North Korea's ICBM Test Is a Decision Point for the US and Its Asian Allies

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS THAT NORTH KOREA AND IRAN ARE HOT BUTTON TOPICS. • While US mainstream news is busy telling President Trump how not to stop North Korea's nuclear threats -- the New York Times published an Opinion piece on Tuesday with the headline "Drop the Bluster on North Korea" -- the British press is actually following the story with fact-based reporting. • • • THE NORTH KOREA ICBM TEST. The UK's Independent published a photo of NK Dear Leader Kim Jong-un watching the Saturday midnight test-fire of the Hwasong-14 and reported on Tuesday that American intelligence officials say North Korea may now be capable of hitting almost the entire continental US after its latest missile test showed it had mastered new technology allowing its projectiles to travel much further. • In the latest test, the ICBM reached an altitude of 2,314.6 miles and flew 620 miles before landing in the waters off the Korean peninsula's east coast, according to the North Korean official news agency KCNA. The flight demonstrated successful stage separation, and reliability of the vehicle's control and guidance to allow the warhead to make an atmospheric re-entry under conditions harsher than under a normal long-range trajectory, KCNA said. Independent weapons experts also said they believe the launch demonstrated many parts of the United States were within range if the missile had been launched at a flattened trajectory. • The NK ICBM flew for 45 minutes and traveled more than 1,000 kilometers laterally, defense officials and analysts said. US officials believe the missile broke up upon re-entering the atmosphere. So, analysts say, Pyongyang has not yet showed that the ICBM can inflict serious damage once it reaches its target. The re-entry of the Hwasong-14 launched Saturday was captured on video by the Japanese, showing the re-entry vehicle shortly before it crashed into the sea, and US and South Korean experts say the video suggests that the ICBM failed to survive the extreme heat and pressure after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. The analysts say the apparent failure probably means the North will conduct more flight tests of the Hwasong-14 to ensure the warhead can survive the re-entry from space and hit its intended target. • NK's latest ICBM test also showed the increased range of Pyongyang’s arsenal, according to two officials. North Korea’s ICBM test last Saturday had greater height, range and power than the previous test because it used force-stabilizing engines that counter the effects of winds and other forces that can knock an ascending rocket off course, said one analyst. The latest expert assessment underscores the growing threat posed by NK's nuclear and missile programs, and could add pressure on the Trump administration to respond to North Korean leader Kim Jung-un's boast that the successful test of an ICBM that proved NK's ability to strike America's mainland. Kim Jong Un called it a "stern warning" to the US that it would not be safe from destruction if it tried to attack, the official KCNA news agency said. • But, the two US intelligence officials who spoke to the Independent said Kim wants to develop a nuclear-capable ICBM to deter any attack on his country and gain international legitimacy, not to launch an attack on the US or its allies that he knows would be suicidal. • The Pentagon declined to comment on the US Intel assessment of the missile launch, but it acknowledged that the latest test represented the longest test flight of any North Korean missile. Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis told a news briefing : "The specifics of our assessment are classified for reasons I hope you understand." Captain Davis did, however, acknowledge that the missile could fly at least 3,420 miles, the minimum range for what the Pentagon classifies as an ICBM. • In a related story, CNN, quoting a US defense official, reported that North Korea had been showing "highly unusual and unprecedented levels" of submarine activity, in addition to its third "ejection test" this month. The ejection test was carried out on land at Sinpo Naval Shipyard on Sunday, the US defense official told CNN. No other details about the increased submarine activity are known. The Independent explained : "Ejection tests from submarines usually gauge the ability to 'cold launch' missiles, when high pressure steam is used to propel missiles out of launch canisters. The shipyard is in Sinpo, a port city on the east coast where NK had previously conducted tests of submarine-launched ballistic missiles." • Japan Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, spoke with President Trump on Monday and agreed on the need for more action on North Korea, just hours after the US Ambassador to the United Nations said Washington was "done talking about North Korea." The Pentagon acknowledged military-to-military talks with US allies Japan and South Korea after the test. • • • TILLERSON TRIES TO LOWER THE US-CHINA-NK TONE. A few days after the North Korean ICBM launch, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said relations between the US and China -- both are nuclear and economic superpowers -- has reached “a pivot point” as tensions over global affairs escalate. President Trump has repeatedly called on China