North Korea signals more provocations, tensions

  North Korea has issued a series of truculent missives warning of dire, though unspecified, military actions in an attempt to intimidate the U.S. and its allies into canceling planned military exercises.

  Pyongyang responded strongly last year when Washington and Seoul restored large-scale military exercises and resumed deployment of nuclear-capable strategic assets after a four-year hiatus.

Why North Korea unleashed a flurry of missile tests

  Pyongyang continues to augment and diversify its threat to U.S. allies in Asia with mobile missiles more difficult to detect and more adept at evading missile defenses. In September, North Korea revealed three new offensive missiles, a new rail-based launch system, and claimed to have developed a quicker missile fueling system.

  The regime is rapidly implementing Kim Jong-un’s January directive to develop and test numerous new missiles. Pyongyang may yet test two new submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and a massive multi-warhead ICBM revealed during recent parades. Doing so would significantly escalate tensions in the region and push North Korea to the top of the Biden administration’s security agenda.

The U.S.-South Korea Alliance is a historic success (and could get even better)

  Not all U.S. foreign policy ends in a debacle. The Biden administration’s precipitous, unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan destroyed hopes of freedom and security there and has shaken our allies’ trust in Washington’s commitments to them.

  But foreign policy done well has the opposite effect. Exhibit A: the enduring alliance between the United States and South Korea.

National-security statism and North Korea’s nukes

  The Pentagon and the CIA and their policy of foreign interventionism are the root cause of the nuclear crisis with North Korea.

  Keep in mind that we are talking about one country, Korea, which was artificially divided into two halves, North Korea and South Korea. Therefore, the war that ultimately broke out between North Korea and South Korea was actually nothing more than a civil war, one in which the North was trying to reunite the country under communist rule and in which the South was trying to retain its independence.

U.S. perversity on peace in Korea

  Just when you think that the U.S. national-security state’s policy toward Korea can’t get more perverse, it does. The latest perversion? Opposing a peace agreement between North Korea and South Korea! Imagine that. And why would U.S. officials oppose such an agreement? Because it would inevitably lead to calls for U.S. troops in Korea to be sent packing home to the United States. After all, when a peace agreement is entered into, what would be the justification for keeping U.S. troops in that faraway land?

Trump got played in Singapore, but that’s a good thing

  Conservatives are a fascinating lot. Throughout the Cold War, they steadfastly maintained that the Cold War was necessary because communist tyrants were hell-bent on conquering the United States and subjugating the American people. That is, in fact, why the U.S. national-security establishment intervened in the Korean War and the Vietnam War and sacrificed more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers — supposedly to prevent the communists in North Korea and North Vietnam from ultimately coming to America and taking control of the United States.

  The conservative mantra throughout the Cold War was encapsulated by the title of a book written in 1962 by a conservative curmudgeon named Fred Schwarz: You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists.) The idea was that the communists were incorrigible liars who had one goal in mind: the defeat and Red takeover of the United States.

Jacob Hornberger: The bizarre Trump-Kim summit

  Overlooked in all of the hullabaloo over the summit in North Korea between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un are two bizarre things: One, the U.S. government is the root cause of the crisis that Trump is trying to resolve and, two, the fact that South Korean president Moon Jae-in is not an equal player in the summit.

  It’s important to remind ourselves of fundamentals. The Korean War was always been between North Korea and South Korea. It was never a war between North Korea and the United States. That is, North Korea never attacked the United States and it never invaded the United States. In 1950, North Korea attacked and invaded South Korea in an attempt to unify the country under communist rule. Thus, the war has always been a civil war between two halves of what used to be one country (just like the Vietnam War).

How Trump can still win his Nobel on Korea

  All is not lost. Despite the fact that President Trump has canceled his much-ballyhooed summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un, the president and his army of Trumpsters and Trumpistas need not despair. There is still an opportunity for him to win his Nobel Prize for Peace.

  First things first, however.

  In 1962, a Cold War curmudgeon named Fred Schwarz published a book entitled "You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists)". The idea behind the book, of course, was not that you could really trust the communists. The point was the exact opposite. Communists could not be trusted at all, on anything, especially since they were hell-bent on one overarching goal: to turn America Red.

Jacob G. Hornberger: The best hope for Korea: The North Korean citizenry

  With President Trump’s appointment of John Bolton as his new “national security advisor,” don’t be surprised if the Trump administration again begins banging the war drums against North Korea. Bolton has expressed support for initiating an attack against North Korea if it refuses to dismantle its nuclear bombs and missiles. For what it’s worth, Bolton was also a fervent supporter of the U.S. government’s attack in 2003 on Iraq, a country that, like North Korea, never attacked the United States.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Hating the North Korean Reds

  Among the U.S. government’s worst nightmares is the participation of North Korean athletes in the Winter Olympics, which are being held in South Korea. That’s because Americans might get to know some of the North Koreans, who might just come across as regular people, perhaps even likable.

  That’s not a good thing for a regime that has been committed to regime change for almost 80 years. Given the brutal sanctions that the U.S. government enforces against North Korea and given the distinct possibility that U.S. officials could still initiate a surprise military attack on North Korea or provoke an attack, the last thing U.S. officials want is for the American people to personalize any North Korean citizen.

Jacob G. Hornberger: No American is willing to die for South Korea

  Let’s engage in a thought experiment. Let’s assume that President Trump today ordered all U.S. troops in South Korea to immediately withdraw and come home, a position that I hold is the best and possibly only solution to the Korean crisis. After all, let’s not forget that the reason North Korea wants nuclear capability is to deter or defend against one of the U.S. government’s storied regime-change operations (e.g., Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Libya, etc.). Virtually no one suggests that the reason North Korea wants a long-range nuclear capability is to enable it to start a war with the United States. It wants nuclear capability for defensive, not offensive, purposes. Once U.S. troops are brought home, the incentive for North Korea to acquire nuclear capability that would strike the United States plummets.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Interventionism and the Korean crisis

  If war ends up breaking out in Korea, President Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA will be announcing that it was all North Korea fault. They’ll say that North Korea was “begging for war,” and that the United States was “forced” to act to protect “national security.” Of course, in the process they will be ignoring the interventionist sanctions that the United States and the United Nations have imposed on North Korea for decades, an indirect act of war that has targeted and killed countless North Korean citizens.

Jacob G. Hornberger: South Korea should give U.S. troops the boot

  The best thing that South Koreans could ever do, both for themselves and for the American people, as well as the Japanese citizenry, is boot all U.S. troops out of their country.

  Isn’t the reason obvious?

  If President Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA succeed in instigating a war with North Korea, guess who is going to pay the biggest price for such a war.

Edwin J. Feulner: How to encourage peace in North Korea

SEOUL – Every Korean I know remains saddened by the division of the Korean people into a North and a South at the 38th parallel. The Korean people still dream of reunification, even as they tell me about their appreciation for the sacrifices that their friends, the Americans, made for Korea’s freedom.

  When we talk about the situation north of the demilitarized zone, it’s with enduring concern. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, is the son and the grandson of North Korea’s former dictators. U.N. Security Council resolutions have repeatedly condemned North Korean nuclear activities. A special international U.N. committee has censured human rights violations by these dictators. But they keep on going.