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Washington, United States | AFP | A top Republican lawmaker warned Sunday that the United States moves closer to preemptive war with North Korea every time Pyongyang carries out a missile or nuclear test.
North Korea’s test launch this week of an intercontinental ballistic missile has sent tensions soaring once again on the Korean peninsula, after a two month lull.
“If there’s an underground nuclear test, then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States,” Senator Lindsey Graham said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
His remarks echoed those of National Security Advisor HR McMaster, who told a security forum in Washington on Saturday that the potential for war with North Korea “is increasing every day.”
The United States has demanded tougher international sanctions, including cuts in oil shipments to the isolated state, but both McMaster and Graham suggested that the risk of war is growing despite the diplomatic efforts.
“We are in a race to be able to solve this problem,” said McMaster. “This would be the most destabilizing development I think in the post World War II period. It’s something that places us at direct risk but places the world at risk.”
Graham, a foreign policy hawk, said he has had extensive discussions with the Trump administration about the situation.
The administration’s policy, he said, is “to deny North Korea the capability to hit America with a nuclear-tipped missile. Not to contain it.”
“Denial means preemptive war as a last resort. That preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures. Every missile test, every underground test of a nuclear weapon, means the marriage is more likely.
“I think we’re really running out of time. The Chinese are trying, but ineffectively,” he said.
Beijing has backed a slew of sanctions that include bans on imports of North Korean coal, iron ore and seafood.
The UN also barred the hiring of North Korean guest workers and capped exports of refined petroleum products.
But China has refused to turn off its pipeline shipping crude to North Korea.
North Korea has boasted — and western experts agree — that the missile tested on Wednesday is capable of reaching the United States.
In September, it conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test. It is unclear whether it has succeeded in making nuclear warheads small enough to be put atop a missile.
This world is nauseatingly irrational. USA has appointed itself and its other proteges, the rulers of this world. They are the ones supposed to have this or that weaponry system whereas others are not supposed to have. If these others dare have, then risk the full wrath of the big brother US! Come to think of it. From the past experience, whom can the world entrust the nuclear weapons – USA which decimated hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Japan when it dropped 2 bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or N. Korea that has only threatened to do so? Had the world been rational and fair, USA would have been banned from having any nuclear weapons, judging from its past behaviour. It is even becoming terribly unpredictable with the rabidly volatile and hot tempered Trump. But here we are. When Libya was coarsed and sweet talked into abandoning its nuclear arms ambitions, the next thing it new was – being bombed with nuclear tipped bombs to extinction, and with its water bodies poisoned. It is such irresponsible actions by USA and its proteges that have fueled the nuclear war race.
I do not at all advocate for a nuclear war. But the slave-master mentality is not good a peaceful world order.