to rein in North Korea, accusing China of “doing nothing for us with North Korea, just talk” in a Twitter series last week. In a State Department briefing on Tuesday, Tillerson mirrored the President’s frustration over what he called America’s “differences” with China. He suggested that “a long period of no conflict” with China could come to an end if relations continued to go sour, saying : “How should we define this relationship and how do we ensure that economic prosperity to the benefit of both countries and the world can continue, and that where we have differences -- because we will have differences, we do have differences -- that we will deal with those differences in a way that does not lead to open conflict?” Tillerson said the “situation in North Korea” tests the relationship between the US and China : "Can we work together to address this global threat where we have a common objective? And where we have differences -- in the South China Sea, and we have some trading differences that need to be addressed -- can we work through those differences in a way without it leading to open conflict and find the solutions that are necessary to serve us both?” Secretary Tillerson made a direct appeal to North Korea and Kim Jung-un : “We're not your enemy. We do not seek a regime change, we do not seek the collapse of the regime, we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula, we do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th parallel.” • But, almost simultaneously, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham revealed Trump’s plan for war with North Korea if it doesn't stop testing ballistic missiles. In an interview with NBC’s Today program, he said : “There will be a war with North Korea over their missile program if they continue to try to hit America with an ICBM. He [Trump] has told me that, I believe him, and if I were China I would believe him too, and do something about it.” Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Norio Maruyama said he was unaware of Senator Graham's remarks, but that his country -- a key ally of the US -- was in favor of the Trump administration's posture "using both words and action to show that all choices are on the table." Another longstanding ally in the region, the Philippines, will host an international regional security meeting on Monday, when leaders could pressure Pyongyang to halt its intermediate-range missile tests. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is expected to attend the meeting in Manila. On Wednesday, flamboyant Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte went on the attack against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he referred to in a speech as a "fool" and a "son of a b----," according to Reuters. "That chubby face that looks kind....If he commits a mistake, the Far East will become an arid land," Duterte said, "It must be stopped, this nuclear war. A limited confrontation and it blows up here, I will tell you, the fallout can deplete the soil, the resources and I don't know what will happen to us," he added. Duterte had previously called for the US to show restraint in dealing with Kim's totalitarian regime. • • • MORE US TROOPS TO SOUTH KOREA AS US MILITARY DESCRIBES THE CATASTROPHE OF A WAR WITH NK. The UK's Express newspaper said on Tuesday that the US is sending 200 more troops to South Korea, adding that the increase in troop numbers "amid an ever-tightening spiral of threat and counter-threat," raises the stakes. According to the Express, 12 F-16 fighter jets will also be deployed to Kunsan Air Base, located in mid-South Korea around 180 miles from the capital of Seoul, in August. • The US Pacific Air Force (PAF) said the move would help stabilize the region and “maintain peace.” General Terrence O'Shaughnessy, a PAF commander, said : “If called upon, we are ready to respond with rapid, lethal and overwhelming force at a time and place of our choosing.” A PAF prepared statement said : “PAF Theater Security Package deployments to the Indo-Asia-Pacific region signify a continued commitment to regional stability and security, while allowing units to train in the Pacific theater. F-16s routinely deploy throughout the US Pacific Command area of responsibility. The United States routinely evaluates readiness and repositions forces as needed to ensure capabilities necessary to meet obligations in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. These deployments demonstrate the continued US commitment to fulfil security responsibilities throughout the Western Pacific and to maintain peace in the region.” The PAF action follows a high-profile joint training exercise between the USA and Japan. • Expert Michael Elleman told the Express : "No one outside of North Korea knows the precise status of its nuclear-bomb making capabilities. However, it is reasonable to assume North Korea can construct a bomb that weighs less than one metric ton, with a diameter of less than one meter. This could be easily carried by the Hwasong-14, though to reach the US mainland, a lighter-weight bomb may be required." • But, amid the attempts to cajole North Korea into talking instead of launching ICBMs, the United States and its allies flew supersonic bombers and fighter jets over the Korean Peninsula in a 10-hour show of force Sunday against North Korea following its latest ICBM launch. The US B-1 bombers