Korean Peninsula: Is Nuclear War Likely?

Only strong international working class opposition can halt military aggression

- Niall Mulholland

The North Korean nuclear bomb test on 3 September, the most powerful yet, and the bellicose reaction of the US administration, underlines the volatile and dangerous situation in the peninsula and entire region.

Hours after the bomb test, South Korea, with US backing, held military exercises and missile launches in a simulated attack on North Korea.

Many people in the region and across the world are understandably fearful that the aggressive actions of the US and North Korea’s arms programme can lead to armed conflict, by design or accident, and even nuclear war - costing untold lives and environmental destruction.

Appalling as North Korea’s weapon programme is, it is nothing compared to the 7,000 nuclear warheads the US superpower possesses.

And while Trump condemns North Korea’s threat to “world peace”, it is the US that has unleashed over 6,000 bombs in several countries, so far, in 2017.

Bellicose threats

The Trump administration gave a chilling response to the North Korea bomb test. The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, declared that North Korea’s president Kim Jong-un was “begging for war” and called for an end of all economic links with North Korea.

This is a direct threat to China’s interests, which is the main trader with North Korea and its primary oil supplier.

China and Russia’s ‘freeze for freeze’ proposals - the US and South  Korea to stop massive military exercises on North Korea’s borders in return for Pyongyang stopping nuclear and missile testing and for talks - is dismissed out of hand by the White House.

Both China and Russia border North Korea and are vying with the US in the Eurasia region. They criticise Pyongyang’s nuclear arms programme partly because it gives US imperialism the pretext to vastly increase its military power on the Korean peninsula.