“North Korea has already decided on war.” The tip from the ex-CIA

«The situation on the Korean Peninsula is more dangerous than at any time since the beginning of June 1950. It may seem overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un made the strategic decision to enter the war» . This is what former CIA Robert L. Carlin and nuclear expert Siegfried S. Hecker, both from Stanford University and both protagonists of missions in North Korea, write in an article published in the North Korea analysis magazine ‘ 38 North’ titled ‘Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War? “We don’t know when or how Kim intends to pull the trigger, but the danger – the two write in an article dated January 11 – is already far beyond the levels of routine warnings in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s ‘provocations’. In other words, we have not seen themes of war preparation in the North Korean media appear since the beginning of last year as typical North Korean braggadocio.”

“Raising the specter of Pyongyang’s decision to move towards a military solution, in fact, to give warning of war, in the absence of ‘concrete’ evidence, is complicated. Typically, you will encounter the now-routine argument that Kim Jong Un would not dare take such a step because he knows that Washington and Seoul would destroy his regime if he did so. If this is what politicians are thinking, it is the result of a fundamental misinterpretation of Kim’s vision of history and a serious lack of imagination that could lead (on both Kim’s and Washington’s part) to disaster.”

Per Carlin, former chief of the Northeast Asia Division of the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where he participated in negotiations between the US and North Korea, and Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and professor emeritus at Stanford University, “the inability to understand the history of North Korean politics over the past 33 years is not simply an academic problem. Getting history wrong has dangerous implications for understanding the importance of what we face now.” Washington and Seoul, they note, “cling to the belief that their alliance, backed by “iron” deterrence, will keep Kim on course. of the status quo, perhaps with some minor provocation. There is the perfectly understandable belief that increasingly frequent symbols of our intention to retaliate will keep the North at bay, as well as our oft-stated belief that if the North attacks, the counterattack will completely destroy the North Korean regime. However, in the current situation, holding these beliefs could be fatal.” North Korea, they emphasize, “has a large nuclear arsenal, according to our estimates of 50 or 60 warheads launchable on missiles that can reach all of South Korea, practically all of Japan (including Okinawa) and Guam. If, As we suspect, Kim has convinced himself that, after decades of trying, there is no way to engage the United States, his recent words and actions point to the prospect of a military solution using that arsenal.” A catastrophic scenario.

Source: IL Tempo

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