North Korea Goes South: to Menace the U.S.

by Peter Huessy
May 7, 2013 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3689/north-korea-nuclear-threat

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The North is making progress in its goal of being able to deliver a nuclear warhead surreptitiously to the U.S., probably in an EMP mode, an existential threat to our survival. Missiles and nuclear warheads are the emerging weapons of choice, the modern battering ram, to remove US security guarantees from the Western Pacific and the Middle East, and allow the rise of new totalitarian powers, including China, Iran and North Korea, to the detriment of freedom and liberty everywhere.

On December 12, 2012 -- the 28^th anniversary of its pledge to join to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- North Korea successfully launched a satellite into orbit aboard an Unha-3 rocket.
After the launch, two months later, on February 12, 2013, North Korea tested another nuclear weapon -- this time on the 10^th year anniversary of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Administration] finding the country in noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT]. This launch was noteworthy in that the orbit was a southern polar one, which can place an object over the central United States. So, too, the nuclear weapons test, a 3-4 kiloton blast, was consistent with the development of a small nuclear weapons specifically designed to create an electro-magnetic pulse.
As for the dates, joining the NPT was long associated with keeping a country's nuclear energy program within accepted international boundaries. But North Korea, similar to Iraq, Libya and now Iran, used the NPT and the IAEA inspection process to set up parallel efforts to pretend compliance with the anti-nuclear weapon strictures of the treaty while at the same time surreptitiously developing nuclear weapons.
Similarly, the findings of the IAEA in 2002 were the culmination of a series of concerns with the North Korean nuclear program which had been largely camouflaged by the 1995 Agreed Framework agreement with the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea. Under this deal, initially negotiated by former President Jimmy Carter and North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung, Pyongyang would get two new nuclear reactors; suspend, and then halt, its nuclear weapons work, and willingly comply with the provisions of the NPT.
Following the December flight test and the February weapons test, most analysts concluded that the North Korean capability to attack the United States -- which the regime has repeatedly threatened to do -- was largely a bluff. Countless analysts wandered into a maze of technical jargon about how Pyongyang was not yet able "adequately" and "fully" to test a warhead and missile to "demonstrate" a threatening military capability. Such assessments ignored that other nuclear powers had developed such technological prowess without testing, and that North Korea was considerably farther along in its technological capability than it had been just a year earlier.
The most striking and common error, however, was a two-fold refrain: first, that North Korea was simply defending itself from a hostile United States -- an echo of what the regime itself was claiming. Simply stated, the refrain went, North Korea had grievances against the United States, and its nuclear weapons and missiles were solely for its own security. The second part of the refrain went: even if North Korea should launch such missiles at us, we would easily see where such a missile originated and take massive retaliatory action, the threat of which safely ensures that no such missile would ever be launched by North Korea in the first place.
Most analysts, while noting that the "unpredictable" behavior of the new leader in North Korea was somewhat unnerving, expressed the hope and belief that that China would use sufficient pressure on the regime in Pyongyang to rein in its militaristic impulses -- while simultaneously noting how difficult it was for China to do so because China did not have all that much leverage with North Korea, after all.
Unfortunately, there are five reasons for North Korea's allegedly "crazy" behavior:
