THE UN Security Council last Friday unanimously adopted a new set of draconian US-proposed sanctions against North Korea to further strangle its energy supplies and tighten restrictions on smuggling and the employment of North Korean workers overseas.
Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, said after the vote was carried: ‘Today, we cut deeper.’ Resolution 2397 in fact cuts exports of gasoline, diesel and other refined oil products by a total of 89%. It bans almost 90 per cent of North-bound exports of refined petroleum products by limiting them to 500,000 barrels a year.
The resolution also bans exports of industrial equipment, machinery, transportation vehicles and industrial metals to North Korea. It requires countries using North Korean labourers to send them back home no later than 24 months from the adoption of the resolution. The resolution also requires countries to stop ships from illegally providing oil to North Korea through ship-to-ship transfers and prohibits them from smuggling North Korean coal and other prohibited commodities by sea.
Against that backdrop, Trump has issued continuous threats, including a threat to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea, raising fears of military intervention. In fact, Trump’s supporters in the UN vote, Russia and China, were identified by Trump in the recent latest US strategic review as major US rivals.
He said: ‘This strategy recognises that, whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a new era of competition. We accept that vigorous military, economic, and political contests are now playing out all around the world. We also face rival powers, Russia and China, that seek to challenge American influence, values, and wealth. We will attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries, but in a manner that always protects our national interest.’
Trump is seeking to use the treacherous Russian and Chinese Stalinist bureaucracies to destroy North Korea, which shows capable signs of being able to defend itself, and has a programme for uniting the entire Korean Peninsula. Ever since General MacArthur proposed a nuclear attack on North Korea in 1951, the US has never given North Korea diplomatic recognition and has always sought to destroy it.
Now it is seeking to greatly weaken North Korea as a preliminary to an onslaught to destroy it using whatever means are necessary as it did against Japan in 1945. This will bring the giant US military machine right up to the Yalu River border with China and the Tumen River border with Russia.
The Stalinist bureaucracy should re-learn the lessons from the Stalin-Hitler pact, when Stalin almost lost the USSR through his belief that Hitler was an ally who could be trusted. Hitler used the pact to destroy the military forces of the Franco-British alliance, and then turned on the USSR with massive force.
North Korea is not going to surrender its advanced weaponry to the USA. It has seen what happened to Saddam Hussein, who had no wmds and refused to believe that the USA and the UK were intent on attacking and destroying him. It has also seen what happened to Colonel Gadaffi, who was disarmed after making a deal with Tony Blair and was duly torn into pieces by the Islamist wolves organised by the imperialists.
North Korea will fight and, as it has always done, fight desperately to defend its independence and unite the entire Peninsula. The threat to North Korea is being raised to the point of military intervention at the same time as Trump has given big business at home trillions of dollars in tax cuts, and finished off Obama Care.
He is the hero of the right and the champion of the rich. His number one enemy is at home. It is the US trade unions and he will no doubt be taking action shortly to smash them. In fact, his foreign policy is an extension of this home policy. Workers in the US and workers in the UK and the rest of the world must give their full support to the North Korean people.
In fact, their historic mission is to aid the Korean people to disarm and destroy world imperialism with socialist revolutions. They are in the same trench as the North Korean workers and this must guide their actions!
