With the arms race between North Korea and the United States formalised after recent statements by both Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un, China is rapidly losing patience over the situation on the Korean peninsula.
After months of Donald Trump provocatively hectoring China about North Korea, under the false assumption that North Korea is a uniquely Chinese responsibility, China has now called on the US to do more to de-escalate the situation in a statement that seeks to highlight America’s own irresponsible and threatening remarks which are almost always met with predictable retaliation from Pyongyang.
China’s Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai has said,
“Honestly, I think the United States should be doing… much more than now, so that there’s real effective international cooperation on this issue.
They should refrain from issuing more threats. They should do more to find effective ways to resume dialogue and negotiation”.
Here, China has voiced a view that is not dissimilar to that of Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin resented stated that it is not realistic to expect North Korea to simply stop its weapons program entirely as the lessons of Libya and Iraq being attacked from a position of not being able to defend themselves, is etched deeply on the North Korean psyche.
As The Duran previously reported,
“After strongly condemning North Korea’s recent nuclear test, the Russian President explained that after seeing how Iraq and Libya were unilaterally decimated by US forces, North Korea has determined that a nuclear deterrent is the only thing which will spare Pyongyang a similarly grim fate.
Rather than play games of nuclear chicken Putin warned that a dialogue based approach to de-escalation on the Korean peninsula is the only rational approach. He stated,
“Ramping up military hysteria in such conditions is senseless; it’s a dead end. It could lead to a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life. There is no other way to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, save that of peaceful dialogue”.
He continued,
“It is necessary to push the issue to a dialogue between all interested parties. All participants in this process, including North Korea, should not have any of these considerations that are associated with the threat of destruction, but, on the contrary, all parties to the conflict should get on the path of cooperation”.
Putin echoed the previous words of his Foreign Ministery Sergey Lavrov who cautioned that “starving” North Korea with sanctions will only create a humanitarian disaster on top of a tense military stand-off. Putin said,
“As I told my colleagues yesterday, they (North Koreans) will eat grass but will not stop their program as long as they do not feel safe. What can restore their security? The restoration of international law“.
Turning to Donald Trump’s Tweet threatening to instigate US trade embargoes against any nation which has any trade with North Korea, Putin joined China in condemning the ridiculous proposal.
He stated,
“Of course, it is ridiculous to put us on one sanctions list with North Korea and then to ask to help them with sanctions exercises against North Korea”.
Putin further explained that while Russia does trade with North Korea, the turnover if “virtually zero”. Putin proceeded to explain that while many countries, including US allies trade with North Korea, no country in the world is making any significant amounts of money from such trade.
In this sense, China and Russia are both increasingly fed up with a Washington adminsitration that is fuelling a situation that Moscow and Beijing seek to extinguish through compromise.
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