PATRICE GREANVILLE

Anti North Korean propaganda is so pervasive, so vicious, and so obsessive that it easily outstrips the anticommunist vitriol dispensed to other nations designated as "enemies" by the perennially sanctimonious "indispensable nation".  Such unrelenting hybrid war by the empire's minions is designed not only to keep the victimised nation isolated and in penury, but to serve notice to other nations that anyone defying Uncle Sam's diktats is also liable to find itself in similar sorry circumstances. In any case, here's perhaps the best and most lucid denunciation and rebuttal of the arch-hypocritical effluvia emanating from the US disinformation machine and that of its vassal states. It was penned by our editor emeritus André Vltchek. —PG

Why Does the West Hate North Korea?

North Korea's capital subway—spotless.  No one visiting North Korea today can understand how these people, after a genocidal attack by the West, managed to rebuild their nation in such a glorious way. (Photo: A. Vltchek)

How much more can one country endure?

More than 60 years ago, millions of people above the 38th parallel died. They were literally slaughtered by the US-led coalition.

After that, after its victory, North Korea was never left in peace. The West has been provoking it, threatening it, imposing brutal sanctions and of course, manipulating global public opinion.

Why? There are several answers. The simple one is: because it is Communist and because it wants to follow its own course! As Cuba has been doing for decades… As several Latin American countries were doing lately.

Typical warmongering against North Korea, by a supposedly reputable publication. Not an atom of human solidarity with a clear victim of large-scale aggression. In reality, for most of the world the question is, can the American sociopathic hegemon be stopped?

But there is one more, much more complex answer: because the DPRK fought for its principles at home, and it fought against Western imperialism abroad. It helped to liberate colonized and oppressed nations. And, like Cuba, it did it selflessly, as a true internationalist state.

The African continent benefited the most, including Namibia and Angola, when they were suffering from horrific apartheid regimes imposed on them by South Africa. It goes without saying that these regimes were fully sponsored by the West, as was the racist madness coming from Pretoria (let us also not forget that the fascist, apartheid South Africa was one of the countries that was fighting, on the side of the West, during the Korean War).

Cars made in North Korea—did you know they even made modern automobiles? Of course not.

Free housing in Pyongyang. Compare that to the US "projects"

The West never forgot nor ‘forgave’ the DPRK’s internationalist help to many African nations. North Korean pilots were flying Egyptian fighter planes in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The DPRK was taking part in the liberation struggle in Angola (it participated in combat operations, alongside the People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA)), it fought in Rhodesia, Lesotho, Namibia (decisively supporting SWAPO) and in the Seychelles. It aided the African National Congress in its struggle against apartheid in South Africa. In the past, it had provided assistance to then progressive African nations, including Guinea, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Mali and Tanzania.

The fact that people of the DPRK spilled their blood for freedom in the most devastated (by the Western imperialism) continent on earth – Africa – is one of the main reasons why the West is willing to go ‘all the way’, trying to “punish”, systematically discredit, even to liquidate this proud nation. The West is obsessed with harming North Korea, as it was for decades obsessed with destroying Cuba. 

North Korea has painfully built an advanced weapons inventory capable of keeping the empire and its accomplices at bay. For that, it is accused of being "an international security threat". To whom?

The West plundered Africa, an enormous continent rich in resources, for centuries. It grew wealthy on this loot. Anybody who tried to stop it, had to be liquidated.

The DPRK was pushed into a corner, tormented and provoked. When Pyongyang reacted, determined to protect itself, the West declared that defense was actually “illegal” and that it represented true “danger to the world”.

FILE PHOTO KOREA - UNDATED: (FILE PHOTO) U.S. troops emerge from tandem helicopters onto an open field during the Korean War (1950 - 1953).  (Photo by Archive Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The DPRK refused to surrender its independence and its path – it continued developing its defensive nuclear program. The West’s propaganda apparatus remained in top gear, spreading toxic fabrications and polluted the entire Planet with them. As a result, the entire world is convinced that “North Korea is evil”, but it has absolutely no idea, why? The entire charade is built on clichés, but almost no one challenges it.