First, the regime evidently wants to pick a fight with the United States -- move rockets into launch position, appear to be ready to test nuclear weapons -- on purpose. North Korea apparently does not care about "not being isolated." North Korea apparently does not want to trade its nuclear arsenal for more food, oil or investment. By making the United States offer to come back to the six party talks and even hint at humanitarian assistance, they have seized the agenda -- which worked so successful for Iran -- to buy time and make the agenda their own.
As a bonus, with its "erratic" behavior North Korea even induced some Washington analysts into a state of alarm that had them calling for US troops to leave the Korean peninsula. One pundit argued this would improve "the security situation" because then North Korea would invest more in its own defense.
Who then would supply the missing extended US nuclear umbrella?
A Western retreat -- U.S. withdrawal from the region -- is exactly what North Korea and China want, as recently expressed by a Chinese defense white paper and senior PRC official. Further, Pyongyang knows that a US troop presence in the Republic of Korea makes any North Korean invasion a losing proposition. With the US gone, North Korea sees its nuclear arsenal as the trump card preventing the United States from coming to the defense of the ROK when the North invades.
Second, the North's regime always tries to batter a new South Korean government. The South's President has just taken office. The North uses its harsh rhetoric and military deployments to put pressure on the new government in two ways -- if the government talks tough and threatens a severe retaliation to any "provocation," the liberals in Seoul will condemn their government for risking war.
Conversely, if South Korea takes a conciliatory stance and offers to talk and provide assistance, Pyongyang wins the argument: it can claim that Seoul is the supplicant and the North is the victim.
So poking its nuclear missile fingers in the eyes of South Korea's government works to Pyongyang's advantage.
Third, the regime is also helping achieve China's objectives. The China's leadership can always claim it has less influence over the regime in Pyongyang than everyone assumes, and that they are really, really, really trying to keep its crazy North Koreastein uncle "in the attic."
But their creation -- North Koreanstein -- did not just spontaneously get off the table and run out the laboratory door. The "escape" was not an accident.
Just think. With North Koreanstein running around outside the lab, China then can act the hero. It can plead for calm, and promise to try to control its crazy creation.
And it can urge a return to "negotiations" to "resolve peacefully" the issues at hand.
Of course, negotiations mean the North must be a party to any agreement, a stipulation that renders denuclearization off the table. And given the Swiss cheese nature of all sanctions against North Korea, China is not about seriously to curtail any aid or economic investment that might actually effect the actions of North Korea.
So on cue, North Korea's harsh rhetoric is put on the diplomatic shelf, the parades celebrating the founder's rule continue, and the rope-a-dope process of "crisis, conflict, demands for concessions, pledges to negotiate, and return to business as usual" goes on.
Fourth, the nuclear and missile tests are not just about North Korea. They are about Iran, as well. Even as North Korea was pledging a moratorium on testing the Musadan missile, Iran -- in a show of having one's missiles and eating them, too -- was testing that very missile. Iran is evidently paying Pyongyang for missile tests, and it would be plausible that Iran is also receiving help with nuclear weapons. After all, during such tests in the North, the mullahs and top Iranian military leaders have repeatedly been present.
The Iranians are not on vacation. The North Korean tests are thus a form of "auto show," as they demonstrate their WMD wares to the mullahs still flush with oil cash. It is not a coincidence that the debris from the North Korean rocket tests revealed Chinese technological assistance, as well as a high level of supposedly indigenous North Korean capability.
Iran knows this, as do Moscow and Peking. Rockets sell, North Korea needs cash. Better rockets bring in more cash. North Korea is building better rockets.
All this helps not only Iran, it also secures the objectives of Russia and China.
