… but the belligerent rhetoric between the two vain peacocks ruling the US and North Korea respectively, seems to have already resulted in a full-fledged war according to US-American cyberwar doctrine, it seems. It’s just that the North Koreans, if at all, aren’t fighting back in the physical world just yet. Sure, they haven’t gone “nucular” as George W. Bush would say, but we’re at the brink of war and the moderate forces in the US seem to take the backseat once again. It sure pays off to be a wartime POTUS. And for Trump it’s all about profit and getting the best deal for himself. So he’s in.
What am I up to here? Well, remember a few years ago?
When warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country. We reserve the right to use all necessary means — diplomatic, informational, military, and economic — as appropriate and consistent with applicable international law, in order to defend our Nation, our allies, our partners, and our interests. In so doing, we will exhaust all options before military force whenever we can; will carefully weigh the costs and risks of action against the costs of inaction; and will act in a way that reflects our values and strengthens our legitimacy, seeking broad international support whenever possible.
International Strategy for Cyberspace, The White House, 2011
According to that very same Wikipedia article, they went even further by stating:
The cyber threat is serious, with potential consequences similar in some ways to the nuclear threat of the Cold War
That’s right. Not only did Donald Trump manage to use the UN general assembly — an institution created to foster diplomacy and avoid war — to effectively declare a war on North Korea:
No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles. The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing, and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. That’s what the United Nations is all about. That’s what the United Nations is for. Let’s see how they do.
Effectively the US is already waging war on North Korea according to its own doctrine. Indeed, what the Washington Post reports on as Trump signed presidential directive ordering actions to pressure North Korea is — according to the USA’s own cyberwar doctrine — an act of war.
Trump and any US citizen reading this ought to be ashamed! Not only has the US — as well as other powers with nukes — failed to deliver on the promises made in the NPT a little under fifty years ago: complete disarmament of nuclear weapons. Now they’re even threatening another nation with total destruction in the one arena which was created with peace in mind: the UN general assembly. And no one on Earth has any illusions about the kind of weapons the US intents to unleash, should they deliver on their threat.
Why on Earth would North Korea abandon its efforts to become a nuclear power when you openly threaten to annihilate it? Why on Earth should North Korea abandon those efforts, seeing that you shun Iran for — brace yourself — obliging to the deal which was painstakingly negotiated in years of hard work by multiple international parties? Heck, I have no sympathy for Kim Jong Un, but I can tell you that I do understand why he’s holding on to his nukes and attempts to improve the technology even further.
Neither party of this conflict has the moral high ground, also known as legitimacy. Those holding the moral high ground are not party to the conflict, but we all are going to suffer from the consequences if either or all parties of the conflict “go nuclear”. Instead those who aren’t part of the conflict sat together to make sure none of the nuclear powers will ever again be able to claim the moral high ground by coming up with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons also known as Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty. And the best the US could do was to pressure NATO and non-NATO states into abstaining from the conferences preceding the treaty, the votes and ultimately bullying nations into not signing or ratifying the treaty. Western values, I presume …
// Oliver