Christopher Black, a prominent international lawyer based in Toronto, Canada, considers new sanctions against the DPRK as a true danger to the world peace:

“Chapter VII of the UN Charter states that the Security Council can take measures against a country if there is a threat to the peace and this is the justification they are using for imposing the sanctions. However, it is not the DPRK that is creating a threat to the peace, but the USA which is militarily threatening the DPRK with annihilation. The DPRK has clearly stated its nuclear weapons are only to deter an American attack which is the threat to the peace.

The fact that the US, as part of the SC is imposing sanctions on a country it is threatening is hypocritical and unjust. That the Russians and Chinese have joined the US in this instead of calling for sanctions against the US for its threats against the DPRK and its new military exercises which are a clear and present danger to the DPRK is shameful. If the Russians and Chinese are sincere why don’t they insist that the US draw down its forces there so the DPRK feels less threatened and take steps to guarantee the security of the DPRK? They do not explain their actions but their actions make them collaborators with the USA against the DPRK.”

US/NATO Threatens the DPRK, China and Russia’s Far East

The US/NATO military bases in Asia (and in other parts of the world) are actually the main danger to the DPRK, to China and to the Russian “Far East”.

Enormous air force bases located in Okinawa (Kadena and Futenma), as well as the military bases on the territory of the ROK, are directly threatening North Korea, which has all rights to defend itself and its citizens.

It is also thoroughly illogical to impose sanctions on the victim and not on the empire, which is responsible for hundreds of millions of lost human lives in all corners of the Globe.

Addendum
The US war on Korea remains an international war crime worthy of a Nuremberg tribunal. Same for Vietnam later. And, it should be noted, this Wiki page, from which we quote, conveniently forgets about America's bacteriological and chemical warfare on Korea, including the liberal use of napalm. 

Even the CIA-influenced Wikipedia recognises the savagery of US bombing of Korea. Please read the following passage, and hopefully the whole page later:

A B-29 dropping 1,000 lb bombs over Korea, August 1951

The bombing of North Korea
Air forces of the United Nations Command carried out an extensive bombing campaign against North Korea from 1950 to 1953 during the Korean War. It was the first major bombing campaign for the United States Air Force (USAF) since its inception in 1947 from the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). During the campaign, conventional weapons such as explosives, incendiary bombs, and napalm destroyed nearly all of the country's cities and towns, including an estimated 85 percent of its buildings.^[1]

On 17 November 1950, General MacArthur told U.S. Ambassador to Korea John J. Muccio, "Unfortunately, this area will be left a desert." By "this area" MacArthur meant the entire area between "our present positions and the border."^[10]

In May 1951, an international fact finding team from East Germany, West Germany, China, and the Netherlands stated, "The members, in the whole course of their journey, did not see one town that had not been destroyed, and there were very few undamaged villages."^[11]

On 25 June 1951, General O'Donnell, commander of the Far Eastern Air Force Bomber Command, testified in answer to a question from Senator John C. Stennis ("...North Korea has been virtually destroyed, hasn't it?): "Oh, yes; ... I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name ... Just before the Chinese came in we were grounded. There were no more targets in Korea."^{[12]
(Bombing of North Korea, Wikipedia)}

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Our Editor Emeritus and Senior Roaming Correspondent André Vltchek was a novelist, philosopher, investigative journalist, filmmaker, photographer and playwright. He covered dozens of war zones and conflicts from Bosnia and Peru to Sri Lanka, DR Congo,Timor-Leste, Iraq and Syria. A passionate communist and internationalist, he was a strong critic of Western policies towards the rest of the world. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek died "under suspicious circumstances" in September 2020, in Istanbul, Turkey.  On 22 September 2020, he died while traveling overnight from the Turkish Black Sea coastal city of Samsun to Istanbul. Andre Vltchek, 57, and his wife were traveling inside a rented and chauffeured car and arrived in front of their Istanbul hotel at around 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday. His wife tried to wake him up to tell him they had arrived but could not do so, the Anadolu Agency reported. The private DHA news agency said police recorded his case as a “suspicious death.”^[2] André Vltchek was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), the Soviet Union, in 1963. He spent some of his adult life in New York City and worked and lived in all of the continents of the world.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of  The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience. 

