In the
aftermath of President Donald Trump’s bellicose United Nations
speech – where he threatened to “totally destroy” the 25
million inhabitants of North Korea – Trump’s own use of
provocative and unprecedented language was largely ignored.
Instead,
frenzied coverage focused primarily on North Korea’s response to
his shocking UN address. North Korea’s answer came courtesy of
foreign minister Ri Yong-ho, who told reporters that North Korean
leadership may consider testing a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific in
response to Trump’s UN threats.
The latest
counter from North Korea prompted a frantic response from corporate
media pundits. Fox News interviewed retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters
who argued that such a test would be “close to an act of war.”
Reuters quoted David Albright of the Institute for Science and
International Security in Washington, who argued that such a test
would be a “tipping point” for China and might prompt many other
countries to call for an “end to the [North Korean] regime.”
Most reports
gave a scant and highly selective history of nuclear weapons testing
in the Pacific Ocean. Reuters, for example, stated that the United
States’ only test of an operational ballistic missile with a live
warhead was fired from a submarine in the Pacific Ocean in 1962.
Others made no mention of the previous nuclear weapons tests in the
Pacific, or merely stated that the last above-ground test of a
nuclear device was conducted by China in 1980 – suggesting to their
readers that a potential test by North Korea would be among the first
conducted in the Pacific.
In reality,
the history of nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific is as long as it
is tragic. Such tests in the region were conducted exclusively by the
only country in the world to have used a nuclear bomb against another
nation – the United States.
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