Vol. 73/No. 26      July 13, 2009

In another threat against North Korea, the Pentagon is deploying a ground-based missile system in Hawaii and a sea-based radar system nearby.

The Kang Nam 1, which left the port of Nampo June 17, is the first vessel monitored under the cover of UN sanctions.

On June 12 the UN Security Council passed a resolution that tightened sanctions on North Korea. The resolution expanded a list of “banned cargo” they insist not be transported to or from North Korea, as well as imposed further financial sanctions. The resolution was in response to North Korea’s second test of a nuclear bomb.

The resolution calls on UN member states to inspect all cargo in their territory going to and from North Korea if they have “grounds to believe” it may be related to the production or sale of any weapons, with the exception of small arms. Member states are also called upon to inspect suspected vessels on the high seas.

The permanent members of the UN Security Council are the governments of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All have active nuclear arsenals and intercontinental delivery systems and have carried out nuclear tests throughout much of the second half of the 20th century.

U.S. president Barack Obama ordered June 24 that additional sanctions imposed on North Korea by Washington be renewed for another year. Obama said that the existence of nuclear weapons in that country poses “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

Washington introduced nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula five years after the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in U.S. imperialism’s first military defeat. Today the U.S. military maintains nuclear weapons throughout the region.

An unnamed U.S. official said that the destroyer USS John S. McCain has no orders to intercept the ship, according to a June 24 dispatch from Britain’s Press Association. It also said that the vessel will need to stop to refuel soon on the 4,100-mile, two-week trip to Myanmar. The UN resolution calls for member states to refuse services such as refueling to ships accused of carrying banned cargo. Officials in Singapore, the world’s largest refueling hub, say they will “act appropriately” if the ship docks at its port.

Meanwhile, Washington is reacting in anticipation of a test of a long-range missile. U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates said June 18 that he ordered the deployment to Hawaii of the SBX sea-based radar system in the Pacific and missile interceptors designed to destroy incoming missiles in the final stages of their flight path. Antiballistic missiles are already deployed on U.S. warships throughout the Pacific and on bases in Alaska and California.

Washington has some 28,000 troops on the Korean peninsula today and routinely carries out joint military exercises with South Korean forces.

U.S. imperialism has been working for decades to regain first-strike capability to use its nuclear arsenal unchecked, as it did in 1945, when it incinerated hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In mid-April Gates announced aspects of the proposed war budget for 2010, which includes the addition of six warships equipped with the Aegis antiballistic missile system.

North Korea continues to assert its right to self-defense. A June 20 article from the Korean Central News Agency states that “the enemies’ tightened ‘sanctions’ and ‘blockade’ would only embolden [the Korean people] to wage a more courageous struggle in defense of the sovereignty of the country.”  
 
 
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