Friday, February 09, 2018

Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang




Rare encounter in times of conflict !


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The possibility of a U.S. military strike against North Korea has dominated the news in the United States and South Korea and for a good reason. The Trump administration now appears to be downplaying the idea that it is considering a military strike to prevent Pyongyang from crossing the ICBM threshold. But it’s hard to ignore the consistent signals that senior officials had been sending over the past several months.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and others have been talking about a “preventive war,” saying we are “running out of time” to solve the North Korea problem, and that North Korea has brought the world “closer to war.” President Trump, for his part, has warned that the U.S. military is “locked and loaded” and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea.

Recently the administration withdrew Victor Cha’s nomination to be ambassador to South Korea, reportedly because of his objection to a “bloody nose” strike. Despite appearances at the Olympics, we are now closer to a war on the Korean Peninsula than at any time since 1994, when the Clinton administration considered a military strike to destroy North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex.

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Excerpt from an article published by authors near to the The Brookings Institution in the US daily USA Today on February 9, 2018. The Brookings Institution is a think tank located in Washington DC and which is usually considered as a rather conservative and liberal organization.

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