Stephen Lendman

Pyongyang long sought normalized relations with America and other Western nations. Washington wanting adversarial relations maintained prevents it.

A previous article explained why North Korea wants nukes. It fears America for good reason. It knows it wages endless imperial wars, raping one country after another.

Truman’s naked aggression turned most of North Korea to rubble. Millions died, mostly civilians. Pyongyang wants protection against a possible repeat of what happened earlier.

It chose nuclear weapons as its strategy, for defensive, not offensive purposes. It wants peace and stability, not war, devastation and chaos.

Washington duplicitously claims Pyongyang poses a nuclear threat, a pretext for greater US regional militarization, the real threat all Asian nations face.

According to US Pacific Command spokesman Capt. Darryn James, Washington may further militarize Hawaii, Guam, and continental America from (nonexistent) Pyongyang ballistic missile threats.

Kauai’s Aegis Ashore site’s “proven test capability” can be converted to a combat complex, he said.

US Pacific Command head Admiral Harry Harris “is always exploring options to forward deploy and operationalize the latest advancements in ballistic missile defense technologies in the Pacific, where we face increasingly sophisticated threats to the homeland,” according to James.

Fact: America faced no external threats since WW II ended - only ones it invents as pretexts for endless wars of aggression, deployments of US combat troops equipped with weapons of mass destruction worldwide, and homeland police state repression.

China justifiably expressed concern about possible greater US regional militarization than already, a clear threat to its national security.

“All measures seeking to increase military capacities will only intensify antagonism and will not help to solve the problem,” Beijing’s Washington embassy spokesman Zhu Haiquan stressed.

America’s west coast and Alaska are heavily militarized against potential threats even though none exist.

Russia is justifiably concerned about US-led NATO’s Eastern Europe buildup, increasingly close to its borders.

It’s deploying additional forces with state-of-the-art weapons in its southwestern areas - countering US-led NATO plans to expand its Black Sea region presence, along with aiding Ukraine increase its combat readiness.

Black Sea Fleet spokesman Captain Vyacheslav Trukhachov said over 15 new Russian warships were deployed in the Black Sea in 2015.

They include two missile carriers and two nuclear submarines, equipped with state-of-the-art Kalibr-NK cruise missile systems - able to strike targets with precision accuracy up to 3,000 km away, proved effective in Russia’s anti-terrorist Syrian campaign.

Russian Northern Caucasus and Rostov region forces have warplanes able to strike targets accurately throughout the Black and Caspian Sea regions.

Its Iskander-M ballistic missiles can penetrate existing missile defense systems. Its effective range is 500 km.

Russia’s sophisticated weapons can match or exceed America’s best - why Pentagon commanders call its capability “awesome,” a force to be reckoned with.

US Air Forces in Europe commander General Frank Forenc called its aerial qualitative and quantitative capability “alarming.”

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.