Washington's objections to North Korea's nuclear deterrent are hypocritical, says a leading geopolitical analyst.
The US launched seaborne military exercises with Japan and South Korea on Tuesday off Jeju island in the East China Sea — the second set of joint manoeuvres in the Pacific region this month.
The southern Republic of Korea Navy claimed in a statement that the latest provocative manoeuvres were intended to "strengthen the response posture and capabilities against North Korea’s escalating nuclear and missile threats."
The northern Democratic People's Republic of Korea has made a series of advances in nuclear, missile and peaceful satellite technology over the past 15 years after the US refused to honour an agreement to build a light-water atomic power plant in the east Asian country — while continuing large-scale military exercises near the 1953 armistice line twice a year.
Washington still refuses to condemn nuclear proliferation by its allies Pakistan and Israel.
Dr David Oualaalou told Sputnik that North Korea had been forced to develop its own nuclear deterrent "because there was always that threat to them" from the the US, the only country to ever use atomic weapons on another country.
He said the current geopolitical dynamics only confirmed that decision, in light of the new AUKUS alliance which will see the US and UK provide cruise missile-armed nuclear submarines to Australia.
"Then you look at also with the agreement we made with South Korea that we're going to move some nuclear submarines there," the international expert pointed out. "Then you have now the alliance that's just been declared recently between the US, Japan and South Korea. Then you have now Indonesia purchasing F-15s from the US. Then you have the Philippines: we are declaring publicly our support for Philippines. "
"All this sort of let North Korea think twice as saying 'we're going to have to defend ourselves by any means', because the more nuclear weapons gets closer to their borders, the more alarmed that they're going to become," Oualaalou said.
In light of North Korea's growing deterrent ability, the US is once again offering peace talks "without preconditions" as it did in the 1990s and 2017, the commentator noted.
But he said Pyongyang was unlikely to trust Washington again after so many promises broken by previous US administrations.
"How can they trust us when we did that back in 1994 and we went back on our words by not building the nuclear reactor plant that we promised so they can get the nuclear fuel for their electricity?" Oualaalou asked. "We went back in our word and it's kind of like, 'No, we're not going to trust you, we're going to build our own'."
When former US president Donald Trump launched his détente with Pyongyang, he attacked the practice begun by previous administrations of flying nuclear-capable strategic bombers up to the heavily-militarized 'Demilitarized Zone' separating north and south Korea before turning away at the last minute.
"He understood back then and still understands it — and many others — that the US troops are within range of North Korea's missiles," Oualaalou said. "This is one of the reasons why we never attempted to conduct any, for example, military special operations in North Korea or any of those kind of sorts of activities, because we know North Korea does not bluff."
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