The DPRK diplomat also warned that participation in the exercises by governments that are also involved in six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear programs would “create an obstacle” to any meaningful negotiations. The governments of China and south Korea—which are parties to these negotiations along with Moscow, Tokyo, and Washington—declined to participate in the war games.

The naval exercise, dubbed “Team Samurai,” started October 26 and lasted for three days. They were led by Washington and included warships from Australia, France, and Japan. They are part of the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), under which Washington and its imperialist allies assert the right to stop, board, and confiscate the cargo of any ships they decide are suspect of carrying “weapons of mass destruction” or materials that could be used for their production.

U.S. undersecretary of state John Bolton personally reviewed the maneuvers from the deck of a Japanese Coast Guard vessel. “We are sending a signal to everybody who wants to traffic weapons of mass destruction that we have zero tolerance for that,” Bolton said. He also charged that north Korea, Iran and Syria are “the world’s foremost proliferators of ballistic missiles and related technology to rogue states.”

At the end of September, the U.S. Navy deployed state-of-the-art Aegis destroyers in the Sea of Japan off the waters of north Korea. The ships, part of the Navy’s Seventh Fleet, are also part of an elaborate network of sea-based missiles, and land-based Patriot missiles, that make up the so-called missile defense shield. The system is designed to intercept ballistic missiles from adversaries, thus giving Washington and its imperialist allies first-strike nuclear capacity.  
 
 
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