first flew over Japanese airspace, where they were joined by two Japanese F-2 fighter jets, before flying over the Korean Peninsula with four South Korean F-15 fighter jets, US Pacific Air Forces said in a statement. The Air Force said the 10-hour mission was a direct response to North Korea's two ICBM tests this month, including the latest on Friday. • When Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley spoke at the National Press Club in Washington a day before the latest NK ICBM launch, he said a land war with North Korea would be “highly deadly,” and that the United States has no good options for how to deal with the rogue nation. General Milley told his audience : “War in the Korean peninsula would be terrible, however, a nuclear weapon detonating in Los Angeles would be terrible,” but he added that the United States is “at a point in time where [a] choice will have to be made once way or the other. None of these choices are particularly palatable. None of them are good.” Milley said he believes the United States “would utterly destroy the North Korean military,” if it came to such a point. But “that would be done at a high cost in terms of human life, in terms of infrastructure.” • Defense Secretary Jim Mattis made similar comments in May, saying that a war with North Korea would be “catastrophic,” and would place United States allies in the region at extreme risk. General Mattis said earlier this month that he does not believe North Korea’s new ballistic missile capability brings the United States "closer to war" with the country, but he asserted that the US military "remains ready" for any conflict. • • • NEW US ICBM TEST. The Associated Press and NBC News reported Wednesday that the US test-launched an unarmed ICBM. The US Air Force successfully launched an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the fourth such test this year. The 30th Space Wing says the missile was launched at 2:10 a.m. on Wednesday. Vandenberg Air Force Base is 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles. An Air Force statement said that the test was not a response to recent North Korean actions, but shows that America's nuclear enterprise is "safe, secure, effective and ready to be able to deter, detect and defend against attacks on the United States and its allies." The ICBM was equipped with a test reentry vehicle, which officials said showed it traveled about 4,200 miles to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The operation was conducted by a team of Air Force Global Strike Command Airmen from the 90th Missile Wing, along with the 576th Flight Test Squadron and the 30th Space Wing stationed at Vandenberg. Colonel Michael Hough; commander of the 30th Space Wing and launch decision authority, said in a statement : "These test launches require the highest-degree of technical competence and commitment at every level." • Air Force Global Strike Command has tested 299 Minuteman III ICBMs over the program's history. The Minuteman IIIs are the US military's only land-based ICBMs. Another one was tested earlier this year in February from Vandenberg. • The US military schedules four test-launches each fiscal year, with the actual schedule plotted out several years in advance -- so it's unrelated to recent events, Air Force Captain Michele Rollins, a spokesperson for the strike command, told CNBC. • Asked about possible US military action against North Korea, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reiterated on Tuesday that "all options are on the table" but the administration would not "broadcast what we're going to do." The focus for the administration remains on stopping North Korea's nuclear program and halting their aggression, Sanders said. • • • HOW REAL IS THE FANTASYLAND IN NORTH KOREA? On Wednesday, the UK's Telegraph reported that North Korea has condemned Britain and other nations that fought the Korean War under the banner of the United Nations as a "despicable burlesque of losers." State-run media has criticized a series of events organized by the South Korean government to mark the anniversary of the signing of the armistice that brought the three-year Korean War to an uneasy truce in 1953. Accusing the "South Korean puppet forces" of arranging a "confrontational farce," the Korea Central News Agency said the administration of Moon Jae-in had invited "mercenaries of the US and its satellite countries" to attend commemorative events in South Korea. "Meanwhile, they held such [a] despicable burlesque of sending 'friendship missions' made up of young people to Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands to let them visit mercenaries who took part in the Korean War and the families to read letters of 'thanks'," the KCNA report added. "This is a detestable farce of the losers aimed to cover up their sordid nature as provoker of the Korean War and paint the defeat as 'victory' and thus justify their confrontational racket against the DPRK." • The facts are that the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950, when around 75,000 North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel to attack the pro-Western Republic of Korea in an effort to unite the peninsula under Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong-un, the current North Korean dictator. The UN, with the United States as the principal force, came to the aid of the South and