The United States and South Korea made a show of force against Kim Jong-un’s dictatorship on Tuesday, assembling 20 fighter jets in a flight in the waters around the region. The move coincided with a visit by a senior US official to Seoul and renewed military activity by Pyongyang.
On Sunday, North Korea fired eight ballistic missiles over South Korean waters, the biggest exercise of its kind in history. The communist regime has been testing practically every weapon in its arsenal since last year, including intercontinental missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the US.
The test came after a joint missile launch exercise by South Korean naval forces and the American strike group led by the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.
Seoul responded by firing the same amount of projectiles, but the main show took place now. 16 South Korean fighter jets were deployed, including F-35A with stealth radar capabilities and F-15K models, and 4 American F-16 on a flight along the western coast of the peninsula.
The action took place while State Department No. 2 Wendy Sherman was visiting Seoul and making explicit warnings to Kim. Information from intelligence services and the International Atomic Energy Agency indicates that Pyongyang is preparing its seventh nuclear test, the first since 2017,
“Any nuclear test will be in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. There will be a quick and strong response,” Sherman said in a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Cho Hyun-dong. Pyongyang must “choose the path of diplomacy”, said the American, who on Wednesday (8) will add Japanese Vice Chancellor Mori Takeo to the table.
The political and military tie with North Korea is an old one, dating back to the ceasefire that ended the Korean War in 1953, with the division of the peninsula between communists supported by China and the Soviet Union and the capitalist south, supported by Washington.
The conflict never had a formal end. The north has developed nuclear weapons, seen by analysts as insurance for the regime to remain under any circumstances, but the 2011 rise of Kim Jong-un, the third dynasty leader who rules the bizarre regime that mixes mystical personalism and Stalinism, has changed world perception.
He accelerated the development of more powerful missiles and conducted nuclear tests. In 2017, the program’s speed brought the country to the brink of conflict with the Trump administration, following the North Korean tradition of testing the limits of new US officials. American rhetoric has become carbonarian.
Kim achieved a political victory by being accepted as an equal at a negotiating table, and met Trump on three occasions in 2018 and 2019. Negotiations to achieve some normality in relations with Seoul and to denuclearize North Korea, an American objective not shared by Pyongyang have since stalled.
Keeping writing, Kim tests Joe Biden since the American’s inauguration last year. But the emergence of the Ukrainian-Russian issue has stood in the way, shifting Washington’s attention to Europe, contrary to the White House’s stated plans to prioritize Asia and its Cold War 2.0 with China – which, like Russia, is unreservedly supportive. great enthusiasm for Pyongyang.
The geopolitical shift gave Kim time to prepare a series of missile tests and, according to available information, another underground atomic blast. The objective is to draw attention, of course, and seek a resumption of negotiations that lead to the lifting of sanctions against its territory. But the risk of an escalation is always present.
Kim is also under pressure from Covid-19, which he has apparently managed to keep out of his territory despite refusing to receive vaccines from friends in Beijing. Now, with the most transmissible variant omicron, the country is experiencing an explosion of cases and the dictator has had to assume a “grave mistake” in handling the crisis.
Thus, metaphorical fireworks can help assert its internal position in the dictatorship — information is scarce in what is one of the most closed countries in the world, and shifts of political tectonic plates are noticed when someone is killed abroad or executed at home.
For the US, with its focus on Ukraine, a North Korean nuclear test will now be bad news, proving that its policy of deterrence so far has not worked. Even Tuesday’s fighter show is dubious: it doesn’t seem likely that the Americans will support the most belligerent South Koreans in a punitive expedition to northern nuclear sites, given that doing so would risk a larger and unwanted war.
For friends Xi Jinping and especially Vladimir Putin, it’s a welcome sideshow. If in the past they accepted eventual sanctions against the ally, which is seen as unreliable, Russia and China have now vetoed a proposal for further punishment by the US in the Security Council.
