Here’s your U.S. foreign policy quiz for the day:

[Proserpina]

Question 1– How many governments has the United States overthrown or tried to overthrow since the Second World War?

Answer: 57 (See William Blum: http://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list )

Question 2– How many of those governments had nuclear weapons?

Answer— 0

Does that mean North Korea needs nuclear weapons to deter US aggression?

Yes and no. Yes, nuclear weapons are a credible deterrent but, no, that’s not why North Korea set off a hydrogen bomb last Tuesday. The reason North Korea detonated the bomb was to force the Obama administration to sit up and take notice. That’s what this is all about. North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, wants the US to realize that they’re going to pay a heavy price for avoiding direct negotiations. In other words, Kim is trying to pressure Obama back to the bargaining table.

Unfortunately, Washington isn’t listening. They see the North as a threat to regional security and have decided that additional sanctions and isolation are the best remedies. The Obama administration thinks they have the whole matter under control and don’t need to be flexible or compromise which is why they are opting for sticks over carrots. In fact, Obama has refused to conduct any bilateral talks with the North unless the North agrees beforehand to abandon its nuclear weapons programs altogether and allow weapons inspectors to examine all their nuclear facilities. This is a non-starter for the DPRK. They see their nuclear weapons program as their “ace in the hole”, their only chance to end persistent US hostility.

Now if we separate the “hydrogen bomb” incident from the longer historic narrative dating back to the Korean War, it’s possible to twist the facts in a way that makes the North look like the “bad guy”, but that’s simply not the case. In fact, the reason the world is facing these problems today is because of US adventurism in the past. Just as ISIS emerged from he embers of the Iraq War, so too, nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula is a direct result of failed US foreign policy in the ’50s.

US involvement in the Korean War precluded a final settlement, which means the war never really ended. An armistice agreement that was signed on July 27, 1953, ended the hostilities, but a “final peaceful settlement” was never achieved, so the nation remains divided today. The reason that matters is because the US still has 15 military bases in South Korea, 28,000 combat troops, and enough artillery and missiles to blow the entire country to smithereens. The US presence in South Korea effectively prevents the reunification of the country and a final conclusion to the war unless it is entirely on Washington’s terms. Bottom line: Even though the cannons have stopped firing, the war drags on, thanks in large part to the ongoing US occupation.

So how can the North normalize relations with the US if Washington won’t talk to them and, at the same time, insists that the North abandon the weapons program that is their only source of leverage? Maybe they should do an about-face, meet Washington’s demands, and hope that by extending the olive branch relations will gradually improve. But how can that possibly work, after all, Washington wants regime change so it can install a US puppet that will help create another capitalist dystopia for its corporate friends. Isn’t that the way US interventions usually turn out? That’s not compromise, it’s suicide.

Does North Korea Need Nukes to Deter US Aggression? By Mike Whitney

[Nyan]

1. Absolutely spot on.

I might also add, if anybody in Washington thinks North Korea's gonna disarm itself under the auspices of US-South Korea-Japan alliances, that's just laughable -a pipe dream if you ask me.
North Korea deeply distrusts the West, and when NATO air-bombed Gaddafi's palace in 2011, it gave North Korea a very good reason to continue distrusting them. Because Gaddafi disarmed himself while working with the West, and what happened to him as a result of that was something that North Korean government fears the most -regime change, and a violent one at that.
That's why NATO's Libya bombing was such a strategic blunder in the long run. Why come to the table at all when you're gonna get air-bombed for it? It cast a dark shadow over any prospect for peaceful disarmament, or an agreement to be reached on our terms.
And in the end, it further bonded North Korea and China (and Russia), because what played out in Libya was the most fearful scenario to China and Russia as well.
If there's one thing that China will not have, it's any scenario that involves US troops entering North Korea, which, for them, is the only strategic buffer zone against heavily armed US forces stationed in its immediate neighbors -Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. And especially because the "pivot to Asia" strategy has been pushing them militarily, they see no real incentive to disarm North Korea. And Russia, of course, is determined to not have another disturbance on their border. So they're not that enthusiastic about disarming North Korea.
Obama's policy towards China, and East Asia in general, is unrealistic. So it looks like six-party talks are not coming back.

This lady on Democracy Now has some great insight on the matter, if anybody wants to check it out.