Saturday, July 29, 2017 by Common Dreams by Medea Benjamin

Excerpt: "The North Korean nuclear program is certainly alarming, as are the myriad human rights violations of that repressive regime. But the question is how best to de-escalate the conflict so that it doesn’t explode into an all-out nuclear war. Adding another weapon system into the mix is not the answer.

The North Korean regime feels encircled. It knows that the most powerful nation in the world, the United States, wants to overthrow it. There’s Trump’s belligerent rhetoric: “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will." There’s the ever-tightening screws of sanctions. Just a few hours before the latest North Korean missile test, Congress approved yet another round of sanctions to squeeze the North.

There are 83 US military bases on South Korean soil and US warships often patrolling the coast. US-South Korean military exercises have been getting larger and more provocative, including dropping mock nuclear bombs on North Korea.The US military also announced that it would permanently station an armed drone called Gray Eagle on the Korean Peninsula and it has been practicing long-range strikes with strategic bombers, sending them to the region for exercises and deploying them in Guam and on the peninsula.

The United States has also long held a “pre-emptive first strike” policy towards North Korea. This frightening threat of an unprovoked US nuclear attack gives North Korea good reason to want its own nuclear arsenal.

North Korea’s leadership also looks at the fate of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, leaders who gave up their nuclear programs, and conclude that nuclear weapons are their key to survival.

So the North Korean leadership is not acting irrationally; on the contrary. On July 29, the day after the test, North Korean President Kim Jong-un asserted that the threat of sanctions or military action “only strengthens our resolve and further justifies our possession of nuclear weapons.”... read full posting