YESTERDAY North Korea shook the imperialist powers who had assumed that the workers state would not dare to proceed to test a nuclear weapon.
North Korea has called the bluff of the imperialist bullies, announcing that it had tested a nuclear bomb, saying that this was an ‘historic event that brought happiness to our military and people’.
It said the test would maintain ‘peace and stability’ in the region and was ‘a great leap forward in the building of a great prosperous, powerful socialist nation’. There was no radiation leak, it added.
The White House called for a swift response from the UN Security Council, calling North Korea’s move ‘provocative’ requiring ‘immediate actions to respond to this unprovoked act’.
A rattled President Bush spoke later in the afternoon but did not demand that North Korea hand over its weapons or else.
He stated that the transference of ‘nuclear weapons or material’ by North Korea to Iran and Syria or ‘non state entities’ would be seen as a ‘grave threat to the US’ and ‘North Korea would be held fully accountable for the consequences of such actions’, ie that North Korea would be attacked by the United States.
Bush further called for a nuclear free Korean peninsula without pledging that all US nuclear weaponry would be removed from South Korea and its territorial waters and its air space.
In fact, President Bush has acted provocatively against North Korea for the whole of his presidency.
He has repeatedly said that North Korea was part of an ‘axis of evil’ along with Iran and Iraq, and made no secret that he would like to see regimes changed.
Iraq has already been invaded by Anglo-US imperialism and has had its economy and infrastructure destroyed as well as losing about 100,000 of its people.
Bush has not ceased threatening Iran, and has refused to sign a non-aggression treaty with Korea.
The US maintains 35,000 troops in South Korea and has large numbers of ships and planes off the North Korean coast.
North Korea has every reason to think that it is only a matter of time before it is invaded by the US and its allies, so it is entitled to develop all of the weapons that it needs for its defence, including nuclear weapons.
It is not only entitled to develop such weapons, it is also entitled to test them.
In fact all anti-imperialist nations are entitled to possess and test such weapons as part of their defences against the imperialist powers.
The United States seems to think that it has a divine right to such weapons, and to test them and constantly refine them. It is now producing tactical nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield, and smaller nuclear bombs that can penetrate into mountains and destroy command and control and other centres.
Britain is on the brink of spending £20 billion on replacing the Trident nuclear missile system with an even more deadly system.
Together, the US and the UK have enough nuclear weapons to destroy human life on the planet many times over.
Their opposition to proliferation does not apply to their allies, Pakistan, Israel and India, but it is resolutely applied to North Korea.
Their enthusiasm for a nuclear free Korean peninsula is not extended to demanding a nuclear free Middle East. This is because its ally, Israel, has 200 nuclear bombs and the Arab states have none.
The News Line supports the right of the anti-imperialist nations to possess nuclear weapons and to test them as required.
The way to create a nuclear free world is to organise for the victory of the world socialist revolution to smash capitalism and imperialism and with it the drive to war in general and the drive to nuclear war in particular.
This is the only way forward to a world free from nuclear bombs and weaponry.