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CGTN

On October 1, 1950, a large crowd filled Tiananmen Square in Beijing. They were celebrating the first anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. However, the nascent state received letters from the leaders of two of its neighbors on the day – leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Kim Il Sung and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, asking for military assistance. How did this come about? CGTN's documentary "Enemy on the Doorstep: China's Involvement in the Korean War" shows you what was behind the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, which defined history. #KoreanWar1950 #China #Korea Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://goo.gl/lP12gA Download our APP on Apple Store (iOS): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cctvn...

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Kim Petersen

An establishment think tank manipulates the narrative

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walk together as they meet in the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Paju, South Korea, on Friday, April 27, 2018. Kim Jong Un on Friday became the first North Korean leader to enter South Korea since the peninsula was divided almost seven decades ago as a result of US meddling.

Foreign Affairs (FA) magazine, published by the right-wing Council on Foreign Relations, has recently published some articles on taking advantage of economic challenges faced by North Korea. On 29 July, FA says, “Change is underway on the Korean Peninsula. FA posits that sanctions have worked for the US, as can be gleaned from the article’s title: “A Grand Bargain With North Korea: Pyongyang’s Economic Distress Offers a Chance for Peace.” The title is also disingenuous in the extreme since former US secretary-of-state Colin Powell made it clear: “We won’t do nonaggression pacts or treaties, things of that nature.”

FA posits a re-prioritization in North Korean governance whereby the military will now play second fiddle to the economy. This, says FA, “sets the stage for efforts to resuscitate North Korea’s dying economy.”

Why is North Korea’s economy in the predicament that it is? FA, presumably attributes the economic difficulties to military overspending. But FA’s analysis downplays the deleterious effects of sanctions spearheaded by the United States against North Korea. It does admit to this further down in the article, and it also points to the adversity imposed by “COVID-19 restrictions … and a relentless series of natural disasters.” However, why would anyone sanction a country beset by natural disasters and disease? And North Korea, despite whatever skepticism, does not list itself as having any COVID-19 cases.

FA notes, “Kim’s criticisms of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises and his country’s firing of cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles have also been more notable for their level of self-restraint than for escalating tensions on the peninsula.”

However, North Korea has already demonstrated that it has a nuclear weapon and that it has long-range delivery capability. It is obvious that if any actor were to attack North Korea that the aggressor would be punished. Any reading of this exposes a hypocrisy, on the one hand North Korea is considered “notable for their level of self-restraint” and not “escalating tensions on the peninsula.” On the other hand, the US and South Korea conducted joint military exercises in late August. Is this self-restraint or is it provocation? Was not the seizure, announced by the US Justice Department in July, of a tanker that transports oil to North Korea a provocation?

Free public housing in North Korea. Does this look like the "projects" we see in the US?

FA points at food shortages in North Korea. However, it is important to remember that during US intrusion into the Korean civil war, the US wiped out the economic and agricultural basis of North Korea and killed millions of North Koreans. Following its aggression of North Korea, North Koreans have been forced to endure hardship to remain independent of their attacker. Absent this historical background, one might be fooled by FA’s attempt to create an image of American benevolence when it writes: “Kim [Jong-un] is treading carefully on the military front so as not to foreclose the opportunity for dialogue with the United States, which could serve as a guarantor of his country’s future economic security.”

North Korea does not need an economic guarantor, it needs the US to stop sabotaging North Korea’s economic efforts.

FA preposterously dreams:

FA posits North Korea handing over its defense and integrating into the “U.S.-led liberal international order” with the close support of South Korea while at the same time poking a stick in the eye of China. North Koreans are extremely aware of their history and how the US separated the Korean people, conducted a scorched earth campaign in the northern part of the peninsula, and they are well aware that China came to fight alongside them to defeat the US. It is risible that anyone would posit that North Korea would relinquish its independence, its juche, and ally, to be led by its aggressor.