Fifth, and most importantly, the North Korean tests in fact reveal a very serious and growing threat to the United States. All the technical clap-trap from self-appointed non-Korean experts is just that -- clap-trap. Talk about shields, sheeting, stresses, temperature excursions, vibration is beside the point. The North is making progress toward its goal of being able to deliver a nuclear warhead surreptitiously to the United States, probably in the mode of an electromagnetic pulse [EMP], which is an existential threat to our survival. That is the significance of the North Korean tests, not whether or not we are going to see a replica of the Johnson Space Center or Cape Kennedy built on the banks of the Yalu River.
Let us look at the evidence about EMP.
China, South Korea and Russia have all told US officials, especially the Congressional mandated EMP Commission, that Pyongyang is developing a sophisticated capability to launch such weapons against the United States and received significant help from the outside, (including, ironically, from China and Russia), exactly as highlighted by the 1998 "Commission on Ballistic Missile Threats to the United States."
We also know that Iran tested rocket launches off of a barge in the Caspian, and detonated two dummy warheads in an EMP mode. We know there is considerable work between Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and Pakistan in this entire area of missiles and nuclear weapons. What more do we need to know?
Pyongyang launched its December rocket to its south late last year. This space launch vehicle fired by North Korea put a satellite into a southern orbit, and, with some modifications, could have placed it over the central United States.
As the Defense Intelligence Agency has warned, Pyongyang may have accomplished the feat of making nuclear warheads small enough to fit onto such a missile or launch vehicle. If detonated high over the United States at an altitude of some 70-100 kilometers, a special-effects nuclear warhead could effect an electromagnetic pulse that would shut down a large portion of the electrical grid in the United States, creating casualties in the tens of millions.
The warhead would not have to travel through the atmosphere; thus shielding would not be required. The stress of such a launch would thus be minimal. There also would be no debris, and thus nuclear forensics would not be able to determine the origin of the warhead. And if the launch point were in the huge maritime region off the coasts of the United States, there would be no "return address" from which to identify the attacker.
It is not as if we have not known of this threat for some time -- at least since 1998.
In 2009, Thomas Reed and Danny Stillman also warned in their book, "The Nuclear Express," that, "The revelations from the BBC China…within Libya…confirmed the opaque role of North Korea in the world's new triangle trade, shuttling gas cylinders made…in Pakistan, filled with uranium hexafluoride in North Korea, then delivered to Libya…[which]…opened wide a window into nuclear Iran."
Too many assume that if the US just "changes its policy" to "more friendly," this can all go away. But none of these acts is the result of a "hostile US policy," as many analysts seem to assume, most recently in an April 15 Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Strategic Security Blog. Such commentary just reinforces the arguments used by the North itself, and its allies, including Iran, China and Russia, which all give credibility to a false narrative undoubtedly designed to justify the aggression and terrorism of which this coalition is guilty.
Missiles and nuclear warheads are the emerging weapons of choice, the modern battering ram to remove US security guarantees from the Western Pacific and Middle East, and with that removal, to allow the rise of new totalitarian powers, including China and its allies such as Iran and North Korea -- to the detriment of freedom and liberty everywhere.
HASC Subcommittee Chairman Mike Rogers, in an April 24, 3013, letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, warned that "withdrawing [our] missile defenses from Asia in exchange for support from" China to lean on North Korea" would not find any support in the House military committee.
In short, retreat from global threats is just that, retreat. It does not give us security, and it will not give us peace. There is no substitute or escape from our constitutional duty of "providing for the common defense."

