Routine Defensive Exercises or Prelude to War?

Clearly the US forces deployed to the area before the "baffling turn around" in Kim's "attitude," are practicing for an attack on North Korea, whether it is called a "routine exercise" or not. The forces assembled are not regarded as "routine," even by South Korean analysts. The new catch phrase for US jingoism, replacing "all options on the table," is apparently "fight tonight," with the US State Department adopting the military slogan.

Kim has indicated he will wait until the current "exercise" is over before discussing the prospect of a new meeting. It is not whether the assembled forces associated with Max Thunder deployments will cease their exercise activity but whether those out of area US forces will actually leave the region. The next exercise providing a new opportunity for an attack on North Korea will be Ulchi Freedom Guardian in mid to late August. So the prospect for war before the US mid term election exists.

The situation has returned to the status of 2017, except perhaps that the north is not in a position to detonate any more nukes having just destroyed their test site. A test missile launch could trigger an attack by US forces, as this is exactly what the forces in the graphic published above are designed to do, detect and intercept such an act. If such a missile test fails to occur, what we could expect then is something along the lines of a Tonkin Gulf incident or another Chonan "incident," to provide the pretext for a massive US attack. The danger beyond that would be of nuclear war, if the North were to respond with ballistic missile launches. This is a more dangerous situation than in Syria, because this option, the "death note" if you will or "suicide note," has already been clearly laid down by North Korea as their intended response in the event of US attack. North Korean conventional forces are no match for the US and South Korea in the aerospace realm, so the ballistic missiles would be their response rather than submitting to being bombed at will by the US. There is no check or restraint of a cold war nature, as exerted by the Russians in Syria, to avoid a direct conflagration with the US and allied forces in the region. Tae Yong Ho, the high profile defector has described the mechanism in the north, in the event of a US attack, as a doomsday machine.