IS NUCLEAR WAR POSSIBLE IN KOREAN PENINSULA?  

The emergence of the President Donald Trump-led administration in America this January has brought with it many apprehensions both within the political space of the United States of America and globally.

In many ways, the emergence of the totally inexperienced politician as the world’s most powerful political figure has understandably created a constant state of tension of unprecedented dimension.

First, President Trump is battling with internal political forces known as the 'deep state' who are doing every conceivable thing to destabilize his Administration.

The Democratic party has yet to fully come to terms that it lost power phenomenally to a greenhorn from the Republican party. They have latched on to the gross inexperience of Donsld Trump to attack virtually all his decisions. The majority of the U.S media are not in good terms withthe Trump's government which has polarised the Presidency and the media which is the fourth estateof the realm.

Whereas the American media is working hard to portray President Trump as dishonest the Presidency of Trump has also used every public speaking opportunities to characterise majority of the media in America as unreliable and has popularised the phrase- 'fake news' for such globally reputable news channels like CNN amongst others.

These internal political forces waging war against the administration of President Trump have even extended their influences to the judicial arm of the United States Society to such an extent that all the efforts made by the American President to bring into effect his travel ban through Executive orders have all but been invalidated by Federal Courts which considered them as targeting Members of the Islamic Faith for alienation.

The confusions that greeted the enforcement of the ill-fated first Executive Order which banned citizens from 7 mostly Islamic nations from visiting USA didn't help the image of President Trump.

The Trump's Administration has had to contend with series of mass demonstrations both within and without the United States environments from demonstrators angry at his style of leadership which they feared would isolate the united states from the rest of the world.

Externally, President Trump has not experienced joy of the prestigious office because even before he was sworn in, he had a brush with the Chinese Administration over his phone conversation with the leader of Taiwan.

This action was considered a slap on China given that China still regards Taiwan as an integral part of china just as the phone conversation between the then United States President-Elect Mr. Donald Trump and the Taiwanese premier was seen as a breach of the one china policy signed onto by the United States since 1972.

And then, not far from china, the irrepressible young ruler of North Korea has become a thorn in the flesh of the united states new administration with the provocative actions of conducting nuclear test twice around the Korean Peninsula which threatens to generate global wide conflagration. The North Korean war mongering President has even boasted that his military has developed a nuclear warhead that can be transported within few hours into the USA.

The North Korean ruling dynasty has close ties to the Chinese Government and is known to have always deferred to China on matters of such international dimension.

The unilateral decision of the North Korean leader to authorize two controversial tests of nuclear war heads which fell on both seaside close to South Korea and Japan is seen as the North Korean ruler’s unique way of sending hardline message to president Trump that North Korean military might has become enigmatic.

The silence of China which usually calms down the North Korean leader to scale down on those provocative actions is also disconcerting.

However, even as South Korea and japan are not sleeping with their two eyes closed because of the imminent threats of nuclear attacks from their bellicose neighbor-North Korea, the United States President Mr. Donald Trump has sent serious note of warning to the reclusive north Korean leader that it will not be business as usual.

Even before all of these issues of north Korean’s provocative nuclear test, the united states president had told his nation that America will surely build more sophisticated nuclear armaments.

The resolution of President Trump’s Administration to make America the world’s greatest nuclear power is interpreted to mean that the agreement by the nuclear powers of the world to stop further nuclear power acquisitions may have collapsed.

Fast forward to what has just been revealed by the United States secretary of state’s Mr. Rex Tillerson, who is visiting South Korea in the first of his top level visit to South East Asia.

The Secretary of State who is America’s top most diplomat has told North Korea to expect the hardest response from the U.S should it (North Korea) attack either south Korea or Japan.

The top U.S diplomat openly informed the North Korean restless tyrannical ruler that America has run out of patience with his administration as it relates to North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear power.

The weight of that statement made by the Secretary of State shows that the prospect of a nuclear war is imminent and that the rest of the world have not seen the last of what Thomas Hobbes described as state of nature whereby life becomes short, miserable, bruttish and uninteresting and whereby might is right.

The Hobbesian scenario may occur should there be a nuclear war because of the strategic nature of the Korean peninsula in East Asia which straddles nations with the largest populations of human beings on the planet Earth. Some of the World's most prosperous nations are found around those axis.

Again, any such nuclear uprising in the Korean Peninsula would have global wide environmental impacts and would quicken the consequences of climate change.

In the news reports of the cable news network (CNN), we were told that Mr. Rex Tillerson said the United States would consider military actions against North Korea if it was provoked.

Although he did not disclosed the red line.
Speaking in Seoul at a joint press conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Tillerson said Washington's policy of "strategic patience" had ended.

"Certainly, we do not want things to get to a military conflict ... but obviously, if North Korea takes actions that threatens the South Korean forces or our own forces, then that would be met with an appropriate response," he said, in response to a question from CNN.

"If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe that requires action, that option is on the table," Tillerson added.

Later Friday morning, President Donald Trump denounced North Korea, tweeting, "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!"

Tillerson's remarks comes at a time when the US intelligence community and the Defense Department are increasingly anticipating that North Korea will soon undertake anew round of testing of its missile and nuclear program; half a dozen US officials have told CNN.

The secretary of state is on a three-country tour to the region amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula following recent North Korea missile launches, and fears it's preparing foranother nuclear test.

In Tokyo Thursday, Tillerson said efforts over the past 20 years tohalt North Korea's nuclear development had failed .

He said it was time for a new policy on North Korea, but released no details. It is clear that he sees Beijing, where he will fly to Saturday, as a key part of Washington's new approach.

A senior Chinese official told CNN this week that Beijing plans to present itsown plan to Tillerson during his visit .

However, Tillerson dismissed suggestions by Beijing that the US should drop joint military exercises with South Korea as a show of good faith to Pyongyang. Washington did "not believe that conditions are right to engage in any talks at this time."

"Conditions must change before there are any scopes for talks to resume, whether they are five parties or six parties," he said.”

Even as china is highly expected to mediate and get the north Korean ruler to drop his aggression towards the south and japan, it is still too early in the day to dream that all is well in the Korean Peninsula because so long as this unpredictable maverick politician remains in power in North Korea, the prospect of a nuclear war cannot be ruled out.

This is because the North Korean reclusive ruler Mr. Kim Jon-un has been accused of killing his many uncles who were military generals and is principally suspected by Malaysia of being behind the recent assassination of his Half-brother in Malaysia – Kim Jong Nam.

Because of the devastating consequences of any future nuclear war, it is the overwhelming opinion of this writer that China must be encouraged to take all necessary actions to stop their friend in North Korea from instigating such a phenomenal war.

And as if scientists were in anticipation of the madness currently playing out within the Korean peninsula, they have already conducted a research on how the world looks like should there be any nuclear war.

The Daily Mail of Britain reported that the “terrible fate of Earth after a nuclear war has been mapped out using computer models for the first time.

Worldwide famine, deadly frosts, global ozone losses of up to 50 per cent and more would greet any inhabitants of the planet still remaining after a nuclear conflict.

And the researchers hope their study of what they call a relatively 'small' nuclear war will serve as a deterrent against such weapons being used by any nation in the future.

The unnerving consequences were laid out in a paper called ‘Multidecadal global cooling and unprecedented ozone loss following a regional nuclear conflict.”

For now all hopes are still not lost that all the actors in this emerging disagreements in the Korean peninsula can come to their senses and ceasefire for the sake of our common humanity.

*Emmanuel Onwubiko is Head of HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) and blogs @[email protected]; www.emmanuelonwubiko.