24.04.2017
The election of Donald Trump as US
President has seen the ramping up of US rhetoric about North Korea.
Trump recently demanded that China should use its influence with the
North Koreans and if China did not intervene, then, according to an
interview Trump gave to the UK Financial Times, the “US would act
alone.”
US Vice President Mike Pence, currently
on a visit to Australia where he will undoubtedly seek Australian
support for the US position, said that his country’s
“era of strategic patience” with North Korea was over.
Trump also claimed to have dispatched
“an armada”, by which he was presumably referring to the aircraft
carrier the USS Vinson and its support vessels, to Korean waters.
Perhaps typical of Trump’s loose association with the truth, the Vinson
was at that very time steaming in the opposite direction.
Quite what is to be made of this fresh
rhetorical belligerence is not clear. One thing however has been
abundantly clear for nearly the whole of North Korea’s short existence
and that is US antipathy and refusal to take meaningful steps to resolve
what has become a festering problem for East Asia.
Korea was only divided into two parts following the defeat of the Japanese in 1945. The dividing line was the 38thparallel of latitude, with the Soviet Union occupying the northern part and the US the southern portion. Read More
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