FA argues, “Achieving superior joint military and diplomatic power is what will enable the allies to deter Kim’s threats, allowing for a new approach to North Korea that can pave the way to a lasting peace.”

How will the US achieve this? To threaten North Korea with “superior joint military and diplomatic power”? Peace from the barrel of a gun and deadly sanctions? North Korea succeeded in achieving nuclear capability to punish any military attack against it. In the meantime, North Korean chairman Kim Jong-un can achieve economic development by joining the Chinese-initiated BRI and further opening up to Russia.

FA pushes increased militarization of South Korea, by having South Korea ease access to US military forces in the country. FA complains that South Korean domestic political pressure is a barrier to freer military training in the country.

FA portrays the US-South Korean summit in May where the US committed to providing South Korea with COVID-19 vaccines as sending “a powerful signal to South Koreans that the United States is placing a high priority on the relationship.”

The Diplomat asked, “Why isn’t South Korea Buying Chinese Vaccines?” It noted, “Like many Asian countries, Seoul is having troubling sourcing vaccines. But unlike its neighbors, South Korea has so far refused to turn to a ready supplier: China.” The article states, “Part of the problem is that the South Korean government is still eagerly and persistently seeking vaccine supplies from the United States.” China’s Global Times reported, “After the World Health Organization (WHO) officially approved two Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines, South Korea became the first country to fully exempt travelers vaccinated with shots of Sinopharm and Sinovac from its original mandatory two-week quarantine” on 1 July. It seems a prudent move to maintain good relations with South Korea’s largest trading partner, China.

FA has further scorn for China. It accused China of “bullying” South Korea over its apoplexy regarding the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in 2016 — a system which can be used against China.

The US places military armaments a continent away from US shores — a hop, skip, and jump from China — and FA accuses China of bullying? How would the US feel if such a missile-interceptor system were placed in Cuba by China?

FA promoted an end-of-war declaration that “would not be linked in any way to a peace treaty.” Other steps are demanded before consideration of a peace treaty between the parties. One is a non-starter: the verified destruction of nuclear weapons by North Korea. Of course, only by North Korea, the US will keep its nuclear weapons. As a test of the US’s word, imagine the American reaction if North Korea agreed to denuclearize, as long as the US also destroys its nuclear weapons, as is required by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s article 6, which the US signed on to.

*****

In a September article, “The Last Chance to Stop North Korea?: U.S. Aid Could Help Revive Nuclear Diplomacy,” FA seems to have had its druthers about the late July article that envisioned coercing North Korea through “superior joint military and diplomatic power” and now supports humanitarian aid as the way to denuclearization.

The subtitle should give pause to most informed readers. First, consider what is meant by “nuclear diplomacy” in this context. It means that a country (especially the northern half of a country) that was devastated by an American scorched earth campaign, one that used bioweapons and chemical weapons — and even threatened attack with nuclear weapons, should disarm itself of a deterrent while the aggressor maintains its nuclear arsenal. Furthermore, just what is US aid? The Democratic Republic of Korea does not need US aid; it needs an end to US-led international sanctions against the country.

Despite noting US participation with South Korea for military exercises, FA writes that “the Biden administration should not take comfort in the relative lack of [North Korean] provocations” recently.

This wording seems particularly one-sided. Are the South Korean and US military maneuvers (including training previously of a decapitation unit) not provocative? Is the stationing of US troops in South Korea not provocative? Consider what the reaction would be if North Korea held military exercises off the American coast?

FA attempts to evoke fear of the North Korean menace:

This appears to be just a risible posturing. How is it that North Korea would threaten the United States? Through the mere development of its military capability? Such logic would apply to every country that seeks to upgrade its military. Are all these countries then threatening the US? Moreover, would it be responsible for a government to allow its defensive capability to lag behind that of a belligerent parked next door? A belligerent that eschews a peace treaty. A belligerent that refuses to adhere to a no-first use of nuclear weapons as North Korea does?

