U.S. Reckless War Bluff

U.S. Reckless War Bluff

By Finian Cunningham
Information Clearing House
September 22, 2017

American leaders have warned they will destroy North Korea
if it threatens either the U.S. or allies.

But how much of this posturing by Washington is a bluff?

And a very dangerous bluff at that.

There is a gaping contradiction in official U.S. rhetoric.

The Americans have already lambasted North Korea as
a global threat due to its nuclear weapons program.

After mocking North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un earlier this
week as "rocket man," US President Trump went on to vilify
the communist Asian nation as a “global threat” during his
address to the United Nations’ General Assembly.

With Pyongyang having conducted dozens of successful ballistic
missile tests this year alone, some of which are reportedly capable
of reaching North America, as well as having successfully carried
out two underground test nuclear explosions, one might expect that
Kim Jong-un has more than breached the supposed American
threshold of threat posture.

So, if the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is indeed a threat,
as Washington repeatedly declares, why don’t U.S. forces take the
military action that American leaders keep warning about?

One such action, in particular, would be to shoot down the ballistic
missiles that North Korea has test-fired above the atmosphere over
Japan.

The latest test last week involved a ballistic missile that overshot
Japan’s Hokkaido northern province and landed 3,700 kilometers
away in the Pacific Ocean.

That distance from Pyongyang also puts the U.S. Pacific territory
and military base of Guam within a target range of North Korean
missiles.

This week, US Defense Secretary James Mattis was asked
by reporters why American forces did not shoot down that
missile or several others that have been test-fired by North
Korea around the Korean Peninsula and over Japanese
airspace.

"Those missiles are not directly threatening any of us,"
Mattis said Monday, according to Bloomberg reporting.

"The bottom line is that when the missiles – were they to be a
threat, whether it be to US territory, Guam, obviously Japan –
Japan’s territory, that would elicit a different response from us,"
he added.

But hold on a moment.

Mattis is here saying there is “no threat”, which is in contradiction
to repeated U.S. claims that North Korea is posing a threat.

OK, perhaps the Pentagon chief is selectively narrowing the
definition of threat to mean North Korean missiles that are
detected specifically being aimed at U.S. territory and its
allies.

Somehow, knowing the American gung-ho propensity
for belligerence, that narrower definition of threat is
not credible as an explanation for why the U.S. forces
have not shot down any North Korean missiles so far.

The U.S. is not known for restraint when it comes to using
military power and especially when its officials brag about
"amazing technology."

What’s really holding the Americans back from blasting
North Korea rockets out of the sky?

A more plausible explanation is that the hi-tech, anti-missile
systems which the Americans boast about are not at all what
they’re cracked up to be.

That is, these systems do not, in fact, provide a protective
“shield” or “dome” from incoming ballistic warheads.

In Asia-Pacific, the U.S. has sold billions of dollars-worth of
these anti-missile systems to its allies in South Korea and Japan.

The systems are touted to provide “a layered defense”
against attack.

They include the Patriot system, for taking out short-range missiles;
the newly installed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)
batteries that have controversially been installed in South Korea;
and the Aegis onshore and offshore systems.

The latter is supposed to give protective cover for a wider area
encompassing thousands of kilometers.

Currently, there are some 14 US Navy destroyers patrolling the Asia-
Pacific around Japan which are equipped with the Aegis anti-missile
system.

Some of these destroyers keep colliding with cargo vessels, which
makes one wonder about the effectiveness of the supposed hi-tech
radar systems on board.

If they can’t detect approaching oil tankers, how will they fare
against supersonic warheads?

Anyway, despite undergoing development over three decades back
to the “star wars” concept initiated under U.S. President Ronald
Reagan in the 1980s, the capability of these anti-missile systems is
still very much an open question.

In an article this week in the American publication Defense One,
author Joe Cirincione makes the following stark conclusion:

“The reason why we don’t shoot down North Korea’s missiles
is that we cannot.”

The article quotes several Pentagon missile-testing experts
who candidly admit that the performance of the U.S. anti-
missile systems is only average at best.

"It’s like a coin toss," says one former Pentagon official
who oversaw system testing.

The problem is that the U.S. anti-missile defense systems
have never been tested in a stressful real-war scenario.

They have only been deployed under strictly controlled test
conditions in which all the launch and flight data are well
rehearsed in advance, giving the anti-missile systems maximum
chance to succeed in intercepting the incoming projectile.

And yet despite favorable conditions, the performance of the
system is only about 50 percent successful.

That means the American allies are nowhere near as protected
as Washington boasts about.

How about the U.S. mainland, how well protected is it?

The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) interceptors based in
Alaska and California are designed to shoot down Intercontinental
Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) aimed at the US mainland.

However, as one Pentagon test director admitted, the performance
record of this last line of defense is "dismal" – lower even than the
lackluster Patriot, THAAD or Aegis.

In other words, not only are American allies not fully protected
from a missile strike, neither is the U.S. mainland.

Many independent analysts agree with North Korean official claims
that the nation has reached the capability to hit U.S. cities with a
nuclear ICBM.

This is where the provocative rhetoric of U.S. officials becomes
exposed as a reckless bluff.

Trump, Mattis and the ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley keep
threatening North Korea with a pre-emptive military attack.

Trump has said the strike would be "overwhelming," which hints
at the use of nuclear weapons.

Washington’s bravado is partly based on a misplaced confidence
or a bluff that its defenses are impregnable.

That does not seem to be the case, as even U.S. defense experts
admit.

Therefore, the U.S. and its allies are far from invincible as they
might believe.

If we factor in too that North Korea has a fleet of submarines which
are also reportedly capable of launching ballistic missiles that
makes American defenses even more vulnerable.

Sub-launched missiles give much less chance of detection
and interception.

Washington’s belligerent rhetoric is criminally reckless.

Talking about "exhausting diplomacy" and "only military options"
which will "destroy North Korea" is a huge reckless bluff aimed
at intimidating Pyongyang into submission to give up its nuclear
weapons.

The Americans deceitfully claim the right to "preventive war" when
in reality what their words and actions amount to is "aggression."

If a war breaks out, U.S. leaders have put the lives of millions
of their citizens and allies at risk of nuclear horror.

American delusion of invincibility is one big catastrophic bluff.

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