Tag: cold war

Trump v Kim: Warmongering rhetoric escalates between the two leaders, as the US President now retorts that North Korea ‘will regret any action it takes on Guam’

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un have been playing a high stakes poker game for some time, using world peace as a bargaining chip.

A few days ago, the US President said that North Korea would be met with ‘fire and fury like the world has even seen’, if the Pyongyang regime threatened US soil.

In response to such inflammatory comments, North Korea retorted that it is planning to launch an attack on the Pacific island of Guam, which is both a popular tourist destination and home to Andersen Air Base. The 36th Wing is housed there, providing mission support duties to a large number of civilian and military aircraft. Crucially, a significant portion of the US’ long-range capability (six B-1B bomber aircraft) are based at Andersen.

Trump, incensed at such low blow, today said that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, will ‘truly regret’ any action it takes against Guam.

Against such warmongering background, China stepped up and said that, should military conflict actually break out, the country will remain neutral if North Korea strikes first. However, if the US and/or South Korea are the ones to start the conflict, China will intervene militarily to defend the current socio-political landscape in the region.

Far from shying away from provocative rhetoric, Trump resorted to Twitter to say “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!”

The standoff carries dark and ominous undertones not seen since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and the escalation of the Cold War after the Able Archer European wargames of 1983.

North Korea is profoundly resentful of the latest raft of sanctions set against the country, over its ongoing testing of missiles, and both it and the US remain locked in a high-risk game of nuclear intentions, after US intelligence sources claimed that North Korea had developed a nuclear warhead small enough to fit into a missile that could theoretically reach US soil.

Still, despite the highly charged rhetoric, there has been no discernible change in the state of readiness of US military assets, so the next steps remain unclear.

Back to Havana! First scheduled flight between the US and Cuba in decades departs today

jetblue

Back in the early 1960s, the US and the then USSR were playing a dangerous game of military escalation that almost triggered thermonuclear war.

The USSR were using Cuba as a proxy in a high-stakes display of firepower, and when some US reconnaisance planes spotted a significant build-up of military hardware on the US’s backyard -including medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles (MRBMs and IRBMs) sites-, the brown stuff really did hit the fan.

The escalation directly led to the Cuban Missile Crisis of ’62, plus trade embargos, blockades, and more relevant to this piece, Cuba imposed a ban on all incoming flights from the US, a ban that has lasted to this very day.

History is being written today, however, as the first commercial flight between the US and Cuba in five decades takes off from Fort Lauderdale in Florida, bound for Santa Clara in Cuba.

JetBlue Flight 387, a 150-seater Airbus A320, is scheduled to depart at 9:45 a.m. EDT, and will fly the short 72-minute journey into history, a journey that open up a brand new era of U.S.-Cuba travel.

JetBlue’s landmark flight heralds big business, too, as other airlines are likely to establish links with Cuba in the near future. The forecast is for up to 400 flights weekly between the two countries, and with fares quoted as low as US$99 (€88) one way, most Americans have no excuse to fly to the beautiful island of Cuba.