The FA article then complains that the improved military capability “would make it more difficult for the United States to preemptively strike a missile before its launch. These are all capabilities that make North Korea’s nuclear deterrent more survivable and impervious to a U.S. first strike.” A contradiction arises; now the writer has positioned the US as a preemptive threat. So, in essence, the writer defies all logic by preposterously postulating that a country enhancing its survivability and deterrence against a preemptive external attack makes it the threat.

But FA has a solution on “how to stop North Korea before it crosses this threshold”: “getting diplomacy back on track through humanitarian assistance that includes American COVID-19 vaccines and food aid, both of which the country needs.”

Providing US aid would serve American hegemonic aims in that it “would reduce Chinese influence in Pyongyang.” Seems to be rather self-serving aid. Sanction a nation, intercept North Korean shipping at sea, then take advantage of any economic deterioration to pose as a generous benefactor by proffering aid.

To its credit, the September FA article does not suggest a militaristic or sanctions-based approach; instead it suggests a humanitarian approach, but a purportedly humanitarian approach that secures American geo-strategic aims.

*****

Does one dare trust the word of the United States? Look no further than what happened to Muammar Gaddafi and Libya when it abandoned its nuclear weapon program, what happened when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq allowed inspections for weapons or mass destruction, or when Syria’s Bashar al-Assad surrendered Syria’s chemical weapons.

As A.B. Abrams expressed with crystal clarity in his excellent book, Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power, North Koreans are well aware of how American imperialism works, of its military depravity, and its proclivity for disinformation. North Koreans have demonstrated resistance, resilience, and self-reliance. It has served them well since the armistice was signed on 27 July 1953. North Korea is an economically sanctioned country, yes, but it is not an economically stunted country. North Korea has achieved so much. It provides tuition-free education right through university, universal health care, preschools, and housing and jobs for all its citizens. It is a country that despite the destruction it suffered from US-led UN warring has achieved military deterrence and social development that Americans can only dream of. It is an independent country neither rich, but neither poor.

SELECT COMMENT

John Lowrie

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by Allan Behm
Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability
All image captions, pull quotes, appendices, etc. by the editors not the authors. 

It's clear that for the Americans and the Brits, China, no matter how peaceful, is to be attacked just for being a great power.  Its very existence is now the West's rationale for her destruction. 

The US is now supposed to start sharing nuclear sub technology with the Aussies, but will it?

I. INTRODUCTION

Allan Behm states that: “Australia’s decision to join with the United States and the United Kingdom to build Australian long-range nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) has little to do with the defence of Australia. The aim is to make possible an Australian contribution to US battle plans against China which that country will view as profoundly threatening with implications also for war planning by Russia, North Korea and other nuclear-armed states.”

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Allan Behm is Head, International and Security Affairs Program, The Australia Institute, Canberra, Australia. Allan spent 30 years in the Australian Public Service, as a member of the Australian diplomatic service, the Prime Minister’s Department, the Department of Defence and the Attorney General’s Department. He specialised in international relations, defence strategy, counter-terrorism and law enforcement policy, and more recently, climate change.

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This essay is published simultaneously with other commentaries on APLN’s Pulse on the AUKUS proposal here.

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The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Nautilus Institute. Readers should note that Nautilus seeks a diversity of views and opinions on significant topics in order to identify common ground. This report is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.

II. NAPSNET POLICY FORUM BY ALLAN BEHM

SCOTT MORRISON’S GIANT NUCLEAR ELECTION PLOY

SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

Australia’s decision to join with the United States and the United Kingdom to build Australian long-range nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) has little to do with the defence of Australia. The aim is to make possible an Australian contribution to US battle plans against China which that country will view as profoundly threatening with implications also for war planning by Russia, North Korea and other nuclear-armed states.

Even leaving aside the fiscal profligacy and defence opportunity costs for Australia of the literal blank cheque issued by the Morrison government, the nuclear submarine decision takes Australia into the heart of naval warfighting in East Asia and Southeast Asia.

