North Korea knows what Trump has in mind
North Korea’s recent threat to abandon détente with the United States shows that Pyongyang has become aware of US President Donald Trump’s real intentions, says an academic in New York.
James Petras, a retired Bartle Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, made the remarks on Wednesday, after Pyongyang censured Washington’s rhetoric over the possible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan took issue with recent comments by Trump’s hawkish security adviser, John Bolton, who has called for a “Libyan model” of nuclear disarmament as well as “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement.”
The process began in 2003 and saw former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi make a full disclosure about the weapons programs his country was running.
To show its seriousness about leaving the talks, the North also cancelled a high-level meeting with the South.
“The US statements that North Korea would disarm, denuclearize” go against Pyongyang’s view of the process, Petras told Press TV.
“North Koreans assumed there was a certain degree of strategic reciprocity in which the US would not exercise its military power on the frontier that the US would not attribute North Koreans with evil intentions if they retain their defensive nuclear program,” the academic argued.
Petras said the media were offering a “distorted” view of the détente to help spread Washington’s propaganda.
It would be foolish for North Korea to accept a Libyan disarmament model, says an American analyst.
“The media presented North Korea as being a submissive and [its] one-sided acceptance of US demands,” he said. “This was never the case; it was a fabrication by Washington.”
The biggest giveaway for North Korea came when Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, suggested a disarmament plan similar to the one offered to Libya, said Petras.
Like they did in Libya, the Americans would seek to destroy any nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons program that North Korea might be running, before the US could make any concessions, Bolton added.
Soon after the disarmament, various political groups in Libya declared war against each other and the country became so destabilized that, in 2011, the US and its allies decided to intervene militarily and oust Gaddafi. This ultimately led to Gaddafi’s capture and death at the hands of US-backed rebels.
The chaos took a turn for the worse once Daesh and other Takfiri terror groups rose to power in parts of Libya. The country has never been able to recover from the crisis.
“US using Libya really disqualified its role as a interlocutor,” Petras argued.
Trump was scheduled o meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12. However, he said Wednesday that he had no clue if the summit was still on.
The analyst noted that the Kim-Trump meeting was going to happen but it was going to be a lot more different than what the media were trying to depict it.
