Most people can remember from their childhood the kids, who when they didn’t get their way in a game of kickball or other playground activity, simply took the ball and left. They stomped off like the angry little child that they were. In the world, countries have their own share of the angry little children among them. Chief of these being North Korea, or as they prefer to be called, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Amongst other times, North Korea becomes particularly whiny when the United States conducts military exercises with its allies in the South. Regardless of the petty threats and tantrums Mr. Un may throw, these drills are a powerful signal to the North and its allies that any act of aggression towards South Korea would meet with swift and strategic action on the part of the United States.
This March 2 through April 24, the United States begins its annual war games exercises with South Korea. To coincide with this, the North regularly renews its pledges to destroy the America and makes various threats regarding to budding nuclear program. In further shows of displeasure, North Korea even launches some of its own domestically produced missiles into the ocean, in the hopes that the United States will be cowed into submission.
The North makes the claim that these war games are offensive in nature and has even gone so far as to say that it is only prelude for a preemptive nuclear strike against their homeland. This complaint reeks of hypocrisy as the North conducts its own military drills, many of which involve actual infiltrations of the South via tunnels that have been discovered under the Demilitarized Zone and even using midget submarines to sneak in using the water ways.
The United States and South Korean joint exercises are designed to simulate coordinated action if the North was ever to begin full offensive operations against its southern neighbors. Therefore, the first steps to be taken if an act of war ensued on the Korean Peninsula, the first moves made by the U.S. and South Korean forest would be shield the rest of the south from further attack, and then begin offensive movements.
In the past, the military drills have been postponed in a sort of appeasement towards the North during negotiations involving its nuclear program. That mindset however, has changed in recent years as the North has continued to press on with is acquisition of more radioactive material.
North Korea has also used the joint exercises as a political tool, to use its heavily censored state run media to paint the U.S. and the South as imperialist aggressors. This helps them justify their further expansion of the military and continual missile test launches that coincide with the South Korean war games.
Throughout this entire process, there has been one consistent wild card. Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s hereditary ruler, has followed in his father’s footsteps in actions only. He makes bigger threats, more denunciations about the West and makes bolder claims to North Korea’s sovereignty over the South.
All in all, with the boldness of North Korea continuing at a rapid rate, and being led by a young, ambitious and unpredictable ruler, it is imperative that the U.S. and South Korean military war games go on as scheduled so as to project power into that tense region of the world.