Further, the Australian nuclear submarine decision will have knock-on effects in Japan and the Republic of Korea, leading them not only to move their already highly capable submarine fleets to nuclear power, but also thereby heighten the likelihood they will then equip those submarines with nuclear weapons.

For several decades the US has been concerned to negate two military advances the Chinese regard as essential protection against literally existential threats. The Australian submarines will be designed primarily to contribute to negating both of those military advances.

No one in the West has yet explained —and the public is not demanding—what possible reason could there be for the nonstop drumbeat toward war with China, Russia and other nations regarded now as "official enemies" by the empire. The greatest crime in history is being planned with practically zero opposition.

Firstly, over the past decade China has constructed the basis for a submarine-based nuclear deterrence force that could survive the effects of an expected US attack against Chinese land-based nuclear missile sites. If Chinese nuclear missile-launching submarines can safely get out of their homeports and reach the depths of the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea they may have a small chance of remaining undetected by highly superior US anti-submarine warfare platforms – including US and now, possible Australian hunter-killer submarines. If those Chinese SSBNs are found and destroyed, especially after US attacks on Chinese ground-launched missile silos, and US and Japanese ballistic missile defence destroying most of the missiles that are launched by China, then, in the Chinese view, China in fact has no survivable nuclear-deterrence force. Whatever the validity deterrence by a balance of vulnerability – or of terror – may have, without a survivable second strike, China has no effective nuclear deterrence against the United States.

China’s four operational nuclear missile submarines are mainly based in the north of the South China Sea on the island of Hainan. China’s militarisation of its concrete islands in the SCS is in large part motivated by a desire to provide extended defence in-depth for those SSBNs.

The fundamental requirement for that capability—apart from questions of missile range, crew training and naval submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and nuclear submarine doctrinal development—is that the submarines are able to reach the deeps of the western Pacific undetected by U.S. and Japanese anti-submarine warfare (ASW) sensor networks. Only there do they have any chance of fulfilling their intended role as a second strike nuclear deterrent force immune to U.S. attack. One key part of US ASW capabilities, in addition to the Fish Hook underwater surveillance network from Japan to the boundary of the South China Sea, are its attack submarines hunting Chinese ballistic missile submarines. Australia’s submarines could play a modest but frontline role, especially in the waters to the west of Borneo, the Philippines and Japan.

For this reason alone, China will view Australia’s decision as a wilful contribution to an existential nuclear threat to China.

The same strategic logic applies to the Russian strategic missile submarines operating from Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula.   Russia has recently rebuilt this force with the latest Borei class submarines operating in the “strategic bastion” of the Sea of Okhotsk and beyond into the Pacific and Arctic oceans.  US nuclear attack submarines track these submarines, guided by the US-Japanese-Korean network of underwater acoustic sensors and with surface and aerial anti-submarine forces.

A fourth-generation Russian sub, designed to carry 16 Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles as their basic armament. The Yasen-class submarines carry Kalibr-PL and Oniks cruise missiles as their strike weapons.

Secondly, Australian long-range attack submarines likely will be deployed in Southeast and East Asian waters to protect US aircraft carrier task forces moving into position close to China for attacks on Chinese coastal facilities, as well as against Russian or North Korean land-based forces. US and coalition SSNs will hunt and try to destroy Chinese submarines lying in wait for the US carriers; or stand as one of the point guards that move in advance of US aircraft carrier battlegroups as they move around.

China has devoted a great deal of money and energy to developing the naval, air and missile capabilities to deny US carrier battle groups the access they had in the past to Chinese waters and its immediate coastal zone inside the island chain from Japan to the Philippines.

US carrier battle groups aided by Australian submarines do not in themselves constitute an existential threat to China, but they do open a vulnerability that the US would certainly not accept for itself.

A late-generation Russian Yasen-class nuclear sub. These boats carry missiles unmatched by any other navy.

---

Moreover, given the acknowledged risks of escalation to the use of nuclear weapons in what may begin as a conventional war on the  Korean peninsula, especially together with a Taiwan crisis, Australian submarines attached to US carrier battle groups may be sailing into a nuclear war.

