US provokes two Koreas to besiege China: US expert

Washington’s provocative moves against North Korea are conducted with the ultimate aim of encircling US arch-rival China, a political analyst tells Press TV.

“Clearly US officials, the administration of Pentagon, [and] the elite in the United States see China as a competitor of the United States in the long run,” Richard Becker of the US-based anti-war ANSWER coalition said in an exclusive interview with Press TV on Tuesday.

“So they are targeting North Korea right now but the overall strategy is one of surrounding China and Korea with military bases that stretch from Japan to the Philippines including Taiwan and the direct deployment of US naval and air forces all over the region,” he explained.

The remarks come amid reports of the United States sending a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, to the southwestern coast of the Korean Peninsula, citing the possibility of a rocket launch by Pyongyang.

In late March, advanced, radar-evading F-22 Raptors were deployed to the main US Air Force base in South Korea in a move Washington described as part of its commitment to defend the Asian country in the face of military threats from the North.

Earlier in the month, two US nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers flew out of Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri and dropped dummy ordnance on targets in South Korea and completed the 13,000-mile round trip in a “single continuous mission.”

“Here in the United States what we hear through the mainstream media, the corporate media, is all about rhetoric coming from North Korea. How that is translated we don’t really know but we do know for sure that very provocative actions are emanating from the United States,” Becker noted.

“When that happened there was of course North Korea which had virtually its entire infrastructure destroyed. No building was left,” he said, referring to the B-2 stealth bombers’ virtual strike on North Korean targets.

He also criticized new round of UN sanctions imposed against Pyongyang as another act of a provocation against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The sanctions followed on the heels of North Korea’s nuclear test in February and led to an escalation of Pyongyang’s rhetoric against Washington and Seoul.