1989 generated the impulse to invade Panama, and how the national bankruptcy of
October 1990 confirmed Bush's intent to wage war in the Gulf. Since the bombing of
Iraq, governments all of the developing sector have been asking who will be the next
target of the insane Bush regime when the US economy takes its next sickening lurch into
depression. Bush's deception operations and real vacillation keep the constellation of
possible targets in constant flux, but a number of prime candidates can be identified.
NORTH KOREA. Harbingers of a looming confrontation with North Korea became
unmistakable during October, precisely timed with the growing popular awareness of
depression and Bush's renewed free fall in the public opinion polls. During November,
1991 Bush sent both Secretary of State James Baker and Secretary of Defense Dick
Cheney to the Far East, with featured stopevers in South Korea. The central issue hyped
during each of these tours was US allegations of a North Korean program to produce
weapons grade plutonium for nuclear weapons. In the wake of Bush's attack on Iraq, the
South Korean defense minister had twice issued threats of military action to wipe out the
alleged North Korean facilities. Baker ranted that North Korea's supposed plan to acquire
nuclear weapons within two to five years was the biggest threat to the security of Asia,
and that all states in the region, including the USSR, Japan, and China must unite in
pressuring North Korea to desist, and open its facilities for international inspectors on
fishing expeditions of the type seen during 1991 in Iraq.
This issue, said Baker, was far too important to be left to the Koreans. Kuwait, we recall,
was also too important to be left to the Arabs. Under the technological apartheid
sponsored by the Bush regime, nuclear energy of any sort, no matter how peaceful, is
defined as a dual-use technology, and is therefore automatically to be proscribed. When
Cheney got to Seoul, he announced that the planned reductions in US forces stationed in
South Korea had been cancelled because of the supposed North Korean threat. Officials
travelling in the entourage of Cheney and Powell issued ominous warnings that North
Korea's "nuclear arms program must be stopped in advance without fail." From the
Cheney-Powell retinue came the word that diplomatic and economic sacntions, rather
than bombing raids, were the preferred options to force Pyongyang to submit. Sound
familiar?
A North Korean adventure possesses powerful attractions for Bush. He has already
waged two wars, and popular sensibilities at home have become correspondingly jaded.
Some are even being to see through his demagogic game. For a true policy of terror and
Schrecklichkeit, something more dramatic than a "standard" war is needed. The obvious
way to escalate is to make nuclear weapons and nuclear terror the central thematic issue
of the confrontation from the very beginning. During the Gulf crisis, Scowcroft, Quayle
and others reflected the Bush regime's common belief that nuclear proliferation was its
most powerful argument. A clash with North Korea would be the perfect occasion to play
this card once again.
In the Asian regional setting, Bush is interested in preventing or at least delaying the
peaceful re-unification of North and South Korea, which might occur through the
collapse of the North Korea regime in the wake of Kim Il Sung's exit from the scene.