THE North Korean government has rejected claims by President Trump that a combination of threats and sanctions have brought Pyongyang to the negotiating table. A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that recent remarks by US President Donald Trump crediting a massive US pressure campaign for the ‘diplomatic breakthrough’ between Pyongyang and Seoul ‘threatened the prospect of peace’.
He added that describing Pyongyang’s recent move to open dialogue with the South as a ‘sign of weakness’ would ‘not be conducive’ to talks and may ‘bring the situation back to square one.’ He said that such remarks were ‘deliberately provoking’ North Korea.
The Foreign Ministry official said: ‘The US is deliberately provoking at the time when the situation on the Korean peninsula is moving towards peace and reconciliation thanks to the historic north-south summit and the Panmunjon Declaration. ‘This act cannot be construed otherwise than a dangerous attempt to ruin the hard-won atmosphere of dialogue and bring the situation back to square one. It would not be conducive to addressing the issue if the US miscalculates the peace-loving intention of North Korea as a sign of “weakness” and continues to pursue its pressure and military threats against the latter.’
A summit is now being planned between the North Korean leader and US President Donald Trump. North and South Korean leaders agreed last month to denuclearise the region, at a border summit. By this North Korea means all US nuclear weapons and all US land, sea and air forces leaving the Korean peninsula and the seas around it. However, the opposite is happening, with the US reinforcing its land, sea and air forces in the region, as part of its struggle to challenge the rise of the Chinese People’s Republic.
An indication of the real US war aims in Asia is Trump’s determination, backed up by Saudi Arabia and Israel, to rip up the deal under which Iran has given up its drive to acquire nuclear weapons. The 2015 deal – between Iran, the US, China, Russia, Germany, France and the UK – lifted sanctions on Iran in return for a halt on its work to produce a nuclear weaponry. France, the UK and Germany have been trying to persuade the US president that the current deal is the best way to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons.
The US is, however, not satisfied with an Iran that has no nukes. The essence of the policy of US imperialism in Asia is not to halt at agreements that the states involved give up the drive to acquire nuclear weapons. It is to drive on and further weaken them to facilitate regime change. In Iran, it means installing a puppet regime, so as to extinguish Iranian support for Syria and Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence, as well as driving back the Palestinian people.
This US aim has the full support of Israel and Saudi Arabia, who are building up their armaments at a fantastic rate for a war with Iran, so as to liberate the entire region for imperialism. Trump has threatened that the US will ‘withdraw’ from the deal on 12th May – the end of a 120-day review period.
The US plans a similar fate for North Korea, its model being the way UK and France disarmed Libya before murdering Gadaffi, and plunging Libya into the abyss.
In fact the US is also rearming at a frantic pace. The Chief of Naval Operations Adm John Richardson has just announced the reforming of its Second Fleet, disbanded in 2011, to ‘counter Russian power’ in the North Atlantic!
The essence of the current situation is that the world crisis of capitalism is driving imperialism to war on Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as well as against the working class at home. The only answer to this world crisis is the victory of the world socialist revolution. Lenin’s maxim was: ‘The enemy is at home’. This means that today the working classes of the US and Europe must come to the aid of the nations that imperialism is seeking to destroy, with socialist revolutions at home to overthrow capitalism and its rule by bosses and bankers. This will prepare the way for the victory of the world socialist revolution.