Passing new economic sanctions Sept. 12, North Korean responded threatening to turn the U.S. “to ashes,” “sink” Japan and “wipe out” South Korea, exactly the kind of rhetoric expected from North Korea’s official news agency KCNA. 71-year-old Donald Trump warned North Korean that more threats against the U.S. and its allies, telling the hermit regime Aug. 8 that it faced “fire-and-fury,” the full wrath of the U.S. military. More threats have been made and no response from the Pentagon, now in a holding pattern giving sanctions a chance. Calling the U.N. Security Council “a tool of evil,” referring to U.S. influence, KCNA continues the belligerent rhetoric, in what U.N. Amb. Nikki Haley said Sept. 4 Kim Jong-un was “begging for war.” When a nuclear state threatens the U.S. with annihilation, Trump can’t ignore the threats or dismiss them as just angry smoke blowing.
Calling the new sanctions “not a big deal,” Trump doubted the watered down U.N. sanctions would curb Kim’s nuke and ballistic programs. Hinting at what’s to follow, Trump said the sanctions “are nothing compared to what ultimately will have to happen,” reminding Pyongyang that the military option is on the table. European Union officials got so rattled from Trump’s Aug. 8 “fire-and-fury” remarks that it led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to spearhead a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Merkel doesn’t know what she’d do to protect Germany if Kim threatened to turn Germany to “ashes” with a nuclear attack. “Now is the time to annihilate the U.S. imperialist aggressors. Let’s reduce the U.S. mainland to ashes and darkness,” said the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, a group connected to the Workers’ Party responsible for international press relations.
Trump’s playing his cards close to the vest, refraining from answering Kim tit-for-tat, something he’s been criticized for in past communications. Calling North Korea’s threats “enraging,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe insisted the new sanctions be implemented to the fullest degree. “The four islands of the archipelago should be sunken in to the sea by the nuclear bomb of justice,” said KCNA’s statement. “Japan is no longer needed to exist near us,” making the strongest case possible why North Korea must be stopped from getting a nuclear-ready ballistic missile. If the Sept. 3 hydrogen bomb test proved anything, it’s that Kim has become dangerously close to getting a thermonuclear device. Threatening to level the United States, Japan and South Korea, China and Russia show astonishing insensitivity to North Korea’s very specific nuclear threats.
North Korean mentions nothing about the fact that the U.N. Security Council, including the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China, has a consensus on sanctions, not simply bowing to the U.S. “The South Korean puppet forces are traitors and dogs of the U.S. as they call for ‘harsher sanctions’ on the fellow countrymen. The group of pro-American traitors should be severely punished and wiped out with fire attack so that he could no longer survive,” said KCNA. Kim’s explicit threats against the U.S., Japan and South Korea are ignored by China and Russia, calling for diplomacy, when, in fact, Putin said Sept. 5 North Korea would rather “eat grass” than give up their nukes and ballistic missiles. If Putin really believes this, why does he talk about negotiations? Trump knows that the U.N.’s recent round of diplomacy won’t stop Kim’s nuke and ballistic missile program for one second.
Letting the Security Council apply more sanctions, Trump’s creating a record that diplomacy doesn’t work with Kim Jong-un. Threatening again to turn the U.S. to “ashes and darkness” cannot be anymore threatening, warranting a military response from Trump. Generations of U.S. leaders dating back to former President Bill Clinton have done almost nothing to contain North Korea’s nuke and ballistic missile program. Now that Pyongyang’s knocking at the door of a nuclear-tipped ICBM, Trump can’t kick the can down the road. Shooting an ICBM over Japan Aug. 28, Kim sent a message to Tokyo that they’re in the crosshairs. Trump’s running out of time and options to respond to an implacable North Korean threat. Whatever the consequences of war now, they seem far better than letting Kim get his nuclear-ready ICBM to continue threatening the U.S. and its allies.
Threatening the U.S. and its allies, Kim gets dangerously close to the point-of-no-return with regard to triggering a U.S. military response. It’s doubtful that the new round of U.N. sanctions will do anything other than get more threats from North Korea. Taking Putin at his word that North Korea would rather “eat grass” than give up its nuke and ballistic missile programs, the U.S. has run out of options to keep Kim from getting a nuke-ready intermediate or ICBM. When Trump says “it’s no big deal” referring to the latest round of watered down sanctions, he knows that the U.S. must do more to stop Kim from getting his nuke-tipped ICBM. Capping oil supplies or banning textile exports does nothing to stop North Korea’s nuke and ballistic missile programs. As Trump told Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to his face Aug. 1, there’s a military option to destroy Kim’s nukes and ballistic missiles.