reversed the North's initial advances. With North Korea facing defeat, China intervened on the side of North Korea, until the conflict reached a stalemate at the pre-war border. An estimated five million civilians and soldiers died in the course of the war. • North Korea refers to the conflict as the Fatherland Liberation War and insists the South attacked the North with the connivance of the US and other nations. Pyongyang also insists that, despite the stalemate at the border that divides the peninsula, it was a victory for North Korea. The Telegraph said the NK government mouthpiece also took the opportunity to threaten the international community, warning that "If the US and the puppet forces ignite a war again, oblivious of the lesson of history, the army and people of the DPRK will mercilessly wipe out the enemies so that there would not be left even a single man to sign the surrender document." • • • DEAR READERS, the US and its Asian allies, especially South Korea and Japan, have good reason to be cautious and attempt to de-escalate Kim Jung-un's rush to long-range nuclear capability. He is a madman in charge of a Hermit Kingdom so secretive that nobody can be sure just how far advanced its nuclear program is. But, the need to deal with North Korea is excalating rapidly, and the only sure-fire fact is that the longer we wait to tamp down Kim Jung-un's fantastical ambitions, the bigger and more risk-laden the task will become. • American Thinker's Robert Arvay wrote on Wednesday : "It seems possible that plans are already being implemented to invade North Korea. I am not speaking of contingency plans; I am speaking of a date certain, a definite schedule, with step number one being the recent flyover of B1-B bombers near the North Korean border. I am not, of course, privy to any such information, but President Trump seemed supremely confident when he made his assurances that (inexact quote) "we will handle North Korea." Arvay says NK already have nuclear weapons and ICBMs "which pose as close to a clear and present danger as we dare to allow without taking decisive, pre-emptive action -- immediately. The only constraint now is feasibility. Are we able to attack and win? Can we accept the consequences of action versus those of inaction?" Arvay describes potentially cataclysmic consequences : "North Korea reputedly has thousands of artillery guns in caves, within firing range of Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. Seoul is a huge metropolis with some eight million or more inhabitants....Those artillery weapons can be expected to deploy within minutes, to fire an overwhelming barrage, and to kill as many as a million people within the first hour of a major war. There can be no doubt that the Norks [the military jargon buzzword for North Korea] would do this in the first moment they perceived an existential threat." • But, Arvay raises another very real spectre -- Iran : "There is no doubt that even if the North Koreans would hold their fire, their Iranian allies are committed to bringing about worldwide chaos and destruction as part of their apocalyptic religious beliefs. The collusion between North Korea and Iran is deep and demonstrable and poses no less a threat, perhaps more so, than the crisis on the Korean peninsula." Arvay also raises the question of the gulags where North Korea operates political prisons among the most inhumane in recent history : "Satellite photos confirm the location of one mega-complex that holds a quarter-million people. Defectors and escapees report that the inmates are routinely tortured, starved, and subjected to abject humiliation on a large scale. Summary executions (murders) are commonplace....Do we have a right to interfere? Do we have an obligation to do so? What if we tried to help, but our good intentions resulted in a war with much greater suffering than is already the case?" • These are all pertinent questions and need public discussion. But, that is something not likely to happen in the US and Europe as long as the media and Progressive, globalist politicians are singlemindedly pursuing their effort to bring down President Trump and every vestige of citizen-based democratic society in the West. They do not even talk about the eight years lost by Barack Obama and his silence in the face of the growing North Korea threat to Asia and America. So, while the MSM and Progressives attack President Trump and leave all other critical issues to languish in the inbox of journalists, if there are any left in the US and Europe, it seems that we have now arrived at the critical moment, that we are finally being forced into action, regardless of the "collateral damage" that years of dithering by Obama and other Progressive leaders has created. Our own lives are at stake, and those of our children -- if not now, soon. No doubt South Koreans and Japanese justifiably fear the outcome. Fear? Dread would be a better descriptor. Ten years ago, the military and collateral costs of action against North Korea would have been far less. Today, the likely costs are far greater. • And lurking in the background are the Ayatollahs. Will Iran counterpunch if the US strikes North Korea? Is Israel the unspoken pawn that the "Axis of Evil" dangles, hidden in the sleeves of its flowing shiite robes? Iran and North Korea, and Russia, are inextricably bound together. Tomorrow we'll discuss Iran.