Vol. 81/No. 34 September 18, 2017
(front page)
Washington seeks more sanctions after Pyongyang tests new bomb
U.S.-South Korean military maneuvers Aug. 22. Washington seeks more sanctions on Pyongyang that hit workers hardest.
Washington responded with heated rhetoric. But the Donald Trump administration has focused on further sanctions and international pressure to get the DPRK to back down.
Washington demands the U.N. Security Council bar the DPRK’s airline from international airports, stop supplies of oil to the government and military, and add more government officials to a blacklist imposing asset freezes and travel bans — steps that hit hardest on workers and farmers. The U.S. rulers are pressing Beijing, which accounts for 92 percent of Pyongyang’s foreign trade, to take harsher economic measures.
The Ulchi Freedom Guardian war “games” involved 17,500 U.S. and 50,000 South Korean soldiers. These drills began in the 1970s. Last March exercises included practicing plans to “decapitate” the North Korean leadership.
On Sept. 4 Seoul’s F-15 fighter jets and ballistic missiles were used to simulate an attack on Pyongyang’s nuclear test site.
The North Korean leadership views the war exercises as acts of aggression by Washington rooted in the decadeslong effort by Washington to overturn the DPRK and re-establish U.S. control over the entire peninsula.
Washington seized southern Korea after the second imperialist world war. After workers and farmers in the north won independence through revolutionary struggle, U.S. troops invaded in 1950. Using massive carpet bombing, the U.S. rulers laid waste to the north, but were unable to crush the country. With the aid of tens of thousands of Chinese troops, the Koreans pushed Washington’s forces and those of its U.N.-sponsored allies back to the 38th parallel, ending the war. Washington has never forgiven them.
Pyongyang has repeatedly called for an end to Washington’s massive military exercises, a peace treaty officially ending the existing formal state of war, the withdrawal of U.S. troops and reunification of the country.
Speaking at a conference in China Sept. 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the nuclear test but said sanctions would be “useless and ineffective” because North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is convinced the survival of his regime depends on development of nuclear weapons.
“The DPRK will, under no circumstances, never flinch an inch from the road of bolstering up the national nuclear force,” the North Korean U.N. Mission said in an Aug. 30 statement.
The Socialist Workers Party has fought against Washington’s assaults and threats against the DPRK and the Korean people for decades. The party spoke out against the U.S. rulers’ seizure of Korea and its brutal and bloody war there against the struggle of the Korean people for independence and revolutionary change. It demands the immediate withdrawal of the 28,000 U.S. troops and all its weaponry from South Korea and that Washington keep its bloody hands off Korea.
The SWP supports the struggle of the Korean people for reunification. Korea will be one!
And the SWP demands the unilateral nuclear disarmament of Washington.
If the DPRK destroyed all its nuclear weapons it would win wide support from workers and farmers worldwide and put enormous pressure on Washington to back off from their threats and economic war against the Korean people.
Cuban President Fidel Castro explained this in a 2005 speech, saying revolutionary Cuba never contemplated producing or using nuclear weapons to defend itself and has always called for the destruction of all nuclear weapons.
“What sense would it make producing a nuclear weapon in the face of an enemy who has thousands of nuclear weapons? It would mean joining the game of nuclear confrontation. We possess a weapon as powerful as nuclear ones and it is the magnitude of the justice we are fighting for,” Castro said. “Our nuclear weapon is the invincible power of moral weapons.”
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