Leon Panetta former US secretary of defence announced America’s pivot to the Asia-Pacific in 2012, the latest flare up between the US and North Korea takes place within this context. Tensions have reached fever pitch in the Asia-Pacific region, ever since North Korea tested a long range rocket in December 2012. Subsequent sanctions by the UN led to North Korea conducting a nuclear test, in February 2013. Events have now escalated with the US dispatching additional military hardware to the region, as well as sending missile defense units to Guam. North Korea reciprocated by scrapping the Korean War armistice, threatening to attack both the US and South Korea with military strikes and declared it has entered into a state of war with South Korea.

The origins of the tensions go back to the manner in which the victorious allies determined the division of the Korean Peninsula. Japan annexed Korea in 1910 and ruled over it until 1945. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, the UN constructed the administration of Korea. The UN divided the peninsula into two zones of administration: the Soviet Union to the North and the US to the South. North Korea refused to participate in a UN supervised election held in the South in 1948, which led to the creation of separate Korean governments for the two occupation zones. Both North and South Korea claimed sovereignty over the Korean Peninsula as a whole, which led to the Korean War.

North Korea invaded the South, using Soviet tanks and weaponry, China also joined the war on the side of Communist North Korea, the threat of communist expansion led to the US defending South Korea and by 1953 the US ended the war in a ceasefire agreement at more or less the same boundary, with South Korea making slight territorial gains. The two countries never signed a peace treaty, the two Koreas remain technically at war. Today the Korean Peninsula remains divided, the Korean Demilitarized Zone acts as the de facto border. With North Korea remaining in poverty and dominated by a ruling family, North Korea thereafter began a uranium enrichment program in order to possess nuclear weapons which have exacerbated tension between South Korea and the North and the US ever since.

International involvement on the Korean peninsula is the fundamental problem in the region.

Whilst the highest-level contact the government of North Korea has had with the US was with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who visited Pyongyang in 2000, the two countries do not have formal diplomatic relations. Then in 2002, George W. Bush labeled North Korea part of an ‘axis of evil’ and an ‘outpost of tyranny,’ which has defined US actions against North Korea ever since.

With North Korea developing Nuclear weapons the US position has always been very clear. The US in 1986 demanded detailed information on North Korea’s nuclear programme, which North Korea refused to hand over to the US, instead it gave those detailed documents running into 19,000 pages to China. An agreement was reached between the US and North Korea in 1994 regarding North Korea’s nuclear reactors. This agreement called for North Korea to bring to halt its nuclear programme and shut down its Yongbyon reactors. This was in exchange for the US supplying two light-water type reactors. But the US failed to honor its part of the promise and hence North Korea resumed its nuclear activities. This has been the case ever since, the US offers a range of promises which do not materialize so North Korea continues with its nuclear programme.

In the face of much saber rattling by the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the US escalated tensions through a number of provocative actions in its annual US-South Korea military exercises, which included the dispatch of a pair of nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers on a training mission over the Korean peninsula. US officials described this as a way of underscoring the US commitment to its longstanding regional allies, Japan and South Korea. This is a departure for the US who usually call for calm when North Korea ratchets up aggression and in the past almost always calls for talks which defuse tensions. The US on this occasion responded to each North Korean provocation with a stronger signal of its own. The US provoked North Korea in order to bolster its presence in the region and increase its military footprint as it continues its ‘pivot’ to the Asia-Pacific. This is why Obama reiterated: “Washington has an obligation (to) defend the homeland (and) reassure South Korea and Japan that America’s defense commitments remain firm.”

The rhetoric from North Korea in reality has very little underlying substance. North Korea has developed a nuclear device that they are able test underground. However there are big question marks over their ability to deliver such a device. North Korea striking with a nuclear weapon at South Korea, Japan or the US is extremely remote. What North Korea does have is a very large conventional force. The North Korean People’s Army operates a very large amount of equipment, including 4,060 tanks, 2,500 APCs, 17,900 artillery pieces, 11,000 air defense guns and some 10,000 MANPADS and anti-tank guided missiles in the Ground force; at least 915 vessels in the Navy and 1,748 aircraft in the Air Force, of which 478 are fighters and 180 are bombers. North Korea’s missile programme is based primarily on Soviet Scud missile technology, and Pyongyang is believed to have developed the infrastructure for missile research and development, testing, and production. Any attempt by North Korea to invade South Korea will lead to the US, China and Russia also getting involved something which has taken place in the past.

This strategy by North Korea of being aggressive and increasing rhetoric as well as launching rockets and conducting nuclear tests are all to influence negotiations. Any leader can make mistakes and miscalculations, however no one can run a country alone. Leaders require loyal and competent administrators. A certifiable and apocalyptic-minded leader is very unlikely to rise so far — and is even less likely to command the respect and loyalty of those necessary to actually run a nation for any length of time. Successive North Korean leaders have shown, consistently that their foremost goal is the survival of their regime. This is achieved thorough developing weapons to act as a deterrent on both South Korea and the US. While North Korean leaders appear unstable – they are designed to seem that way in order to induce an element of uncertainty at the negotiating table with the West, which is always the result of North Korean provocations. Pyongyang regularly uses ballistic missile and nuclear tests as part of a larger strategy to not only keep itself relevant, but to ensure regime survival.