US can’t stand an independent N Korea: Analyst

The United States’ problem with North Korea is that the East Asian country does not want to be under US hegemony, says a political analyst.

Keith Preston made the comments in an interview with Press TV on Sunday when asked about US condemnation of North Korea’s launch of a long-range rocket.

North Korea launched the rocket on Sunday at around 0030 GMT despite warnings by a number of neighbors and world powers.

White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice said in a statement that the rocket launch “represents yet another destabilizing and provocative action and is a flagrant violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions.”

Preston said “the principal problem that the United States has with North Koreans is not that the North Koreans are an aggressive power or even that they are a nuclear-armed power per se as much as the fact that North Korea continues to defy being incorporated into the global system in which the United States has hegemony.”

“We have to remember that back in the early 1950s, the United States was involved in a war on the Korean peninsula, the United States and South Korea were on one side and the north Koreans and the Chinese” were on the other side, he said, adding “that war produced a stalemate, that’s why North Korea is divided even today over sixty years later, that’s why tens of thousands of American troops are still stationed in South Korea.”

“North Korea poses no credible threat to the American national security whatsoever rather the conflict between the United States and North Korea is a legacy of the Korean war,” added Preston, the chief editor and director ofAttacktheSystem.com.

He also said that Pyongyang does not want to “open up its borders to trade and investment by the American corporations and so forth.”

Pyongyang says the rocket it lunched was carrying an earth observation satellite. However, some believe the test is a cover for testing an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The missile is thought to have a range of over 10,000 kilometers, putting it in range of US mainland.

Rice said Sunday that “North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons programs represent serious threats to our interests — including the security of some of our closest allies — and undermine peace and security in the broader region.”

South Korea and Japan have threatened to shoot the rocket down if its trajectory passes over their territories.