[2017-05-31]









With the passage of time it is becoming ever clearer that the "maximum pressure and engagement", though named anew, is an extension of the deep-rooted anti-DPRK policy the US has persistently pursued for decades and the culmination of the heinous policy to stifle the DPRK.
The keynote of the "maximum pressure" is to put intense pressure far surpassing those enforced by the successive American regimes upon the DPRK in the shortest possible period by employing all possible means and methods so as to make it succumb to the US demand for nuclear abandonment.
Accordingly, the Americans are blustering they will not hesitate to choose any extreme option in order to check the DPRK’s nuclear programme and make it totally scrap its nuclear weapons, bragging they will ratchet up sanctions and blockade to the maximum for the present.
As the US admits the limit of its strength in the showdown with the country, it is trying in every way to apply the “highest pressure north Korea has ever experienced” by involving not only its vassal states but also neighbouring countries.
Threats by force and high-intensity military pressure constitute a major component of the "maximum pressure" touted by the Trump clique.
To cite the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle 17 joint military exercises they staged this year as an example, they committed aggression forces to them, including special operation units, on the largest scale, daringly making public that their goal was to “eliminate the north Korean leadership” and “overthrow its regime”, discarding the deceptive signboard of “annual” and “defensive” drills.
The US war hawks deliberately spread the theories of “April war” and “nuclear war crisis” in the Korean peninsula to add fuel to tension. Not content with this, they continue to deploy forces after declaring the conclusion of the war games.
The “maximum pressure” also aims to extremely isolate the DPRK in the international diplomatic arena and deprive it of its sovereign right and its people of their elementary right to existence.
Going far beyond their predecessors in the anti-DPRK sanctions racket, the villainous Trump group is hatching all kinds of despicable plots to degrade the DPRK’s political and diplomatic status in the international community in every way and completely isolate and stifle it, insisting they would “slap sanctions on any countries, organizations and individuals and question even international organizations, if they support the north” and “strip it of UN membership”.
The “maximum pressure” is just the height of anti-DPRK hostility the US has pursued so far and a declaration of all-out war.
"Engagement" is part of the DPRK policy the current US administration is hyping so much as if it were a new solution to the north’s nuclear issue.
They spin out rhetoric day after day, saying “engagement” is geared to the “peaceful settlement” of the north’s nuclear issue and they also want the “settlement through dialogue and negotiations”, not only by pressure.
To level a gun at the DPRK behind to get it to surrender while offering their hand in front is as loathsome and shameless as a wolf bleating without wearing a sheep’s clothing.
The Trump administration is trying hard to embellish “engagement” as a gesture of goodwill.
As the Americans are well aware that they will never be able to stop the DPRK from building up its nuclear capabilities by such coercive means as the "maximum pressure", they are trying to cover up their miserable defeat and achieve the aim of the “north’s dismantlement of nuclear programme" by adopting all engagement tactics such as appeasement, deception, negotiation and dissuasion.
To the DPRK that has disgustingly experienced the US double standards, it associates the term “engagement” with a synonym for a cover for aggression and plunder.
It is the US that has poured cold water on the sincere efforts of the other side aspiring for a negotiated settlement and scrapped hard-won agreements by inventing all unfounded excuses.
Such historical processes give future generations such a bitter lesson that unless the US fundamentally withdraws its policy of hostility towards the DPRK, normal dialogue and negotiations between the two countries can never be expected and every good agreement will become a good-for-nothing eventually.
Such a US attempt to conceal its nasty true colours, disarm the DPRK and guide it to denuclearization by dint of the vacuous “engagement” is as foolish as a bid to set the ladder to the sky.
The "maximum pressure and engagement" loudly touted by the Trump administration has been fated to be thrown into the garbage bin since it came out.
Thunderstruck by the successful test launches of Hwasong 12 and Pukkuksong 2 ballistic rockets the DPRK has developed holding aloft the banner of promoting economic construction and nuclear arms buildup in parallel, the White House is still undecided as to whether to put up the “maximum pressure” card or the “maximum engagement” card.
It is the DPRK’s consistent and resolute stand to go steadily along its way no matter what others may clamour for sanctions and pressure and any US bravado will come to a miserable end unless it does an about-face in its anti-DPRK policy.
The US is now in such a pitiable plight in which it is unable to attack the DPRK it regards as a thorn in its flesh, though it did with other countries, and it can find no way but to apply sanctions and pressure by bringing together all the riffraff around the world.
The most perfect weapon system in the world cannot remain US monopoly, and the DPRK has the right to give a greater threat to it, if it poses a threat, and to mount a retaliatory, annihilating nuclear strike against it, if it commits a preemptive nuclear attack.
To do so belongs to the country’s independence, self-defence and dignity.
The US has to see its rival correctly and stop such foolish political sophism as the "maximum pressure and engagement" which can never be realized but will only elicit greater rebuff and challenge from its rival.
Recognition, respect, equality and reciprocity based on the withdrawal of its policy hostile towards the DPRK, not the "maximum pressure and engagement", constitute the basis of a correct policy for establishing normal relations between the DPRK and the US.
Time and tide wait for no man.
The Trump administration had better make a wise decision before meeting a bigger crisis and sustaining irrevocable defeat and ruin.
This is the excerpts from the commentator’s article carried on Rodong Sinmun, organ of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea.