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" they will eat grass, but they will not abandon this program unless they feel safe.” Wah, Russia mau alirkan gas bahan bakar lewat pipa ke Korea utara dan kemudian ke Korea Selatan, bikin ke dua bagian Korea kerjasama ? *While Trump Tweets, Putin Steals a March on North Korea * The Russian president has been busy this week sowing the seeds of Kremlin-led diplomacy as a solution to the impasse on the Korean Peninsula M.K. Bhadrakumar http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/while-trump-tweets- putin-steals-march-north-korea/ri20857 The message from the two-day Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) conference, which concluded in Vladivostok on Thursday, is that Russia’s “pivot to Asia” in recent years, in the downstream of Western sanctions against it, has become a core vector of its foreign policies. The EEF began modestly in 2015 with the agenda of showcasing the “new reality” of a role for the Russian Far East in the economic integration of the Asia-Pacific region. But this year’s EEF waded into the critical regional security issue of North Korea. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed, inter alia, that a North Korean delegation would attend the EEF event. He said, “As I understand, the DPRK’s delegation to the EEF consists of representatives of the economic bloc. We (Russia) also have representatives of our economic ministries and departments here. So I think, meetings within the profile structures of the two countries will take place.” This comes at a time when administration of US President Donald Trump is stepping up its rhetoric and demanding more sanctions against North Korea. Curiously, South Korean President Moon Jae-In also attended the EEF conference, taking time off to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok on Wednesday. Moon may well be quietly admiring of Putin for saying things upfront about North Korea which he is unable to do himself. When talking to the media in Xiamen on Tuesday following the BRICS summit, Putin had done some plain speaking regarding North Korea. Notably, he said: “Everyone remembers well what happened to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Hussein abandoned the production of weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless… Saddam Hussein himself and his family were killed… Even children died back then. His grandson, I believe, was shot to death. The country was destroyed… North Koreans are also aware of it and remember it. Do you think that following the adoption of some sanctions, North Korea will abandon its course on creating weapons of mass destruction? “Certainly, the North Koreans will not forget it. Sanctions of any kind are useless and ineffective in this case. As I said to one of my colleagues yesterday, they will eat grass, but they will not abandon this program unless they feel safe.” After meeting Moon, Putin again urged that dialogue is the only way out of the crisis. Putin is well aware that Moon has a pivotal role in preventing US President Donald Trump from taking military risks, and he cannot be unaware that some fractures have appeared lately in the US-South Korea alliance. Significantly, Moon said at his press conference with Putin on Wednesday: “Mr. President and I have also agreed to build up the basis for the implementation of trilateral projects with participation of the two Koreas and Russia, which will connect the Korean Peninsula and the Russian Far East… We have decided to give priority to the projects that can be implemented in the near future, primarily in the Far East. The development of the Far East will promote the prosperity of our two countries and will also help change North Korea and create the basis for the implementation of the trilateral agreements. We will be working hard on this.” To jog memories, Moscow has, in the past, mooted certain infrastructural projects involving North Korea that might hold the potential to stabilize the region: an extension of the Trans-Siberian railway system into South Korea via North Korea; a gas pipeline connecting South and North Korea with the vast Russian oil and gas fields in the Far East; and transmission lines to take surplus electricity from the Russian Far East to the Korean Peninsula. South Korean companies are involved in Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 energy projects and are currently discussing with Russia the delivery of liquefied natural gas. South Korean shipyards are hoping to build 15 tankers to transport gas from the Yamal LNG plant in the Russian Far East. Putin stated at the press conference with Moon that “Russia is still willing to implement trilateral projects with the participation of North Korea.” He flagged the above three projects specifically and added, “The implementation of these initiatives will be not only economically beneficial, but will also help build up trust and stability on the Korean Peninsula.” The big question is whether there was some form of contact between the delegations of North and South Korea on the sidelines of the EEF conference in Vladivostok. Russia, the host country, is uniquely placed to play the role of facilitator. At any rate, Moscow is willing to undertake a mediatory role between the two Koreas, which no other world capital today can perform. It can talk to Pyongyang to raise its comfort level and integrate North Korea in regional cooperation, while also easing South Korea’s existential angst. Moscow’s trump card is its privileged communication