After NK’s Humiliating Retreat, US Is Adding Insult to Injury Right on Border

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The United States and South Korea plan to perform a series of joint exercises in the last days of August designed to simulate warfare with North Korea, and this despite an actual war with the rogue regime having just been averted after North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un backed down from a threat to launch missiles at a U.S. territory.

Though these Aug. 21-31 exercises had been scheduled far in advance of the recent confrontation with the rogue regime, which it was recently learned might now possess the capability to strike the U.S. homeland with nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles, the fact that both nations intend to continue with them has many worried about how exactly Kim might react.

It was only days ago that the unhinged despot backed down from a serious threat to launch missiles toward the U.S. territory of Guam, earning himself some unexpected praise from U.S. President Donald Trump, who had previously threatened to bring “fire and fury” upon North Korea if Kim moved forward with the attack plan.

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As the U.S. president and no doubt everybody else on Earth realized, had Kim gone through with his planned attacked, all hell would have broken loose.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea made a very wise and well reasoned decision. The alternative would have been both catastrophic and unacceptable!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017

The concern now is that the war game exercises, slated to be performed in South Korea, could very well once again trigger Kim’s unbridled anger.

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“The drill will definitely provoke Pyongyang more, and Pyongyang is expected to make a more radical response,” an editorial in China’s Global Times newspaper, an army of the Communist Party’s People’s Daily, warned Monday. “If South Korea really wants no war on the Korean Peninsula, it should try to stop this military exercise.”

It’s an indisputable fact that North Korea has a tendency to overreact during U.S. and South Korean war exercises. As McClatchy reported: “In 2014, the North fired off scud missiles during the March exercises held by the U.S.-South Korean command, called Foal Eagle.”

The same thing happened the year after. Now just imagine the Hermit Kingdom responding this year by firing nuclear missiles instead.

China and Russia have reportedly been encouraging U.S. officials to suspend the games and other training exercises as part of a tentative agreement in which Kim would agree to suspend his frequent tests of missiles and nuclear weapons.

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However, as noted by Bruce Bennett, a senior defense researcher at RAND, such a deal would allow North Korea to continue with its own training exercises.

“It is hard to imagine why the United States would accept that, because of the vulnerability it would create,” he told McClatchy.

As of Saturday, it didn’t appear either the U.S. or South Korea intended to back down from their plans.

H/T Fox News

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