20 October 2021 10:07
After the Chinese hypersonic missile, here is the North Korean missile launched on October 19 from a submarine. The Pyongyang regime likes to remind its neighbors through military tests that represent blatant violations of UN resolutions, which however does not seem to upset the leader Kim Jong-un.
The moment of the tests is usually significant: this time North Korea has chosen the day when the heads of the US, Japanese and South Korean intelligence services gathered in Seoul to talk about North Korea, among other things a month after the launch of a similar missile from a South Korean submarine. It is a technology that few countries in the world can rely on.
Nuclear power, North Korea continues its missile program which makes it as feared as it is insensitive to pressure. The colossal investment in armaments is made at the expense of the well-being of the population, but no opposition is tolerated in this communist and dynastic regime.
Asia is at the center of the most intense arms race in the world: China, Taiwan, the two Koreas, Japan, India and even Australia with the submarine affair … Not to mention the United States which concentrates a power of considerable fire, destined to “contain” the emerging Chinese power.
The regional game is particularly complex. China and North Korea are ambiguous allies, brought together by a shared hostility to the presence of the United States in the region. But Beijing and Pyongyang are not linked by a logic of alliance as was the case at the time of the Korean War. In fact, ideological affinities are much less relevant than common interests.
Yet it is significant that on October 1, China sent a huge budget film to theaters for its national holiday. The battle of the lake
Changjin, which reconstructs the first battle between the Chinese and US armies, in 1950, during the Korean War.
This is the only direct confrontation between the armies of the two countries. The film will certainly not tone down. The battle in the Chosin basin, in fact, for the United States represents one of the most bitter defeats of the twentieth century. At the time, the Chinese army took the opponent by surprise, ill-equipped to deal with the extreme cold. The film ridicules General MacArthur, a hero of the Pacific War who made the strategic mistake of not believing that China would intervene to save the North Korean communist regime.
Almost simultaneously with the release of the film, Chinese journalist Luo Changpin was arrested for daring to question the justification of China’s entry into the war in 1950 on social networks. The nationalist newspaper Global Times called any attempt to question the sacrifice of Chinese soldiers.
When war produces a religious language there is no more room for reason. In such a climate, the arms race on all fronts will inevitably receive the necessary legitimacy. With all the consequences of the case.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)
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