Related Topics: North Korea | Peter Huessy

Europeans Rebel Against EU in Ever Larger Numbers

by Peter Martino
May 7, 2013 at 3:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3700/european-union-unpopularity

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Even in Southern Europe, at the receiving end of the financial transfers, people realize that the euro and the EU's authoritarian and vainglorious project of molding the various peoples of Europe into a single state is leading to disaster. Even in the South, people realize that it is better to have a job.

"This wave of protest certainly is not short-term – it is lasting," Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) said last Thursday, after his party became the third largest party in the British local elections. UKIP is a party that wants to take Britain out of the European Union (EU).
All over Europe, the popularity of the EU, the supranational organization of 27 European nations, is plummeting. A recent poll conducted by Eurobarometer, the EU's polling organization, in the six major EU countries, found that public confidence in the EU has fallen to the lowest level ever. Since May 2007, distrust of the EU in Poland rose from 18 to 42%, in Italy from 28 to 53%, in France from 41 to 56%, in Germany from 36 to 59%, in Britain from 49 to 69%, and in Spain from 23 to 72%.
The EU's aim is to transform Europe into a single federal state. One of the ways of achieving this aim is unification of economic and monetary policies. So far, 17 of the 27 EU-member states have joined the so-called eurozone by adopting the euro as their common currency. The project has backfired. The euro has exacerbated the economic crisis. The one-size-fits-all currency has become the one-size-fits-none currency.
When the euro was introduced in 2002, Europe's leaders said it would bring economic growth and prosperity. They even promised full employment by 2010. Europe's misery is largely self-inflicted. The euro prevents countries from overcoming their economic problems by devaluing their currency and adapting their wage and price levels. Countries in financial difficulties have to rely on solidarity payments from countries in better shape. As the euro is dragging everyone down, however, the countries in the North are becoming ever more reluctant to transfer their tax money to the South.
For the past three years, the EU's rich countries have been bailing out the poorer ones, while in return all the Eurozone member states were forced to adopt austerity policies and transfer national sovereignty over their budgets to the unelected, irremovable EU bureaucracy in Brussels. The popular appeal of political parties opposing the austerity policies and/or the transfer of national sovereignty is growing everywhere, from Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement in Italy, to UKIP in Britain, to Geert Wilders's Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, to Marine Le Pen's Front National in France. Britain is not even part of the eurozone, but UKIP wants to take it out of the EU altogether. The PVV wants to take the Netherlands out of the eurozone and out of the EU, as well. Like UKIP, it wants to join the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), a small and modest organization, limiting its ambition simply to establishing a free trade zone, to which so far only four non-EU-nations – Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Iceland – belong.
In Germany, a new party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), is expected to make it through the 5% electoral threshold in the next general elections on September 22^nd. AfD, formally launched by a group of economics professors last Month, wants to take Germany out of the eurozone. The party, which is conservative, may, however, draw voters away from Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition and tip the balance in favor of the Social-Democrats and their Green partners. Merkel's coalition is currently leading at 44% in the polls, against 41% for the leftist alliance.
While most of the anti-EU parties – AfD, UKIP, PVV – tend to be pro-American, their position towards American interests will be shaped by the position Washington takes on the EU centralization policies and the euro. The current U.S. administration, recognizing a centrally-controlled supranational political project when it sees one, supports the EU project. Last January, Philip Gordon, Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, told the British government that it should stay in the EU. The administration also said it wants the EU to let Turkey become a member.
The European people are rebelling against the unelected EU and its grandiose, self-regarding project of abolishing the national sovereignty of the various European countries and turning the whole of Europe into a super-Belgium – an artificial state encompassing several nations with separate languages and distinct cultures and traditions.
Europe's rising tide of discontent mirrors its rising unemployment figures. Last week, on May 1^st, which ironically is Labor Day in Europe, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union (EU), published the unemployment figures for the 27 EU member states. These figures are at a record high. Over 26.5 million people – one in every eight Europeans – are currently unemployed. The figures are highest in Greece (27.2%), Spain (26.7%) and Portugal (17.5%). They are lowest in the three German-speaking EU member states: Austria (4.7%), Germany (5.4%) and Luxemburg (5.7%). For the EU as a whole the unemployment figure is 10.9%. In the Eurozone – the group of 17 EU member states that use the euro as their common currency – the figure is even higher and stands at 12.1%. This is far worse than in Japan (4.3%) and in the United States (7.6%).
If someone loses his job at around 45 years of age, chances of finding other employment are only five percent. The worst-off, however, are Europe's young. Unemployment for those aged 25 years or younger is dramatically high. One in every four young Europeans is unemployed. Youth unemployment stands at 50.5% in Spain, 50.4% in Greece, 35.4% in Portugal, 31.9% in Italy, and 31.6% in Ireland. In Austria and Germany the figure is 7.6%, in the Netherlands 10.5%, in Luxemburg 19.7%.
Talented young people from Southern Europe are looking for jobs in Northern Europe, where unemployment is lower. But even there, with youth unemployment hovering around or above 10%, a growing number of young people are looking for employment elsewhere: in America, Canada, Australia, and the non-EU states of Europe. Last year, 80,000 immigrants from the EU settled in Switzerland. Last week, the Swiss authorities announced that starting on May 1^st they are restricting the number of immigrants from EU countries.
The rising unpopularity of the EU is not occurring only in Northern Europe, whose peoples have to bail out the South, but also in Southern Europe -- a hopeful sign. It indicates that even in Southern Europe, at the receiving end of the financial transfers, people realize that the euro and the EU's authoritarian and vainglorious project of molding the various peoples of Europe into a single state is leading to disaster. Even in the South, people realize that it is better to have a job of their own than to live off handouts.

Related Topics: Peter Martino

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