s UN mission.

The US state department said it had no comment on the report. It had previously been reported that there had been diplomatic contacts about US detainees in North Korea, but the new AP account said the talks addressed wider issues, although such contacts had so far failed to moderate the exchange of threats between the leaders of the two countries.

Asked about the report on Friday, Trump said: “Well, we don’t want to talk about progress, we don’t want to talk about back channels.

“We want to talk about a country that has misbehaved for many many years – decades, actually – through numerous administrations, and they didn’t want to take on the issue and I had no choice but to take it on, and I’m taking it on. And we’ll either be very, very successful quickly or we’re going to be very, very successful in a different way, quickly.”

As for Merkel’s criticism earlier in the day, Trump said: “Maybe she’s speaking for Germany; let her speak for Germany. She’s a friend of mine, she’s a very good person, a very good woman, she’s a friend of Ivanka. Perhaps she is referring to Germany. She’s certainly not referring to the United States, that I can tell you.”

In his comments, Trump made it clear that domestic political considerations played a role in shaping his rhetoric.

“If somebody else uttered the exact same words that I uttered, they’d say: ‘What a great statement, what a wonderful statement,’” Trump said. “But I will tell you, we have tens of millions of people in this country that are so happy with what I am saying, because they say, ‘Finally, we have a president that’s sticking up for our nation and frankly, sticking up for our friends and our allies.’”

Speaking to reporters in California, the US defence secretary, James Mattis, said a conflict on the Korean peninsula would be “catastrophic” and stressed that US diplomats should take the lead in resolving the crisis.

Mattis pointed to a UN security council vote at the weekend for more sanctions against North Korea as a sign that diplomacy was making progress
However, Friday’s tweet, sent out by Trump at about 7.30am from his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, put the emphasis back on the use of force: Trump(@realDonaldTrump) Military solutions are now fully in place,locked and loaded,should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!

August 11, 2017
A White House official later played down the significance of the tweet, saying there were continuously updated military contingency plans for any global crisis. “This isn’t anything new,” the official said, according to CNN.

The contingency plan for war on the Korean peninsula, Oplan 5027, envisages a build-up of the US military, including half the US navy and more than 1,000 aircraft in the region, over 90 days. More than 200,000 US civilians would also have to be evacuated.

Trump says his North Korea comments ‘may not be tough enough’
Later on Friday morning, the president retweeted US Pacific command, which had posted pictures of B-1B Lancer heavy bombers on exercises over the Pacific with the Japanese and South Korean air forces on 7 August, accompanied by text saying the planes were ready to fulfil the “ready to fight tonight” mission of US forces in South Korea, “if called upon to do so”.

Trump’s messages continued a war of words between the president and North Korea that ignited on Tuesday when Trump, following reports of a breakthrough in Pyongyang’s weapons programme, threatened to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on North Korea if the regime continued to threaten the US.

Kim Jong-un’s government responded the next day by deriding Trump’s remarks as a “lot of nonsense” and publishing detailed plans to launch missiles to land in the waters around the US Pacific territory of Guam.

Pyongyang has warned that continued practice sorties by B-1B bombers over South Korea would trigger the launch of the four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range missiles that would be aimed at the waters around their base on Guam.

“This grave situation requires the KPA [Korean People’s Army] to closely watch Guam, the outpost and beachhead for invading the DPRK, and necessarily take practical actions of significance to neutralise it,” a KPA spokesman said on the state news service.

It added that the missile launch, if ordered, would aim “to contain the US major military bases on Guam, including the Andersen air force base, in which the US strategic bombers, which get on the nerves of the DPRK and threaten and blackmail it through their frequent visits to the sky above South Korea, are stationed, and to send a serious warning signal to the US”.

The B-1 bombers have been modified so as to be non-nuclear capable, but the North Korean statement identifies them as “nuclear strategic bombers”, one of many examples of misperceptions and overheated rhetoric that fog the Korean standoff.

“The United States should think carefully about authorizing further B-1 flights. Leadership may decide to defy the North Korean threat, but should make that decision consciously and take measures to limit the risk of that action,” said Adam Mount, an expert on North Korea at the Center for American Progress.

The Guam authorities issued new emergency guidelines on Friday that included advice of what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.

“Do not look at the flash or fireball – it can blind you,” the fact sheet said. “Take cover behind anything that might offer protection.”

Asked about the potential for military confrontation, Mattis told reporters it was his responsibility to prepare “military options should they be needed”.

But he warned: “The tragedy of war is well enough known; it doesn’t need another characterisation, beyond the fact that it would be catastrophic.”

Alongside its missiles and nuclear warheads, North Korea has thousands of pieces of heavy artillery, capable of inflicting devastating damage on Seoul.

The US has about 35,000 troops stationed in South Korea and 40,000 in Japan. They have not been put on a higher alert or redeployed in recent days despite the heated rhetoric.

Malcolm Nance, a former naval intelligence officer, said that there had been none of the normal indicators of heightened alert at US bases in the region.

“We are not ready for even a small action size of Libya much less Korean War 2.0,” Nance said in a tweet. “This talk of Locked & Loaded is irresponsible madness.”
However, large-scale air, sea and land exercises are planned for later this month, which could ratchet tensions up further.

Trump was due to interrupt his working holiday for a lightning visit to Washington on Monday, according to one report. But it was not clear whether the trip was connected to the North Korean stand-off, and there are secure facilities at his Bedminster golf club where he can discuss national security matters.

The North Korean military has said its planned missile test aimed at the sea around Guam will be ready for launch on orders of the country’s leader from mid-August.

In his remarks, however, Mattis repeatedly underlined the role of diplomacy and non-military pressure on Pyongyang, and the key roles played by the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and the US envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley.

“You can see the American effort is diplomatically led,” Mattis said. He added: “It has diplomatic traction. It is gaining diplomatic results. And I want to stay right there right now.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...orth-korea-tweet-military-locked-loaded#img-1

 

[Butchcassidy]

They will not know what hit them

 

[21stCentury]

we are waiting for NK tofire the first shot. they keep saying they'll nuke us but they never follow through. pretty impotent fat boy is. either he's scared or China has the chain very tight around his neck.

you idiot. he is saying he will use his nukes in retaliation. the aggression is coming from the U.S., the U.S. is provoking and belligerent--not north korea you fool. anyway, will the U.S. attack another sovereign country? we shall see

 

[UKBengali]

They will not know what hit them

Another Indian US cheerleader.

 

[Butchcassidy]

Another Indian US cheerleader.

Well US citizens have to be US cheerleaders, why would i cheer for NK

 

[DjSnake]

kim is actually clever. he knows what happened to saddam & qaddafi, he's been observing catastrophic collapses of these middle eastern nations and taking notes. USA won't do sh!t

 

[AZ1]

Question is what North Korea gonna do if US attack. Do they have some advance weapon? Why would North Korea say something like this ?

 

[Hallian_Khan]

Question is what North Korea gonna do if US attack. Do they have some advance weapon? Why would North Korea say something like this ?

nk is like suicide bomber they know they gonna die one way or another

 

[DjSnake]

Question is what North Korea gonna do if US attack. Do they have some advance weapon? Why would North Korea say something like this ?

NK has targets on guam, Seoul and Japan

 

[KRAIT]

North Korea cant attack US base. If they do, China wont support them.

 

[Jlaw]

North Korea cant attack US base. If they do, China wont support them.

China will support NK if US Attack first.

 

[Great Sachin]

yet another stupid guy