Who is the bigger threat?

The beleaguered US President Donald Trump has once again stunned the world by hurling a threat of military confrontation at nuclear-armed North Korea. The unpredictable incumbent of the Oval Office is good at startling world leaders.

Earlier, he left many flabbergasted by scrapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) and pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement. While the decisions related to the TTP and the Paris Agreement may benefit the American economy, the threat of military confrontation runs the risk of jeopardising the very survival of not only Americans but people across the world as well.

That this ‘fire and fury’ threat was hurled in the month of August has added insult to the injuries of those whose lives were devastated by the barbaric US attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This also reflects the utter callousness and disregard of the American ruling elite towards the sensitivities of its ally – Japan – that is still grappling with the horrible memories of the attacks, which killed around 146,000 in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki.

According to campaigners against nuclear arms, the uranium bomb that was detonated over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 had an explosive yield equal to 15,000 tonnes of TNT. It razed and burnt around 70 percent of all buildings. A slightly larger plutonium bomb exploded over Nagasaki three days later and flattened 6.7 square kilometres of the city, raising the ground temperature to 4,000 degrees centigrade and resulting in the pouring down of radioactive rain.

One might have assumed that after perpetrating such brutal acts, the American ruling elite would repent its actions and never think of employing such lethal tools of destruction. But even after the conflagration in the two Japanese cities that shamed humanity, various American presidents considered the option of using nuclear arms during the Korean War, the Cuban crisis and the Vietnam imbroglio.

The warmongers in the US did not use these lethal arms after 1945. However, the conflicts that they thrust upon various countries killed far more people than the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Korean War killed around three million people. Over two million people died in the Vietnam War and over a million others were mowed down in more than 180 conflicts and wars – small and large – since the Second World War.

Now the sabre-rattling on the part of the US and its allies in the Korean Peninsula has once again raised the spectre of war. The corporate media in the Western world is trying to lay all the blame on Pyongyang. The question is: why should North Korea not be afraid of Washington? Why should it not accumulate nuclear arms? Why should it not take measures to protect its territory against a possible US attack?

Those who are solely demonising the North Korean government should also do some research. Was it North Korea that militarily intervened more than 223 times since its creation or was it the sole superpower? Which country has the privilege to use nuclear arms – the almighty US or a struggling Pyongyang? Which country invaded Iraq and Afghanistan besides triggering chaos in Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Georgia, Ukraine and Egypt in the name of a regime change? Did North Korea topple the elected government of Mosaddegh in Iran, Allende in Chile, Patrice Lumumba in Congo and Sukarno in Indonesia? Did North Korea invade Panama and Grenada?

Does Pyongyang stand accused of using chemical weapons in Vietnam, depleted uranium in Iraq and the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan or is it the various pacifist incumbents of the Oval Office? Does North Korea believe in exceptionalism or is it Washington that considers itself above international law?

The warmongers sitting in Western capitals are also exaggerating the military strength of North Korea. Here again, they need a reality-check. Which country has the largest military budget? The answer is the US, with over $600 billion – which is larger than the combined budget of 36 countries. The military budget of North Korea is hardly between $5 billion and $10 billion. Washington plans to spend around a trillion dollar on the modernisation of its nuclear arms while some analysts claim the figure stands at $250 billion. North Korea can never amass this much money in decades – let alone use it.

There is much clamour about the nuclear bombs of North Korea, with some Western analysts claiming the pariah state has around 60 bombs and not ten as estimated. Compare this figure with America’s 6,800 nuclear warheads – and that too after decades of reduction in such lethal tools. In the1960s, the sole superpower had around 31,000 destructive arms. A few nuclear tests by the Koreans have infuriated the peace-loving international community while the US carried out 1,054 such tests and not a single objection was raised, let alone any attempts to condemn them.

It is ‘anti-war America’ that has been carrying out military exercises with South Korea and Japan. Did North Korea carry out any such drills with Russia or China? It is the sovereignty-respecting US that has installed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). China complains that its radar can see deep into China and undermines its security. It is the US that has sent the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group to waters off the Korean Peninsula, where it will join the USS Michigan and not North Korea. Imagine if Pyongyang sends such submarines off the American coast.

The international community should realise that its hypocrisy will not work. It should challenge the big powers instead of piling all the pressure on a weaker state. A war will be catastrophic, not only for the Korean Peninsula but for the entire world as it risks dragging other states into the conflict. The world may lambast the pariah state but should seriously consider its offer of a no-war pact with the US. The other states should also be the part of this pact, turning the region into a no-war zone.

The writer is a Karachi-based freelance journalist.

Email: egalitarianism444@gmail.com