channels to Pyongyang and its common interests with Seoul (and Beijing, and Tokyo) in avoiding a catastrophic war. In the given situation, Russian diplomacy becomes optimal. While bringing about peace, it also holds the potential to create wealth and shared prosperity, which provides the bedrock for regional stability and helps the development of the Russian Far East. Incidentally, Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Yang, the point person for China’s Belt and Road Initiative, also attended the EEF meet. Putin arrived in Vladivostok from China where he held detailed discussions with President Xi Jinping on Monday regarding the situation on the Korean Peninsula. A high degree of Sino-Russian coordination on North Korea is already evident. Any Russian peace initiative on North Korea will be a reflection on the failure of leadership in Washington. The Trump administration is unlikely to view such a scenario with equanimity, given its far-reaching implications for the US-led system of alliances in the Far East. Source: Asia Times *After US RegimeChange Wars North Korea's Kim Would Be Stupid Not to Pursue Nuclear Weapons * The US-led aggressions against Iraq and Libya provided a grim example to Pyongyang of what happens to leaders who get rid of WMDs Robert Parry http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/after-us-regime- change-wars-north-koreas-kim-would-be-stupid-not-pursue-nuclear-weapons It is a popular meme in the U.S. media to say that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “crazy” as he undertakes to develop a nuclear bomb and a missile capacity to deliver it, but he is actually working from a cold logic dictated by the U.S. government’s aggressive wars and lack of integrity. Indeed, the current North Korea crisis, which could end up killing millions of people, can be viewed as a follow-on disaster to President George W. Bush’s Iraq War and President Barack Obama’s Libyan intervention. Those wars came after the leaders of Iraq and Libya had dismantled their dangerous weapons programs, leaving their countries virtually powerless when the U.S. government chose to invade. In both cases, the U.S. government also exploited its power over global information to spread lies about the targeted regimes as justification for the invasions — and the world community failed to do anything to block the U.S. aggressions. And, on a grim personal note, the two leaders, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, were then brutally murdered, Hussein by hanging and Gaddafi by a mob that first sodomized him with a knife. So, the neoconservatives who promoted the Iraq invasion supposedly to protect the world from Iraq’s alleged WMDs — and the liberal interventionists who pushed the Libya invasion based on false humanitarian claims — may now share in the horrific possibility that millions of people in North Korea, South Korea, Japan and maybe elsewhere could die from real WMDs launched by North Korea and/or by the United States. Washington foreign policy “experts” who fault President Trump’s erratic and bellicose approach toward this crisis may want to look in the mirror and consider how they contributed to the mess by ignoring the predictable consequences from the Iraq and Libya invasions. Yes, I know, at the time it was so exciting to celebrate the Bush Doctrine of preemptive wars even over a “one percent” suspicion that a “rogue state” like Iraq might share WMDs with terrorists — or the Clinton Doctrine hailed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s acolytes enamored by her application of “smart power” to achieve “regime change” in Libya. However, as we now know, both wars were built upon lies. Iraq did not possess WMD stockpiles as the Bush administration claimed, and Libya was not engaged in mass murder of civilians in rebellious areas in the eastern part of the country as the Obama administration claimed. Post-invasion investigations knocked down Bush’s WMD myth in Iraq, and a British parliamentary inquiry concluded that Western governments misrepresented the situation in eastern Libya where Gaddafi forces were targeting armed rebels but not indiscriminately killing civilians. But those belated fact-finding missions were no comfort to either Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, nor to their countries, which have seen mass slaughters resulting from the U.S.-sponsored invasions and today amount to failed states. There also has been virtually no accountability for the war crimes committed by the Bush and Obama administrations. Bush and Obama both ended up serving two terms as President. None of Bush’s senior advisers were punished – and Hillary Clinton received the 2016 Democratic Party’s nomination for President. As for the U.S. mainstream media, which behaved as boosters for both invasions, pretty much all of the journalistic war advocates have continued on with their glorious careers. To excuse their unprofessional behavior, some even have pushed revisionist lies, such as the popular but false claim that Saddam Hussein was to blame because he pretended that he did have WMDs – when the truth is that his government submitted a detailed 12,000-page report to the United Nations in December 2002 describing how the WMDs had been destroyed (though that accurate account was widely mocked and ultimately ignored). Pervasive Dishonesty The dishonesty that now pervades the U.S. government and the U.S. mainstream media represents another contributing factor to the North Korean crisis. What sensible person anywhere on the planet would trust U.S. assurances? Who would believe what the U.S. government says, except, of course, the U.S. mainstream media? Remember also that North Korea’s nuclear program had largely been mothballed before George W. Bush delivered his “axis of evil” speech in January 2002, which linked Iran and Iraq – then bitter enemies – with North Korea. After that, North Korea withdrew from earlier agreements on limiting its nuclear development and began serious work on a bomb. Yet, while North Korea moved toward a form of mutual assured destruction, Iraq and Libya chose a different path. In Iraq, to head off a threatened U.S.