Australian nuclear submarines may not be allocated offensive missions against Chinese , Russian or eventually, North Korean ballistic missile-firing submarines.  But the roles that they likely will be allocated in American naval operations in the Western Pacific, especially in aircraft battlegroups deployed against Russia, China, or North Korea, will enable US anti-submarine operations against the nuclear forces of these states.

Other lone-wolf long-distance missions for Australian nuclear submarines can be envisioned such as inserting special forces onto land, blockading straits, but none of these can justify the crushing direct cost and massive opportunity cost to the rest of Australia’s armed forces already short of essential capacity to defend Australia’s territory against actual maritime attack.

The AUKUS project for Australian nuclear submarines carries a third nuclear risk. Much has been written about the implications of damage to French amour propre, not to say export income, but the US decision to allow Australia highly preferential access to sensitive submarine technologies only allowed out of the US once before when the US gave such access to Britain in the 1950s.

For Japan and the Republic of Korea, both US allies of considerably greater military and political significance to the US than Australia, the nuclear submarine technology export to Australia will have two consequences.

French nuclear sub in maneuvers. France had the technology all along but that was not what Australia negotiated.

---

Japan and South Korea both have advanced indigenously developed and constructed submarine fleets, for which they will demand equal treatment from the US, further stimulating the dynamic underwater arms race in East Asia.

But more importantly this break-out will occur at a time when powerful political elements in both countries are pressing the case for indigenous nuclear weapons. The preferred nuclear-launch platform in both countries would be from submarines.

Anxiety in both countries about China-US tensions sits alongside not-so-latent long-standing  doubts about the reliability of US promises of nuclear protection. Grievances flowing from the Australian submarine deal may well feed the domestic cases for Japanese and South Korean nuclear weapons. 

The timing of Mr Morrison’s announcements also merits some consideration. In our view, this project is a political stunt aimed to distract from Covid failures, please coalition constituencies, and split the Labor Party and render the Greens shrill and sidelined. In reality, it is likely that after a passage of years of staged announcements and pseudo-planning there will be little to show for it, and the enormously expensive, strategically ill-considered, and force-structure distorting project will quietly die.

But, to use Prime Minister Morrison’s phrase, “let us be clear,” in terms of Australian security, it is a gigantic nuclear election stunt that in the long run may increase the risk of nuclear war while drawing Chinese return fire on our vulnerable export sectors, including iron ore.

“To be clear” again, it is utterly mendacious of Prime Minister Scott Morrison to say that these forces have nothing to do with nuclear weapons because Australian submarines won’t be so armed, assuming it does not cross that barrier in the future if the submarines ever come to pass.  As noted above, they may play a crucial role in US nuclear strike and defence operations.

A Chinese nuclear sub: derided as "shoddily built" by Western observers, they have shown themselves to be impressve machines. Some have gotten within firing range of US aircraft carriers without being detected. And of course the Russian navy is liable to have their back in any major confrontation.

This capability has everything to do with nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear war.   The nett detrimental effects on strategic instability caused by supplementing US forces devoted to strategic nuclear missions in the region may be substantial, especially in the perceptions of American nuclear adversaries who may well target Australia already, and must be properly analysed and debated before any decisions are made to proceed.

III.  NAUTILUS INVITES YOUR RESPONSE

The Nautilus Asia Peace and Security Network invites your responses to this report. Please send responses to: nautilus@nautilus.org. Responses will be considered for redistribution to the network only if they include the author’s name, affiliation, and explicit consent

The NAPSNet Policy Forum provides expert analysis of contemporary peace and security issues in Northeast Asia. As always, we invite your responses to this report and hope you will take the opportunity to participate in discussion of the analysis.

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Allan Behm is an operative and strategist deeply embedded in the maze of the US/Australian "security" establishment. He specialises in political and security risk evaluation, policy analysis and development, and negotiating the policy/politics interface. He naturally tends to see the world through the prism utilised by his counterparts in London and Washington.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of  The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.