The two dozen B-52 and B-1 bombers are being sent to the region to provide U.S. president George Bush with "all the military options" needed "to order a strike on the North’s nuclear plant at Yongbyon," the New York Times reported March 5.

While stating that the "military option is our last choice," Bush said on March 3 that if the U.S. pressure tactics "don’t work diplomatically, they’ll have to work militarily."

Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff noted in the February 28 issue that "contingency plans" being discussed in the Pentagon include a "range of military options from surgical cruise missile strikes to sledgehammer bombing." There "is even talk," he wrote, "of using tactical nuclear weapons to neutralize" the north’s artillery.  
 
U.S. spy plane tailed by Korean jets
In the March 2 incident Washington’s RC-135S spy plane was tailed for about 20 minutes by four north Korean MiG fighter jets over the Sea of Japan. One of the Korean pilots gestured to the U.S. flight crew to "get out of there," a senior U.S. military officer reported.

U.S. officials said the incident occurred at a distance of 150 miles from the north Korean coast. However, the Washington Post quoted "analysts in Asia" who said that "the plane may have been closer to North Korean airspace than the Pentagon reported," given the fact that "U.S. spy craft routinely fly closer."

South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun said the aerial encounter was "very predictable," given the increased U.S. spy flights around north Korea.

One day before the incident the north Korean news agency reported that a U.S. RC-135S aircraft had "illegally intruded into the air above territorial waters in the East Sea almost every day from February 21 and made shuttle flights in the air for hours to spy on major targets in the east coastal area."

The U.S. military flies "regular reconnaissance" flights, including high-flying U-2s, over north Korea, the Financial Times reported. The aircraft is loaded with surveillance hardware, including infrared telescopes and photographic equipment.

The incident marked the closest airborne confrontation between the two governments since April 1969, when a north Korean pilot shot down a Navy spy plane in the same area, killing all 31 crew members. Pentagon officials say they may send U.S. fighter jets as "escorts" on the next spying mission.

As these events unfolded the joint U.S.-south Korean "Foal Eagle" military exercises, simulating an aggression against the north and involving hundreds of thousands of troops, commenced on March 4. Some 5,000 U.S. troops have arrived to reinforce the 37,000 stationed in the south for the month-long maneuvers, which have been held each year since 1961. The exercises will involve a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and will last until April 2.

The north Korean news media warned against the use of the military exercises--some of which will be located near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)--as a cover for a military strike.

Even before the drills began, thousands of U.S. soldiers carried out a warm-up mock battle near the heavily armed border. "This Foal Eagle exercise is escalating the danger of armed clashes on the Korean Peninsula," warned Minju Joson, a north Korean newspaper.

U.S. government officials and the capitalist media justify the military threats against north Korea by hurling accusations that the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) plans to use its nuclear power plant to produce weapons-grade plutonium. "Once they start reprocessing, it’s a bomb a month from now until summer," declared U.S. deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage on February 28. He told Congress that the north Korean government would sell plutonium to "a nonstate actor or a rogue state."

North Korean officials explain that the reactor will help them deal with the country’s huge electricity generation shortfall. In late February, north Korea’s director of energy, Kim Jae Rok, told London’s Sunday Telegraph that his government also plans to build four nuclear power plants to "enable us to meet the urgent need for electricity supplies in our country."

The government moved to restart the Yongbyon reactor after Washington cut off fuel oil supplies that had been guaranteed under a 1994 agreement. Construction of two reactors, part of the same deal, has also been halted.

Even before the current crisis, the country of 22 million people was functioning on 2 gigawatts of energy, less than the amount consumed by a U.S. city of 1 million people, according to a survey by a California-based research outfit. The study, conducted in 2000 by the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, said that there is not enough power to run the electric pumps needed to irrigate fields, or to power factories to make fertilizer, tractor parts, and other essentials.

Before the breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of much of north Korea’s trade, the country had been "fully electrified," said one of the authors of the study. The energy shortages that have dogged the country through the 1990s also exacerbated the impact of alternating droughts and flooding, according to the survey.  
 
Calls for direct talks
The DPRK’s calls for direct talks with the U.S. government to negotiate a nonaggression pact and the nuclear issue to defuse tensions have been repeatedly rebuffed by Washington. The Bush administration has instead insisted on "multilateral talks" involving other governments in the region.

Expressing differences with Washington’s approach, south Korean president Roh told Britain’s Times newspaper, "Ultimately this problem has to be resolved by President Bush and [north Korea’s] Chairman Kim Jong Il."

Meanwhile, the Japanese government has announced plans to launch its first-ever spy satellites at the end of March, targeting the region.

Japanese officials have also "spoken of mounting a ‘preemptive strike’ against North Korea," reported the February 23 New York Times. "Our nation will use military force as a self-defense measure if they start to resort to arms against Japan," said Japanese defense minister Shigeru Ishiba.

"The ceaseless saber-rattling by the U.S." is "creating an extremely tense situation where it may make a preemptive strike" at any time, said a DPRK foreign ministry spokesman on February 26. "This compels the army and the people of the DPRK to keep themselves in full readiness."
 
 
Related articles:
Iraq: British, U.S. forces move toward invasion
Washington targets Iran as ‘nuclear threat’
Bring the troops home now!  
 
 
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