-led invasion, Hussein’s government sought to convince the international community that it had lived up to its commitments regarding the destruction of its WMD arsenal and programs. Besides the detailed declaration, Iraq gave U.N. weapons inspectors wide latitude to search on the ground. But Bush cut short the inspection efforts in March 2003 and launched his “shock and awe” invasion, which led to the collapse of Hussein’s regime and the dictator’s eventual capture and hanging. Gaddafi’s Gestures In Libya, Gaddafi also sought to cooperate with international demands regarding WMDs. In late 2003, he announced that his country would eliminate its unconventional weapons programs, including a nascent nuclear project. Gaddafi also sought to get Libya out from under economic sanctions by taking responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Scotland, although he and his government continued to deny carrying out the terror attack that killed 270 people. But these efforts to normalize Libya’s relations with the West failed to protect him or his country. In 2011 when Islamic militants staged an uprising around Benghazi, Gaddafi moved to crush it, and Secretary of State Clinton eagerly joined with some European countries in seeking military intervention to destroy Gaddafi’s regime. The United Nations Security Council approved a plan for the humanitarian protection of civilians in and around Benghazi, but the Obama administration and its European allies exploited that opening to mount a full-scale “regime change” war. Prominent news personalities, such as MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, cheered on the war with the claim that Gaddafi had American “blood on his hands” over the Pan Am 103 case because he had accepted responsibility. The fact that his government continued to deny actual guilt – and the international conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was a judicial travesty – was ignored. Almost no one in the West dared question the longtime groupthink of Libyan guilt. By October 2011, Gaddafi had fled Tripoli and was captured by rebels in Sirte. He was tortured, sodomized with a knife and then executed. Clinton, whose aides felt she should claim credit for Gaddafi’s overthrow as part of a Clinton Doctrine, celebrated his murder with a laugh and a quip, “We came; we saw; he died.” President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton honor the four victims of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, on Sept. 14, 2012. [State Department photo) But Gaddafi’s warnings about Islamist terrorists in Benghazi came back to haunt Clinton when on Sept. 11, 2012, militants attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA station there, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The obsessive Republican investigation into the Benghazi attack failed to demonstrate many of the lurid claims about Clinton’s negligence, but it did surface the fact that she had used a private server for her official State Department emails, which, in turn, led to an FBI investigation which severely damaged her 2016 presidential run. Lessons Learned Meanwhile, back in North Korea, the young dictator Kim Jong Un was taking all this history in. According to numerous sources, he concluded that his and North Korea’s only safeguard would be a viable nuclear deterrent to stave off another U.S.-sponsored “regime change” war — with him meeting a similar fate as was dealt to Hussein and Gaddafi. Since then, Kim and his advisers have made clear that the surrender of North Korea’s small nuclear arsenal is off the table. They make the understandable point that the United States has shown bad faith in other cases in which leaders have given up their WMDs in compliance with international demands and then saw their countries invaded and faced grisly executions themselves. Now, the world faces a predicament in which an inexperienced and intemperate President Trump confronts a crisis that his two predecessors helped to create and make worse. Trump has threatened “fire and fury” like the world has never seen, suggesting a nuclear strike on North Korea, which, in turn, has vowed to retaliate. Millions of people on the Korean peninsula and Japan – and possibly elsewhere – could die in such a conflagration. The world’s economy could be severely shaken, given Japan’s and South Korea’s industrial might and the size of their consumer markets. If such a horror does come to pass, the U.S. government and the U.S. mainstream media will surely revert to their standard explanation that Kim was simply “crazy” and brought this destruction on himself. Trump’s liberal critics also might attack Trump for bungling the diplomacy. But the truth is that many of Washington’s elite policymakers – both on the Republican and Democratic sides – will share in the blame. And so too should the U.S. mainstream media. Source: Consortiumnews
